First I introduce myself, I\'m the one that had organized the first Zaurus SL-C750 and SL-C760 group buy when they were released in June. I don\'t know if this intervention will be a flop and it doesn\'t matter if so. Perhaps I can influence the way our Zaurus is evolving (its OS, base system, PIM and other software). In any case, what I\'m sure is that it could completely change the face of Linux on PDA. :wink:
:idea: We need a strong reversal in the present PDA Community way of working. What is missing for all Sharp Zaurus, iPaq, Yopy, and other device running Linux is a well thought and organized effort. The goal that could be common to all of us is to build the next generation powerful and complete operating system for our beloved device. You should certainly already know that there\'s a lot of software, build systems, operating systems, rom/kernel images, cross-compilers... out there. All those solutions are growing slowly and in many different projects (with one developer to five). It\'s now time to propose a solution that could resolve this. And to go quickly to something very useful for everyone, the fusion of pdaXrom or OE with Debian ARM distribution is needed.
What do I mean with fusion? Here is an explanation:PdaXrom team for example has define an emerging operating system. They already has proved with cacko rom and pdaXrom that they know how to deal with user needs and communication with the community is done easily and in both way. What should the community do now? We need:
* to completely fusion pdaXrom libraries with those of Debian.
* to leave only useful tools from Debian and replace most of them with busybox (as it is already in pdaXrom).
* to add all dependencies in the base system packages (.ipk) to replace Debian ones (so apt-get or ipkg won\'t try to install something else when an .ipk is available). To split them if necessary.
* to finish the package manager ipkg so it becomes completely stable and could manage correctly .deb files without needing apt-get and other tools.
* Tell to all user whinning for a package: \"it\'s in Debian repository. If you want something smaller, just build an ipk and upload the source and the binary in our incoming directory\".
* It could also be interesting to take the control of
http://www.emdebian.org so Debian could begin to have a real voice in embedded market (other than \'extract deb files and do it manually\').
The selected building system team will need to:
_ refuse to open CVS write access to the base system for anyone other than those whose have proved their value (contribution, submitted patches...).
_ do things like they think they should do it (like any PC distro today) and use and include software built by other people from the net (I mean include for example Portabase without having to manage the construction but only to verify its easy compilation).
_ They need only to work on the base system and not on the wall thing (that shouldn\'t prevent them from building good tools).
_ listen to users but with a very strong reflection because most of them are simple Trolls here.
There\'s also some work for own great sites ZaurusUserGroup.org and www.killefiz.de/zaurus/ :_ list tasks that need works and ask for package maintainers like on Debian. I\'m talking about the wall purged application ipkg set and not the base system. (ZaurusUserGroup.org)
_manage the default applications construction (PIM, ...) in the present community.zaurus mirror. (ZaurusUserGroup.org)
Note: Those default applications need to be defined.
_ manage, if they want to and if it\'s possible, some more open source projects (separated from default one).
_ list all available software, have screenshots, ... (
www.killefiz.de/zaurus/)
_ zaurus forum, zaurus faq (to revamp), ... (ZaurusUserGroup.org).
That\'s it! Someone agree or disagree? ZaurusUserGroup.org or
www.killefiz.de web master?
Please, OE or pdaXrom team members, don\'t reply at one. I\'m sure that you like what you have done so far (as most of us).
