Is Debian For Me?

[band-aid]

I've been using angstrom for the past 6 months and am getting kinda fed up with its "incomplete" feeling. May of the apps that I install segfault on launch or shortly after and I can't find a decent web browser. I use my Z for a variety of things and have a few apps that are fairly necessary.


100% necessary
Web browser - Currently using minimo, but it lacks many features. I NEED to be able to right click and do "save target as"
Wireless support for Ambicom CF card - mainly use kismet
Good Ebook reader - support for TXT's - I love FBReader
IRC client - preferably Xchat
Wireshark
PDF viewer that doesn't segfault when I hit an arrow key

What I'm looking for:
Galculator to work
Notecase
working SSH client


... on second thought, can someone post a link to a package browser that way I can poke around rather than making a post 10 miles long.

Closing question: How close is debian (feature wise) on the zaurus to debian on the desktop? I realize it will be slower but I can handle that if the stuff WORKS.

[tux]

1. Web browser - Currently using minimo, but it lacks many features. I NEED to be able to right click and do "save target as"
2. Wireless support for Ambicom CF card - mainly use kismet
3. Good Ebook reader - support for TXT's - I love FBReader
4. IRC client - preferably Xchat
5. PDF viewer that doesn't segfault when I hit an arrow key
6. Galculator to work
7. working SSH client

 I've put numbers on the questions you ask that I can comment on:

1: On Titchy(OABI) iceweasel works. On the Eabi versions Dillo works and some success with Epiphany and variants: NOT iceweasel.
2. I think I've seen success reported with the Ambicom cards in various threads.
3. fbreader works fine and installs from the repos in Titchy(OABI) and in EABI.
4. I've seen reports of success with irc clients in these threads.
5. I've seen evince remarked on
6. in repos for OABI and EABI, working for me now, as I type. in EABI.
7. Server and client both work under OABI and EABI.

As regards the rest of your questions: search in this forum and I think you'll find the answers.

If you don't care about the multimedia, sound video, the TitchyLinux has the most straightforward install path and the most complete set of repos. As far as I could see everything that a desktop could install was available. The resource limitations of the zaurus made some of the apps rather slow.

As regards the EABI versions, the install path is still a bit problematical. Some of the apps, libs are not all available. However, all of this is changing on a daily basis. The repos are being populated quite rapidly and a problem for today is quite often solved by tomorrow.

Jump in the water is quite warm!  The company is quite pleasant too!

[jpmatrix]

did you RTFW before posting ?

https://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=Debian...eries_models%29

to be short, there are 2 version of debian on the zaurus :
1-debian oabi, same than debian on desktop pc, all debian packages for arm works, but slower than angstrom, some multimedia problems because of older unmaintened kernel
2-debian eabi, about 80-90% packages working (i'd say), as fast as angstrom (which is eabi based), up-to-date kernel and optimizations

most people here are debian eabi powered  

[band-aid]

Thanks for the replies. I think I'm going to give the yongun kernel with this https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showto...=25029&st=0 rootfs a go. Just gotta back up everything before I take the plunge and format my drive.

[ZDevil]

Just to add:
xpdf works fine.
SSH works fine.
There is a NoteCase package (and some other packages not found in the Debian repos) in this repo: deb http://matrixmen.free.fr/zaurus/debian/ sid main contrib non-free

[dlj0]

I've been using angstrom for the past 6 months and am getting kinda fed up with its "incomplete" feeling. May of the apps that I install segfault on launch or shortly after and I can't find a decent web browser. I use my Z for a variety of things and have a few apps that are fairly necessary.


100% necessary
Web browser - Currently using minimo, but it lacks many features. I NEED to be able to right click and do "save target as"
Wireless support for Ambicom CF card - mainly use kismet
Good Ebook reader - support for TXT's - I love FBReader
IRC client - preferably Xchat
Wireshark
PDF viewer that doesn't segfault when I hit an arrow key

What I'm looking for:
Galculator to work
Notecase
working SSH client


... on second thought, can someone post a link to a package browser that way I can poke around rather than making a post 10 miles long.

Closing question: How close is debian (feature wise) on the zaurus to debian on the desktop? I realize it will be slower but I can handle that if the stuff WORKS.

I feel your pain vis-a-vis Angstrom.  They are very concerned about --- and good at --- kernel deveopmeent and porting to various devices, but don't seem as concerned with apps and users.    

Debian on the Zaurus is ---- debian.  Thoe oabi  vesion (arm)  is quite stable.   Theree are several ways to go through the initial  installation aand setting up the xserver.  Titchy is probably the easiest, but check this forum for the up&comers.  Once you get going, the rest is a real debian distribution.  Everything works.  Some things like iceweasel and icedove are very slow, but they work.  You can stick with the stable version or  go to Lenny with little trouble.  

I used it for a while, but was enticed to go with eabi (armel), since it is faaster and better at handling memory and floating-point computations.  This is not as easy to install (yet), and since you have to use sid, some things do not work properly.  It is a trade-off, theortically better performance versus less stability.  Armel clearly is the future for these machines, but there are hassles.  No icedove, so I use sylpheed.  It's OK.  Simillarly , no iceweasel, so I am usinf epiphany-webkit.  It works well and with reasonable speed, but there are still glitches.  Most other things work fine, and you can use it for development.  The gcc/g++ compiler works, albeit slowly.

[adf]

SID?

hmmmmm  I ran sid on my main desktop for a year. "apt-get upgrade....oh noooo; not again"
as the movie made clear; sid breaks things.  A lot of my troubled were from media apps like transcode. Hopefully the smaller package set for armel (no non-free; for example) will make that less of a problem.  And I don" t plan to transcode on a Z

[band-aid]

Well, I'm trying to extract my rootfs but I've hit a wall.

Its in .tar.bz2 format and apparently the old version of busybox that is in the recovery console (I think thats what you'd call it) doesn't have a version of tar that can handle them, -j is an invalid option. I'm trying to extract it on my laptop but I don't know if the extracted version will fit on my card. Maybe I should install Uboot first -- assuming it has a console with the newer version of busybox. Any suggestions?

[scottlfa]

I unarchived my rootfs from the laptop onto the media card, then inserted it into the Z.

[band-aid]

Ok, I got that straightened out and am now facing down the UBOOT hard-drive-is-seen-as-CF bug. It looks like its eaten my partition data and I can't fdisk /dev/hda in the uboot emergency console because it segfaults.

EDIT: It boots now, I wasn't hitting 2 at the correct time. heh

Biggest issue now is a horrific kernel panic I get 10 seconds after plugging in my wireless card.

[ZDevil]

Ok, I got that straightened out and am now facing down the UBOOT hard-drive-is-seen-as-CF bug. It looks like its eaten my partition data and I can't fdisk /dev/hda in the uboot emergency console because it segfaults.

EDIT: It boots now, I wasn't hitting 2 at the correct time. heh

Biggest issue now is a horrific kernel panic I get 10 seconds after plugging in my wireless card.

Yes. The magic number keys are already desribed in the instructions.
Kernel panic: have you installed the kernel modules as well? Which kernel are you using?

[band-aid]

I'm using yongun 2.6.23.1 I believe, not the newest one. I did install the kernel modules that go with this kernel. I'd reinstall them but Uboot is being less than cooperative.

Its probably panicking because some version of whatever drivers being loaded are not compatible with my card. I'll play around with blacklisting hostap,hostap_cs,hermes, orinoco, orinoco_cs... ad infinium, ad nausium, ad gloria patre.

[ZDevil]

Which wifi card are you using then?

[band-aid]

I'm using an Ambicom WL1100C-CF. I blacklisted all the modules for the card and plugged it in. No problem. Modprobed orinoco, orinoco_cs and hermes and it panicked. I restarted plugged the card back in, modprobed hostap and hostap_cs and it panicked again. I'm pretty sure my card is firmware version 1.3.2.
Thanks for the help.

[ZDevil]

That's interesting .... because I am using exactly the same wifi card. I don't do anything extra to get it running.
Does a "depmod -a" help"
Are you using EABI rootfs?
Try take out and plug in the card again?
And how about the settings in /etc/network/interface and /etc/hosts ?