Is Pdaxrom Alive?

[speculatrix]

or has it sadly floundered?

[miskinis]

or has it sadly floundered?

I pop in now and the, but have not been too active in the forum.  I still use
pdaXrom on my SL-5500, but mostly as an xmms-based MP3 player.  I
use pdaXqtrom on my 6000 now and then, but took the native pdaXrom
off of it, since I could never get the power management working 100%.

I still consider it the best OS ever for the Zs, but due to the lack of support
for the 6000 models, past that 1.1whatever beta, I'm way out of touch with
the latest stuff.

It is kind of sad that popularity faded...  But I still love running it...

[ToneBlind]

I'm wondering how many lurkers are in here. Maybe there is a multitude of silent readers which do not post because nobody else does, and thus they assume the forum is dead. [echo] Anybody else here? [/echo]

[karlto]

I still check back every month or two for interest's sake, but I haven't posted in almost two and a half years. I probably haven't touched my Zaurus in just as long.

pdaXrom was the closest I ever got to making it a useful device, but never quite got there (the 6000 seemed to miss out on a lot of the good stuff). Doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon, but I might get it out and play with it again one day. It's amazing to think that it's still quite a powerful device by today's standards even though its four years old!

[ToneBlind]

I still check back every month or two for interest's sake, but I haven't posted in almost two and a half years. I probably haven't touched my Zaurus in just as long.

pdaXrom was the closest I ever got to making it a useful device, but never quite got there (the 6000 seemed to miss out on a lot of the good stuff). Doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon, but I might get it out and play with it again one day. It's amazing to think that it's still quite a powerful device by today's standards even though its four years old!

Welcome back!

Yes, it's amazing how powerful these devices are. Have you thought about selling your 6000 and getting one of the clamshell models? SL-C1000 would be good enough unless you want to install OpenBSD on it, which AFAIK is not possible.

I have an SL-C1000 and it is literally like a miniaturized laptop. I'm running pdaXii13 on it at the moment with Fluxbox, ROX, etc. I can watch movies (mplayer), listen to music (XMMS), write documents and export to different formats including .DOC and .PDF (Abiword), read PDF (xpdf) and CHM (xchm) files, keep an agenda, addresses, passwords (KDE PIM suite,) play arcade games (pdaXmame, although I still haven't figured out how to run them at fullscreen), and about any other thing you can imagine, including browsing the web (Dillo, very fast and acceptable for most sites, or Mozilla, which is slower but more compatible with newer sites.)

You can also find IPK packages for about any application you might imagine, and if you can't find something specific, you can compile your own (I'm in the process of learning how to do this, trying to compile Fluxbox 1.0.0.)

Then you have the newer distros like Debian and Zubuntu, the possibility of installing several ROMS in a SD card and running the system from there without touching NAND, etc.

Frankly it's too bad popularity has faded for these extraordinary devices. Shame on Sharp for dropping the Zaurus.

[2dBH]

I use my z everyday for my work (science). I mostly use maxima for symbolic cal, emacs for latexing, djview for reading ebooks, xpdf, kopi etc. The z is so small that I can carry it around with me and use it whenever it is needed, and pdaxrom is powerful and stable. Thanks to all of you who has made such a wonderful os on the z.

[ToneBlind]

I use my z everyday for my work (science). I mostly use maxima for symbolic cal, emacs for latexing, djview for reading ebooks, xpdf, kopi etc. The z is so small that I can carry it around with me and use it whenever it is needed, and pdaxrom is powerful and stable. Thanks to all of you who has made such a wonderful os on the z.

It is very encouraging to hear that you rely on your Zaurus to provide a dependable and powerful portable platform for your work. I am actually very interested in about all the applications that you mention (except kopi and xpdf, which I am already familiar with.) If you wouldn't mind, could you elaborate on your use of emacs for latexing? I assume you are just using it to produce latex scripts, without having a TeX engine in the Zaurus itself capable of producing output, correct? Even so, I'm very interested in your setup. I think it's the first instance I have heard of someone using emacs in their Zaurus.

I would also like to thank all the people that have put so much work into the Zaurus platform and pdaXrom. The pdaXrom developers, and Meanie (the pdaXii13 developer.) Also, countless other users that have put their effort into different fronts, whether it be tracking problems, developing applications, compiling, or documenting (and I'm including in this last category all the incredibly useful discussions which this forum contains.)

There have been some very interesting developments (zubuntu for example, and kexec as a multibooting solution,) so I hope interest in the Zaurus somehow experiences a revival, because the platform and the community deserves it.

[wario]

i use my z constantly for ad-hoc hacking
just writing little scripts in perl, ruby, c
everthing became clear when i installed native gcc (and removed java)
favorite apps include tilem, mathomatic, driftnet, snes9x, flite ...

i'm just amazed how much use z gets after 7 years

[InSearchOf]

or has it sadly floundered?

Maybe... Maybe not... :-)

Late

[2dBH]

I use my z everyday for my work (science). I mostly use maxima for symbolic cal, emacs for latexing, djview for reading ebooks, xpdf, kopi etc. The z is so small that I can carry it around with me and use it whenever it is needed, and pdaxrom is powerful and stable. Thanks to all of you who has made such a wonderful os on the z.

It is very encouraging to hear that you rely on your Zaurus to provide a dependable and powerful portable platform for your work. I am actually very interested in about all the applications that you mention (except kopi and xpdf, which I am already familiar with.) If you wouldn't mind, could you elaborate on your use of emacs for latexing? I assume you are just using it to produce latex scripts, without having a TeX engine in the Zaurus itself capable of producing output, correct? Even so, I'm very interested in your setup. I think it's the first instance I have heard of someone using emacs in their Zaurus.

I would also like to thank all the people that have put so much work into the Zaurus platform and pdaXrom. The pdaXrom developers, and Meanie (the pdaXii13 developer.) Also, countless other users that have put their effort into different fronts, whether it be tracking problems, developing applications, compiling, or documenting (and I'm including in this last category all the incredibly useful discussions which this forum contains.)

There have been some very interesting developments (zubuntu for example, and kexec as a multibooting solution,) so I hope interest in the Zaurus somehow experiences a revival, because the platform and the community deserves it.

sorry I have not been following this thread for a while...
I have the whole tex distribution on z. I remember compiling a paper in AMS airport once. You can get a distribution at
http://www-alg.ist.hokudai.ac.jp/~jan/zaurus.html
The installtion need about 210M diskspace.

Another page with many useful sci applications is
http://sites.google.com/site/yonggun/scientificpdaxrom

[ToneBlind]

sorry I have not been following this thread for a while...
I have the whole tex distribution on z. I remember compiling a paper in AMS airport once. You can get a distribution at
http://www-alg.ist.hokudai.ac.jp/~jan/zaurus.html
The installtion need about 210M diskspace.

Another page with many useful sci applications is
http://sites.google.com/site/yonggun/scientificpdaxrom

That's amazing (running tex on a Zaurus.) I imagine it must be very slow, but the simple fact that it works is just incredible.

Thank you for posting those links, I will check them out.

[agosine]

I believe InSearchOf needs to be complimented for his hard work.

http://insearchof.inventgen-solutions.com/

[ToneBlind]

Indeed! Things are looking awesome!