*** My initial comments of the latest 20070422 build of Angstrom (purely from a non-technical, non-power user perspective) ***
Here are some very very superficial unorganized remarks. I am completely new to OE systems and OZ, so pardon me for my ignorance and shallow understanding.
1) Installation
Installation is done in a breeze. Just the usual OK mode flashing.
2) Upgradability
A very cool thing is like Sharp rom, upgrading won't wipe the flash clean; the base system and settings are intact, unlike pdaX ... #angry
3) Non-root user setup
Upon the first boot, there is a non-root user account setup page. That's great. I can always use root to do things in the "Root shell".
4) General feel
Overall speed and responsiveness are both good.
5) Interface
The GPE interface is neat, although some windows and menus are too small to see. But I suppose there are ways to change them.
6) Screen rotate
Screen rotate works very well.
7) System utilities
The complete set of system setting utilities:
Date/Time setup, Login setup, Look and Feel, Network setup, Network shield (firewalling), Owner Information, PC/CF Cards (card manager), Keys and Buttons (to assign the big application keys and [1]~[4]), Package Manager, Panel Manager, Serial Ports (with Console and even GPS settings!!), Sleep Config, Sound Settings, USB Settings (ethernet, storage, serial port modes), User Access, User Manager, Screen Setup.
Things are very complete and right in place.
Suspend/resume
Suspend/resume work very well.
9) Power consumption
Battery seems to last much longer than r197.
10) Package Manger
The Package Manager is ready to go with preset feeds. (How come have the pdaX devs never changed the unusable feed locations? #um1 )
11) Taskbar
The taskbar applets (not much different from the matchbox applets in pdaX) seem working.
The taskbar can be hidden, leaving a slender bar at the bottom; tapping it will call up the taskbar again, just like in XFCE. Matchbox should have this.
12) Feeds
The feed(s) looks huge and quite adequate for basic use.
The base system is of the "vanilla" kind; I need more time to test it with other packages I use in pdaXrom.
Still not certain about the compatibility of the packages: can Angstrom use Sharp rom and Opie packages?
*** Things i am looking forward to seeing ***
1) Chinese support!!
Very important to me and all Chinese users: Chinese support.
I have yet to figure out how to add fonts and inputmethods. But there are already quite a number of Chinese locales in the feeds, so i suspect using Chinese shouldn't be impossible.
2) Keymapping
There should be an easy way to config/remap the keys. Still looking into the keymap files in /etc/X11/. The Menu key is not mapped to open up the Main Menu; the "/" key is by default ",", which is not very handy
3) Connectivity
My Symbol Spectrum24 Cf Wifi card is automatically detected and loaded with eth0. Nice. But i have yet to set up a wireless connection yet as dhcpcd seems missing, or maybe it's in some extar package.
I will also try my seldomly used Anycom bluetooth CF on it.
4) Development environment
Native toolchain and compilation environment: clear instructions, pointers, examples, how-tos, packaging guides.
5) Documentation
A set of full-blown documentation and new user walkthrough are as important as the system itself.
That's that for now. Will keep exploring a bit and add more for sure.
I have grown tired of tweaking and hacking so much just to get a basically usable system. I am just an ordinary user and have my holy real life. What i want is usability, stability and productivity, and i am not of the type who take great pride in my geeky ego.
Anyhow, thanks to the OE and OZ people for the efforts.
Angstrom seems to have come a long way.
