X And Cacko At The Same Time In Different Vt's?

[ernestus]

I wonder if it is possible to have a Qtopia derived rom (as Cacko, with it's nice PDA functionality) in a screen, and a X based distro in another, so you could switch between them using any method.

I am currently using the excellent pdaXqtrom, but it has several drawbacks, and sometimes interact not very nicely with Qtopia (anyway the effort made to make those apps behave in such a compatible way is admirable). I use my SL-C3200 for my everyday work, and I NEED the PDA functionality, but X apps makes the Zaurus a real "mini workstation".

I've tried Openzaurus, that allows this (you can instal Opie and GPE side by side), but is very developer-centric and they lack things as a proper embedded web browser. And I am not very sure their alarm system work correctly.

Having the X session in a different terminal should make it faster (ehem, that is for emulator lovers). You can leave your X apps running there as well, without interfering with your PDA environment.

If somebody can give me some hints I can try this myself, but I could not find this information anywere.

Of course thanks in advance.

[InSearchOf]

Well... U-boot has the capibility of doing this... It should be in the future... but as of right now... I dont think anyone has implemented that yet...

Stay tuned :-)

Late

[ldrolez]

You should check if 'alt-boot' can work with pdaxrom. It should work
if you have the kexec fonctionality in the pdaxrom kernel (2.6 based?).

[InSearchOf]

Well alt-boot is configured for OZ... (and I assume he wants a working setup) not Cacko... yes he *may* be able to boot Cacko and OZ... but not Cacko and pdaXrom like he intended...

Late

[InSearchOf]

Ok... wait a minute... I read his post again... you want it on the same session... basicly toggle-able between the two... in 1 active session... with out having to reboot... :-o

I will say yes it can be done...

Will it be stable? No...
Will run at a decent speed? No...

Late

[zogs]

try with Cacko and OpenBSD in dual boot, work fine...

[Meanie]

he is not asking for dual boot
he wants to run the two distros at the same time which is difficult to do since both distros need to be modified in order to accomodate such a thing. OZ can do this because OPIE and GPE both use the exact same kernel and both distros share the same underlying base libraries. And even with all this, there were a few problems with running OPIE and GPE concurrently. Cacko and pdaXrom is not going to be easy to be run like this and some major kernel and distro hacking is gonna be required to achieve running them side by side.

[ernestus]

Thanks to all that posted.
Yes, the idea is having the PDA functionality in one VT and X functionality in another, it's not necessary to run an independent distro.
It's something I did some weeks ago, installing Opie and GPE at the same time in my 3200. I was surprised how clean was the solution and how quick was the X server running besides Qtopia (not *IN* Qtopia). In the first post I comment that this solution wasn't valid for me...

I think this is an extension of Meanie's work in pdaXQTrom (notice the XQT in the middle, BTW: thanks Meanie and the ones who collaborated with you, because it's great!).
In my naive vision, it should be something like this (I am going to try myself, at moleasses pace, sorry):

1 -- Setup another VT (so we can switch back and forth).
2 -- Setup an X server in the second VT.
3 -- launch in that X server the Meanie's pdaXQTrom environment.

Of course this thing accepts more refinements. but achieving point 3 is enough for me.

I repeat, I saw the performance of Qtopia and X running in different VT and was astonishing. But the real engine of this is having the X environment apart of Qtopia, so they don't interfere.

Okay, I expect your comments about this, is it difficult to achieve point 1 or 2? (I think point 3 is very easy, but I might be wrong).

Thanks again.
E