What Is The Future For Collies And Other Sl-5xxx's

[samac]

Hi all

Please shoot me down if I am being stupid!

HRW has released 3.5.4.1 but only for clamshells.
OpenZaurus appears to be heading towards kernel 2.6 exclusively.

Does this mean that development on SL-5xxx variants is at an end?
Or will future releases, say 3.6 be available?
Or will the project fork?

I am being curious, as my Collie is now faster, more stable and better equipped than it was when it arrived from Sharp ( A big thank you to all the developers/contributors), and I would like to think that it can be better still.

Samac

[hvontres]

Hi all

Please shoot me down if I am being stupid!

HRW has released 3.5.4.1 but only for clamshells.
OpenZaurus appears to be heading towards kernel 2.6 exclusively.

Does this mean that development on SL-5xxx variants is at an end?
Or will future releases, say 3.6 be available?
Or will the project fork?

I am being curious, as my Collie is now faster, more stable and better equipped than it was when it arrived from Sharp ( A big thank you to all the developers/contributors), and I would like to think that it can be better still.

Samac
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134694\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The Poodle 2.6 kernel is progressing rather well and I think there has been some progress on getting collie working on 2.6 as well

[koen]

Hi all

Please shoot me down if I am being stupid!

HRW has released 3.5.4.1 but only for clamshells.
OpenZaurus appears to be heading towards kernel 2.6 exclusively.

Does this mean that development on SL-5xxx variants is at an end?
Or will future releases, say 3.6 be available?
Or will the project fork?

I am being curious, as my Collie is now faster, more stable and better equipped than it was when it arrived from Sharp ( A big thank you to all the developers/contributors), and I would like to think that it can be better still.

Samac
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134694\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

For crying out loud, read the release notes!! Those say that the kernel hasn't changed, so you can just update to 3.5.4.1 via ipkg

[Mickeyl]

If there is a sufficiently working kernel 2.6 for poodle and collie, then they will be Ångström-supported devices.

If not, we might see a couple more bugfix-focused releases for them based on the oz354x tree.

One sure thing is that we are completely going the altboot route for collie. I could imagine that future collie releases (no matter Ångström or OZ) will no longer contain anything but the kernel and loader in flash.

External storage has become so cheap and we are no longer willing to jump through hoops to squeeze our distributions into 14.5MB.

[samac]

Hvontres,Mickeyl

Many thanks for the replies, it is good to know that there is a future path planned for the older devices, I thought that there were problems with sharps sd/mcc drivers and they were precluding the development of the 2.6 kernel on the SL-5xxx ranges.

Love the idea of altboot.
2.6 would be great, any ideas when a test version will be available?

Samac

[kopsis]

For crying out loud, read the release notes!! Those say that the kernel hasn't changed, so you can just update to 3.5.4.1 via ipkg
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134698\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Please do not be so quick to push blame on end users. I looked at the release notes and making them a bit less cryptic could help reduce the frequency of such questions. The following:

NOTE: This release will not be provided for 2.4 powered models (collie, poodle, tosa). Users of that machines need to install release 3.5.4 and/or apply upgrade feeds' fixes for 3.5.4. Kernel 2.6 for them is still not ready for users.

may have obvious meaning to OZ developers, but I can see where an ordinary user might be a bit confused. Simply rewording to:

NOTE: Users of 2.4 powered models (collie, poodle, tosa) and clamshell users not ready to move to the 2.6 kernel can get all the 3.5.4.1 updates except the 2.6 kernel by installing the 3.5.4 image and then using ipkg to update to the 3.5.4.1 software. We are working towards supporting the 2.6 kernel on all devices in a future release.

and including a link to a page that gives noob friendly instructions for doing the ipkg upgrade would make it far more obvious that 5x00 users aren't being left behind.

I know (better than most) how frustrating the barage of end user questions can be for developers, but that is no excuse for rude replies. I'm currently evaluating OZ/GPE on my 760 and though it's very impressive technically, I don't think I'm alone in the feeling that poor public relations has hurt OZ's image in the eyes of many users.

[lardman]

Partly my fault - I'm in charge of documentation, but have been away so haven't had a chance to catch up.

The release notes should be available on the wiki (I've not checked yet), if so, feel free to make them clearer, and to point to a page as you describe (and if not, please add them)


Si

[koen]

Partly my fault - I'm in charge of documentation, but have been away so haven't had a chance to catch up.

The release notes should be available on the wiki (I've not checked yet), if so, feel free to make them clearer, and to point to a page as you describe (and if not, please add them)


Si
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134721\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

A  *protected* page, thanks to spambots....

[Hrw]

About wiki page: there is an info to send suggestions via 'Talk/discussion' page. I edited note with kopsis text (a bit edited as we do not provide 2.4 for clamshells at all).

our PR suxx - but atleast moving to wiki allows users to help each other

Future of OpenZaurus from Release Manager point of view:

3.5.4.1 was first planned for cxx00 machines because we did not had good tested 2.6 kernel for them on 3.5.4 time. C7x0 was added to release because: 1. I lack any cxx00 machine and 2. c7x0 is popular machine for which we have same kernel as for cxx00 so why not provide nice upgrade.

Many things were changed during 3.5.4.1 development - for example we now have pregenerated locale support so it is easier to get GPE in other languages. Users of 3.5.4 should be able to upgrade their machines to 3.5.4.1 with 'ipkg update; ipkg upgrade' but this was not tested.

One of Angstrom rules is "machine must have working 2.6 kernel" - so when first release will appear it will support c7x0, cxx00 so I will drop those machines from OpenZaurus - this will force users to change but I do not want to develop for two distros in same time. After that OZ will support only 2.4 powered machines (collie, poodle, tosa) and it will be less maintained.

Current 2.6 kernel on tosa behave MUCH MUCH MUCH better then 2.4 was. I used 2.4/sharprom and 2.4/openzaurus on tosa for about one week and switched to unofficial 3.5.4.1 image with 2.6.17 kernel - it is totally other experience. There are problems to solve but we are going into right direction. When our kernel team decide that kernel is ready for wider testing I will release OpenZaurus 3.5.4.2 which will be 2.6 based for tosa and poodle. Collie/2.6 images can be provided too but they will be more experimental (no SD/MMC support kill that machine). When tosa/2.6 and poodle/2.6 will behave good they will probably move to Angstrom too so OZ will be collie only like it was in first versions.

Collie future is root-on-sd - I do not plan to work on fitting useful set of software in 12M as it takes too much time to get something working.

[kopsis]

HRW: That is excellent information! I learned a ton of stuff from reading your post  The OZ Wiki is definitely a step in the right direction (I can remember the days before clamshells when the only way to know what was going on with OZ was to follow the IRC channel 24 hours a day!). I've added a "Talk" comment to the main OZ wiki page suggesting a "Roadmap" link on the main wiki page that takes one to this info.

[Hrw]

http://wiki.openzaurus.org/RoadMap - need formatting, rewording and then will be in left menu.

Kopsis: thx for your suggestions. I have one question - will you work on getting zkbdd working under OZ on your clamshell? It would be nice to get this working under 2.6 kernel.

[lpotter]

External storage has become so cheap and we are no longer willing to jump through hoops to squeeze our distributions into 14.5MB.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134700\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

then maybe your distributions are too bloated.

[CoreDump]

External storage has become so cheap and we are no longer willing to jump through hoops to squeeze our distributions into 14.5MB.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

then maybe your distributions are too bloated.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134901\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yeah, the [a href=\"http://hentges.net/tmp/screenshots/Zaurus/Akita/Misc/essential-to-boot+wifi.jpg]damn bloat[/url] is killing me.

[lpotter]

External storage has become so cheap and we are no longer willing to jump through hoops to squeeze our distributions into 14.5MB.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

then maybe your distributions are too bloated.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134901\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yeah, the [a href=\"http://hentges.net/tmp/screenshots/Zaurus/Akita/Misc/essential-to-boot+wifi.jpg]damn bloat[/url] is killing me.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134909\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

certainly annoying for people with 5000d,5500, and 5600's, or other embedded hardware that has 16mb flash chips.

and a waste of hardware and battery if you aren't even using the flash the device came with. 128mb is more than enough for an embedded system, and it's being wasted... why??? Why even bother with the device if you are not even using it to it's full potential.

[kopsis]

Kopsis: thx for your suggestions. I have one question - will you work on getting zkbdd working under OZ on your clamshell? It would be nice to get this working under 2.6 kernel.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=134850\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

It all boils down to whether I decide to stick with OZ. I'm trying to learn the develpment environment now, but I'm finding that bitbake and friends have a pretty steep learning curve. When I finally get a package "recipe" and patch set worked out, the build system is pretty sweet. But it's definitely a lot more up-front work than the traditional cross-dev approach.

I have managed to create working packages for lua_5.1.1, lua-sqlite3, lua-sockets, and I'm working on lua-gtk2 (but it looks like freedesktop.org's CVS servers are down so I can't build all the GTK dependencies). If I can get all those packages built and working, then I'll have a compelling reason to stay with OZ and a 2.6 zkbdd package is sure to follow.