Distros On The 3200: Pdax Vs Xii113 Vs Cacko Vs..?

[pixelator]

Hi all, first post (well, practically).

I found a 3200 at a flea market recently and was going to sell, but my penchant for gadgetry has, I think, overcome my desire for extra holiday funds.  So, it's likely going to stay here with me for at least a while... Or I decide it doesn't serve much useful purpose (and I've decided that of lots of PDA's and similar items, including a Fujitsu U810 a couple of months ago - a fun gadget but too small for XP and the keyboard was neither thumb- nor touch-type friendly).

Anyway, I was wondering what the deal was with distros.  I initially put pdaXii113 Akita Full on it but found the lag for opening apps and general speed to be really intolerable.  I repartitioned/restored the HD for Cacko 1.23 and that's what I am running now.  It's clean and fairly quick, but I wonder if I'm missing much flexibility.  What about just plain old pdaXrom?  Spitz vs. Akita?  Yep, I've done some googling and some searching of these forums but haven't yet uncovered a thread that answered these questions (especially not one that was fairly recent).

Also, I'm gleaning that there's no simple method of getting Firefox/Mozilla on Cacko - so is there a Java and Flash ipk or other procedure to get streaming video and other flash or web based stuff running on it?  Bear in mind, before this thing my Linux experience was limited to one simple install of Ubuntu on a desktop for work - and that's it.  

Many thanks...

[Jon_J]

Found at a flea-market - WOW I paid over $400.00 for each of my C3100 and C3200. Consider yourself lucky.
Keep it!!  The Zaurus line is still one of the more advanced mini computers that you can find, especially at flea-market prices.

I cannot answer all your questions, as I only installed pdaxrom for just a few minutes (to upgrade to pdaxii13, when it was first made available).
I tried the spitz pdaxii13 setup on my C3200 and found it too slow for my taste at that time. (I just came from Cacko)
Then I started over and just installed pdaxii13 Akita to NAND. This has a lot fewer applications and general stuff than the spitz version has.
It also seemed to have a faster response time.
While on the subject of speed and pdaxii13, Meanie (the author of pdaxii13) suggests to disable schim in pdaxii13config if you dont need to use it.
Schim is loaded at default and slows pdaxii13 down quite a bit (my personal opinion)
Now, with pdaxii13 Akita installed to NAND only, I later installed "Heavy" applications, such as Firefox, Abiword, etc. to my hard drive.
Set up this way, pdaxii13 has a "comfortable" response/speed for most small tasks.
Opening and using major heavy apps are always going to be slow compared to smaller "simple" apps.

I have another Zaurus, C3100, and It has always ran Cacko.
I recently found a thread in the Angstrom & OpenZaurus forum about HowTo dualboot Cacko & Angstrom.
https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26351
The actual page with fairly easy instructions to dualboot Cacko & Angstrom with kexec is here:
http://www.linuxtogo.org/gowiki/AngstromAndCacko

The below is just my opinion, as I only have had Angstrom installed for 5 days now.
I find Angstrom a lot more difficult than Cacko or pdaxii13, because a lot of basic stuff doesn't seem to work right away, such as USB host/client stuff.
And in Angstrom, to get stuff working, you need to use a lot of console commands, and do a lot of research to find solutions.
I have probs with console commands because I always have to look them up because I forget them if I don't use them regularly.
On my optimistic side, I find Angstrom to be pretty cool, as it is now using 2.6.24 kernel and is being currently updated/developed.
I haven't tried Debian yet. It seems complicated to get installed and setup.

[pixelator]

Thanks Jon, that was exactly the sort of opinion I'm looking for.

So Akita Full into NAND is faster?  I think I installed it that way the first time and did disable Schim...  It was just incredibly slow loading almost everything and once stuff was running it felt like the stylus input wasn't really responsive, either (though that may have been the system response).

Yeah, I did find this for $110.  I sometimes feel guilty buying stuff at fleas since you never know how they got there. The guy wanted $200 but the battery was dead and there was no power adapter so I got him down pretty low.  Came with 2GB SD and an I-O Data WiFi card (which I'm not 100% sure does WPA because I tried for an entire afternoon to get that going and it never worked even after editing the 'WPA y' part of the WiFi config file - so I just reconfigured my WLAN for WEP and it's fine now)...

So what are the minuses of Cacko?  Does it not run everything out there, or require some things be modded?  I found stuff like Quake and a few other items were wanting extra components (I did find that thread that talks about that but it wasn't clear how to resolve it)...  I just downloaded ZPlayer and it doesn't seem to want to play nice with the vids I stuck on SD.  I've read that it's not being updated - and that seems to be a problem with lots of things in the Zaurus community (no offense to the talented developers who either are or have worked on these projects mind you).  

A friend has an N810 that I thought was pretty slick, so if this 3200 could net me about the same money as those seem to be going for, why not go with a device that's newer or (?) better supported?

[Capn_Fish]

Because the N810's keyboard is lousy, the OS is lousy (unless you use Debian, in which case it's just slow, if you think pdaXii13 was slow, you'll be in for a surprise AFAIK), it has binary drivers that are a pain, etc.

Anyway, if you aren't aware of this now, Cacko & Sharp ROM, pdaXrom, pdaXii13, Angstrom, Debian, and OZ's packages don't usually play nice with each other, so if you were trying to install an OZ app onto Cacko, it might SEEM to go OK, but will likely not work. There are a few exceptions, but they're quite complicated.

The main downside to Cacko is the lack of development. It's not getting any newer, and there really aren't any new apps being built for it.

[Jon_J]

Thanks Jon, that was exactly the sort of opinion I'm looking for.

So Akita Full into NAND is faster?  I think I installed it that way the first time and did disable Schim...  It was just incredibly slow loading almost everything and once stuff was running it felt like the stylus input wasn't really responsive, either (though that may have been the system response).

I may be mistaken, but I think there was an Akita-base and an Akita-full. (2 separate install pkgs)
I'm sure that I just started my Akita install with Akita-base. It just had very few utils and maybe a text editor. I built up my apps from there.
I have all this stuff archived to DVDs and I have to look at them to be sure.
When I first launched Akita, it seemed much faster than the HDD driven spitz version.
It still is pretty responsive. I installed it about 2 yrs ago.

[Jon_J]

pixelator
To get WPA working in Cacko, try the tryannoazurus site. http://www.tyrannozaurus.com
It's there somewhere, or you could just look at this attachment.
It is a page describing (in detail with pics) how to get WPA working in Cacko.
Just unzip the contents, (with directories intact) and open: "WPA-Cacko@tyrannozaurus.htm" in a browser.
Scroll about half way down.

[pixelator]

Yep, I did follow that exact (archived) website and it wouldn't work.  Took a while to find a command line editor too, as it seems Cacko 1.23 didn't come with one (or I didn't know what command ot use).  

I don't think I tried Akita base, but I'd assume it's faster although I wouldn't know why - maybe part of the full version launches from the HDD?  Doesn't explain why so many things in Cacko run so much faster - and off the same HDD.

I'm seeing that Akita development may be on hold indefinitely or at best up in the air, and the forum for pdaxrom seems somewhat inactive compared to say, Debian.  Is Debian a better or more current alternative?

[Jon_J]

Install zeditor in cacko to edit text files. You can find it at the ELSI link at the top of this forum.
After installing it, tap and hold stylus on its icon, a properties screen will open, select "run as root" (you need this to save config files.)
Edit: There should be a console app on the first tab in any cacko installation, if not you need to download this attachment.

I just re-installed Cacko the other day, and /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf is nowhere to be found now.
I just tried to re-establish my WPA connection today after the fresh Cacko install.
The last time I used this method to enable WPA, it just worked. (I had /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf on my Zaurus at that time)
I don't know where to find wpa_supplicant.conf at the moment, it's not listed in the cacko feed, maybe I just copied this text file from another distro, such as pdaxii13.

Cacko runs in NAND only, nothing is installed to the hard drive on a C1000 C3100 C3200 (there is a version for the C3000 that installs to the HDD)

[Jon_J]

It works!  
I use WPA PSK on my wireless router and I am using an Ambicom WL1100C-CF Wifi card.
Just copy the attached wpa_supplicant.conf to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf on your Cacko Zaurus.
I extracted this "wpa_supplicant.conf" from the pdaxii13 full spitz archive. (this conf file is virgin and has never been used)
Then follow the instructions given on the web page as mentioned above.
Then fire up opera or netfront and when the connect dialog comes up, your new connection should be there, and just connect.
I had to zip it to attach it to the forum.

Jon

[speculatrix]

cacko works, but you have to consider it basically as a fixed installation. I did ask Anton Maslovsky whether he'd consider doing an update, but he was very busy with real life, and he didn't consider there was too much that could be done to make massive improvements - i.e. it'd only be updates to some packages, but you couldn't do all that much as you needed to maintain compatibility with the Sharp kernel and GLIB.

it's a shame that lpotter didn't carry on producing qtopia2 and qtopia4 roms for zaurus, and the angstrom people have moved on to openmoko (or simply got bored of flaming each other), otherwise we could have a modern version of cacko based on kernel 2.6 and qtopia-latest... though some people are experimenting with it.

there was some activity with ~bsd, but that seems to have faded somewhat.

I think the future is ubuntu possibly with android on top courtesy of Cortez.

[pixelator]

Because the N810's keyboard is lousy, the OS is lousy

Thanks Cap.  My brief handling of the N810 didn't allow me to get very far into it.  No wonder they're not going for that much on eBay and elsewhere.

So far, Cacko seems the quickest and 'polished' environment at first, but I'd like to avail myself of more robust and newer apps like Gimp (which I got running under X/QT but as others have found, it's not usable due to performance (understandable considering the overhead, I suppose).

Do you have a suggestion as to which distro is optimal, considering I've tried pdaXii13 Full and Cacko?  I'm not an utter simpleton but Linux thus far has proven a steep learning curve for me.  I'm 40 and I don't adapt so well to radically different ways of installing and tweaking...  I've come from handhelds running basically one OS, whether they be PalmOS, WinMob or otherwise.

Thanks again!

[pixelator]

Jon, thanks again for your suggestions.  I had actually already Zedited my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (I didn't make that too clear before).  Strange that yours was MIA!  How weird. But mine was there and I definitely edited it according to the instructions on the tyrannozaurus archived page and no dice.  I re-loaded it twice after saving to confirm that it was properly edited with that appended WPA bit and yes, I am aware that when you do any editing of that profile in the GUI app you lose the edited WPA part.  Still, it just didn't work.  I'm not totally convinced the I-O Data card is up to WPA-TKIP which is what I had set up.  Still, WEP is okay (if a bit less secure and more of a pain with the keys instead of easy to remember password).

Cacko runs in NAND but apps you add to it via ipk format go to the HDD, correct?

I was just trying to get GIMP and Firefox running in X/Qt and Firefox triggered an out-of-memory-space error.  Hmm (?)...

[pixelator]

It's too bad... So then am I correct in assuming the only really robust Linux based portable that's going to run newer and more heavy apps (like aforementioned GIMP) without hunting for workarounds, juggling distros/roms or other tweaking is something like an Eee PC running Xandros?

[Jon_J]

Cacko runs in NAND but apps you add to it via ipk format go to the HDD, correct?
I was just trying to get GIMP and Firefox running in X/Qt and Firefox triggered an out-of-memory-space error.  Hmm (?)...

When you use the GUI installer, the "program area" is NAND. Nothing in Cacko installs to the hard drive, unless you hack it like Meanie did.
http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/
http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/custom.html#custom
You can install stuff to a CF or SD card. CF isn't a good choice because of networking cards, but if you install to SD, you should format the SD to ext2 and leave the SD card in the slot at all times. You just treat it as additional storage, instead of removable media.

[speculatrix]

It's too bad... So then am I correct in assuming the only really robust Linux based portable that's going to run newer and more heavy apps (like aforementioned GIMP) without hunting for workarounds, juggling distros/roms or other tweaking is something like an Eee PC running Xandros?

if you want real computing power and are willing to accept a compromise on size, you'll need to consider the Aigo thing that Archimark had, the Fujitsu U820 (or the U810 older model), the Raon Everrun Note, and maybe the eee. I myself have considered the U820 and Everrun but they're costly and the latter has had overheating problems.

the biggest problem with Atom is that whilst it's only 5W-ish, Intel keep quiet about the fact that the chipset is very inefficient and eats 30W. The "poulsbo" chipset which was originally intended to be used hasn't made it into commodity devices yet.

perhaps the nokia n900 (rumoured new device) with Arm Cortex A8 will bring masses more computing power without the power draw. meanwhile Pandora is the current geek's wet dream