So I've been testing OZ 3.5.1 GPE on a SL5000D as some people asked me
to do (see the thread "I am trashing OZ 3.5.1" which I did not start, by
the way). I apologise if this sounds negative. There are a bunch of nice
things on this ROM and a lot of promise but my task here is to point out
the problems I had. I've split the RAM 24-8, I'm not sure whether this
makes any difference.
On the previous occasion I flashed this ROM it ran very slowly, this time
it runs very well, maybe the earlier flash had some problem. There is no help
and the package manager is mistifying. Given that the ROM comes with very
few preinstalled apps, I think a working package manager should have been
first priority, but what do I know. I've decided to install from the command
line instead.
First thing I wanted to install was the rosetta patch, so I put it on a
CF card and ran ipkg install /mnt/cf/rosettapatch...
It gave me some warnings about no space on the CF card (but I was installing
to ROM) then it said installing rosettapatch... and later it said
configuring rosettapatch... at which point the zaurus restarted and prompted
me for my password (it does that a lot, see below). I couldn't tell whether
the installation was successful. Trying rosetta itself didn't work it wouldn't
run. So I made space on the CF card and tried to install again. This time
no warnings, no output and the zaurus kind of froze requiring a reboot.
I tried to run both rosetta and the learner from the command line and both
gave me segmentation fault. So I gave up on rosetta.
Next I tried to install dillo. ipkg install /mnt/cf/dillo...
gave me installing dillo..., then configuring dillo... and there it hung
again. After a reboot, I was surprised to see a new "web browser" icon
on the desktop. Dillo had installed! I wanted to test it so I had to be
online. I used the wlan manager to configure my D-Link DCF-650W card and
enter the WEP key. It seemed more or less straightforward but wouldn't
connect (I know the network is up and the card is OK because my other
Zaurus connects). So I tried an ethernet card (socket low-power)
and that worked fine without any configuration. Surfed the web with dillo,
used ssh, everything worked fine. This is not a bug, I realise, but I wish
that ssh -X was enabled. After all this ROM is X-based so it should work.
Later I tried wireless one more time but no luck. A few days later the
settings I had entered seemed to have disappeared from the wireless setup.
The other thing I wanted to use was TclTk (tclkit actually).
Again it works (under XQt) on my other Zaurus. Non-graphical Tcl works fine,
the canvas widget works fine even with animated graphics, mouse events, etc.
But if I try to put text on the canvas, it crashes and the zaurus restarts.
Same thing if I try any other widget: entry, label, button, etc. It is asking too
much to expect an outside app to work with an early release but maybe this
will point to some bug. This was all from the command line but no errors
came out.
I also opened the screen setup and my zaurus dimmed immediately. The
brightness control was at 10% and it could be slid up to 100% with the
screen brightnening up, but if I let go of the slider it went back to 10%
and dimmed. Seemed stuck there. Finally, I held the slider with the stylus
and pressed the OK button at the same time and it stayed bright! Not exactly
an elegant solution but will do for now.
I tried briefly a bunch of other things which mostly seemed to work as
intended. I am not much of a PIM guy, so I can't tell how good the apps
are. The text editor and sketch program seem very basic.
That's it. I'll keep the ROM for a while in case anybody wants me to follow up
on any of the things I mentioned.
Felipe
