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Author Topic: Replacement Roms: Qnx, Dsl, Or Puppy  (Read 3515 times)

togomenu

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Replacement Roms: Qnx, Dsl, Or Puppy
« on: August 12, 2005, 09:32:00 am »
With the disatisfaction I've noticed with the OZ, et al.  Why hasn't anyone ported a modded Puppy or Damn Small Linux, or QNX (reverse engeneered) over to the Zaurus.  All of these OSes are full Linux, pdaXrom, and can have a footprint smaller than Cracko.  This would increase usable system memory, I'm leaving out the RAM/ROM thing due to past arguments, and allow full Linux functionality.  I'm posting this after reading the thread on replacing the desktop/laptop with the Zaurus.    

Any thoughts on this?
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adf

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Replacement Roms: Qnx, Dsl, Or Puppy
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2005, 05:41:14 pm »
Quote
With the disatisfaction I've noticed with the OZ, et al.  Why hasn't anyone ported a modded Puppy or Damn Small Linux, or QNX (reverse engeneered) over to the Zaurus.  All of these OSes are full Linux, pdaXrom, and can have a footprint smaller than Cracko.  This would increase usable system memory, I'm leaving out the RAM/ROM thing due to past arguments, and allow full Linux functionality.  I'm posting this after reading the thread on replacing the desktop/laptop with the Zaurus.   

Any thoughts on this?
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probably because the qt roms do what they do well, pdaXrom is good, and there is pocket debian.  Also the OZ problems are not uniform. on some z's oz is great.
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**3100 Zubuntu Jaunty,(working on Cacko dualboot), 16G A-Data internal CF, 4G SD, Ambicom WL-1100C Cf, linksys usb ethernet,  BelkinF8T020 BT card, Belkin F8U1500-E Ir kbd, mini targus usb mouse, rechargeble AC/DC powered USB hub, psp cables and battery extenders.

**6000l  Tetsuized Sharprom, installed on internal flash only 1G sd, 2G cf

kopsis

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Replacement Roms: Qnx, Dsl, Or Puppy
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2005, 06:11:44 pm »
Lots of reasons:

They're x86 based ... that means every single binary has to be rebuilt from source and that's a mighty labor intensive process. That's one reason why OE has invested so much effort in a unified build system.

They don't have any support for a Zaurus "system" (with its mix of flash filesystems, custom boot process, etc, the Z looks nothing like the PC system these distros are based on).

People are still going to want things like access to their SD card, use their Zaurus as a USB storage device, etc. and all of those things require merging in Sharp (or OE) software that's not part of the lightweight Linux distros.

Where will people get add-on software? Those distros don't support IPKs (unless you merge in even more Sharp or OE software), and won't be able to use the repositories of x86 extension packages the distro communities have created for them. About the only hope is to pull from Debian's ARM repositories but that means running apt and that means you *must* have many megabytes of free space for apt to work in.

When all is said and done you'd end up with something that looks an awful lot like pdaXrom or Pocket Debian (without the stability they've already gained through many months of testing) so what would be accomplished for all the effort?
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togomenu

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Replacement Roms: Qnx, Dsl, Or Puppy
« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2005, 01:05:16 am »
WOW! Thanks.  Just needed a little clarity.
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