Zaurus SL-C3000 What are these ROMs?
 

Hello everyone.

As a user forever learning the Linux universe I was happily surprised to find out that my brother had bought me a Zaurus 3000 PDA. (He's a nice guy)

Anyway, as I was looking at the Zaurus forums I had noticed that users had been talking about the different ROMs available for the PDA.

Looking at mine it says it is a Qtopia version 1.0

My questions is:

1. Why would I want to upgrade my ROM? (Do they provide patches for bugs and new software)

2. What is Cacko ROM, pdaXrom, tkcRom, Wetapon Rom, Sharp Rom ( It this the one I have), OpenZaurus.

I love how easy IPK packages are to install. Would I be right in thinking that the Zaurus will install tar files? how about RPMs?

So sorry for the questions.

Kind regards to all.

The other roms were developed because Sharp completely failed to support the Zaurus community. The Sharp rom uses old libraries and compilers and is very limited in what you can do with it.

I use openzaurus, because Opie is better looking than Qtopia, more customizable, and has thousands of free applications in the http://openzaurus.org/official/unstable/feed feed.

Check out the different roms. I tried thekompany, cacko, and Crow roms (all sharp based) and they fell short of Openzaurus by a mile.

You can install from source on the Z if you wish, but if you want an idea of how easy package management is on the Z, think of debians apt-get and synaptic for an example. click it and it downloads the package, and its dependencies, and installs it.

Many thanks for your reply.

Just two more.

1. You mentined the package management system. Does openZaurus use a similar pakage management system like Debian? If so that would be great.

2. I have seen screenshots of Opie and GPE, they both look great, bust does one have addvantages or weaknesses over the other or is it just a matter of personal taste.

Again, thank you for your reply.

You have helped me decide now that I will change from the standard Sharp Rom to OpenZaurus.

Kind regards.

I'll take these in order

1. While it doesn't use debs or apt (actually apt is available for it), the aqpkg application (think synaptic) operates exactly like apt + synaptic. You set up repositories in the config file (with the gui or do it in an editor), and then simply click what you want. You can still use a lot of the packages at killefiz.de (see below) but you will rarely need to since the repositories are huge.

2. I look at it like this, if you like KDE, you'll want Opie, if you are a Gnome fan, go with Gpe. I prefer Opie, but then again I don't dig Gnome (***donning my flame-retardant suit***).

If you run into any trouble with the install or config, post the error and what you are trying to do and someone can walk you through it, either here or at the open-embedded forum. I honestly think we (LQ) have more Zaurus users registered here than at OZ, but I may be wrong. It's just that we don't have a dedicated forum for the Z here.

You are in luck, they recently released a new version of OpenZaurus. 3.5.3 is out, and I must say it rules on my 5500.

My goodness that was a fast reply!

I will download and install the lastest version of OpenZaurus and use Opie. The main reason is the I think KDE on my Linux box seems a fuller, robust, everything you need desktop environment.

Not that I am downing Gnome, but from past experiences Gnome seemed less stable than KDE.

I will try the download/installation later today and see how it goes.

Many thanks again.
Kind regards

I downloaded and installed Opie and its pretty clean.
The install went well.

Just 2 little problems

The network is playing up. I use an Asus WL-110 CF wireless card and on the Sharp Rom it had the Prism 2 driver alread installed in the Wlan-ng.conf file. Opie can't seem to connect to the web.

I have checked the network settings and have a strong signal strength but on the Station it tells me it is Prism 1.

I have looked through root/etc/pcmcia/csi and there is no file called wlan-ng.conf - erm, what do I do?
I have tried to use the browser because of the signal strenghth , but when I go to a web site like www.kde.org it tells me Unknown host.

2. Under the old Sharp Rom you had a tag called File and it nicely showed you what was on the internal disk and you could easily choose between that, the CF or SD card. Can't quite do that with Opie unless I haven't a file that lets me do that.

I understand it's an experiment which is great about Linux.
I am having fun with it.

Regards

can you ping yahoo.com from the console? Most networking issues in OZ are DNS setting problems in my experience.

Sorry, just a few hours after posting the above I got the netowrk settings working.

It was a DNS setting that was kicking me for 6.

Thanks for your advice.

Out of curiosity, where can I get the GPE image. I have looked on their web site and they have a link called Familiar Linux, but when I have looked it only mentions GPE for HP.

Where can I get the image from and what other files fo I require for the GPE to ne installed.

GPE images are available in the Openzaurus feed as well as the henges mirror.

http://oz.hentges.net/mirror