I've been itching to put a "real" installation of unix on my C3000 for some time now. The default Sharp Linux was lacking in the development tools I wanted (gcc, python...) and installing them was such a major pain. As a Linux user of many years, I would probably have gone for pdaXrom, if it had decent C3000 support. But it doesn't, so here I am with OpenBSD.
I did an initial install on my desktop machine with a 3.8 pre-release a few weeks ago to be sure I would be happy with the OS, and to aquaint myself with it. Apart from an unfamiliar installation process and X's refusal to drive my monitor at 1600x1200 I have to say it was painless. I love the simple way of installing third party packages which takes me back to my early days of learning unix 15 years ago. In fact, some of the packages haven't been updated since around then but they're still good enough for me!
Installing on the Zaurus was much more difficult. My unfamiliarity with how BSD handles it's disks was a big problem and took me a couple of hours to figure out what I was doing wrong (I calculated the sector offsets and sizes incorrectly). Once I had it booting to the installer, it then took me a while to figure out how to get the base packages onto the 3000. My hope was that I could mount the SD card... alas no. My solution was to setup my wifi card and ftp the files to the local disk. This was quite painless, but luckily I had an idea what I was doing before starting.
Once running, the positives definately outweigh the negatives:
+ It's a real unix with all the tools I expect!
+ gcc available by default
+ Lots of other packages ready to go
- Frambuffer console sometimes corrupt (solution: use X )
- Frozen once when resuming from a suspend.
- Doesn't seem to suspend if I close the lid. (apm -z or zzz)
- I didn't enable enough swap to compile large programs esp with -O2 flag. I guess I'll be adding a swap file.
- SD card doesn't seem to be recognised yet.
- HDD light is permanently lit. (very minor problem)
Finally, thanks to everyone who has been posting here, giving me the confidence to risk bricking my 3000 (especially barryg).
