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Zaurus is a good quality player and much more flexible than "normal" players. I use Open Zaurus the ogg tools you can get for it and CF. A 64 meg CF is cheap and loads up an hour's worth of music and a shell script or two for random play. Larger CF cards are getting cheaper all the time and a CF wifi card could eliminate the need for the clumsy transfer step. I'm sure people will make software that does all of this easier than my dinky shell script, but I like the speed of simple tools like sed and urandom. Don't forget to use the -q flag for ogg123 to silence the output and don't forget to change the power and light settings so the screen turns off but the power does not and you have a beautiful and very powerful jam box and rounds out an all free music system.

My next project for it is to get a car power adaptor and a little nicer mounting system than I already have.

Open Zaurus is a little more flexible than the software that comes with it, but you might not want to do that if you need to sync with nasty old Lookout or something. Debian Zaurus with X11 will be massivly cool when it settles down to stable.

Open Zaurus, Debian, Ogg-Vorbis and some CF cards are all you need. Here's a quick howto. If you can't master the Debian install, use Knoppix. Move your music to free formats and never mess with DRM BS again. If you can't read it and move it to a free format, don't buy it. The RIAA is going to lose this one. The harder they suck the easier it is to be free.

Yeah, you might have been joking. That's OK, I like the chance to sound off about free goodness.

Just as a data point: I've got pretty good Japanese support on my U.S.-purchased Zaurus SL-5500. Look around on the Downloads section of Zaurus Zone for Japanese packages, including Nunome and Kanji Nirvana. Probably not as slick a solution as a Japanese Zaurus, but not bad if you want a primarily English-language PDA with Japanese support useful to a language student.

The sharp zaurus is one of the best tools ever. I have used it in many different situations where before I would have had to grab my laptop. Using Minicom I have programmed routers with the nifty serial cable. I have spent many hours playing Dopewars and Wyvern (a pretty nifty graphical mud). The sharp image comes with Opera and is readable even at the furthest zoom (-4 or something.) My options are NOT restricted by sharp, there is even OpenZaurus (or OZ as the Z junkies call it.) The walkthroughs on the pages are mostly made for Linux noobs.

It runs Kismet (with the special socket drivers I can run low power for about 2 hours.) The software library is always growing, and the developers are happy to share their techniques for cross compiling/QT developing.

The wonderful thing about the Zaurus, is people already have developed and even COMPILED programs for the arm that run just fine on the Z, (mostly Ipaq/other linux SA device developers) but that means an even BIGGER software library.

The community is so helpful, you may be asking questions in the #zaurus channel in irc.openprojects.org and the person answering your question, just might have been the one developing the program you are asking about. It is not infrequent to hear "#Zaurus:So_and_so Yeah here that version is kinda buggy, I just compiled the new one here."

I have to mention Zauruszone even though it is no where near the community it used to be, there still are useful links

You may also want to ask on #opie on IRC to see if they have a more Opie specific howto somewhere.

I just bought a Zaurus from BestBuy this weekend -- the display module. I guess they are going to quit selling them.

Now I just started using it, but I've got to say, this thing is awesome! I probably wouldn't recommend it to someone new to PDAs though. In all honesty, the PIM (calendar, addressbook, etc.) applications included are kinda week. They're okay, but they're not as polished as what I'm used to with a Palm. The multimedia features are very impressive, but best of all is that you have an entire _real_ OS to work with. I've got apache and mysql running on it now. I can use a VNC client on my Zaurus to connect to my servers. I mean, come on, what else could you want?

While I don't expect the Zaurus to outpace Palm anytime soon, if Sharp keeps developing it, then I expect it to be a real contender. Oh, and there is a fairly active development community too. Try zauruszone for example. And there are some good replacements for the week PIM apps that come with it ( thekompany has some really nice ones for a couple dollars too).

Having splurged and bought my first -ever PDA, a Zaurus, I am quite pleased. I am runing many of my own personal Python scripts on the Zaurus, from the BASH shell command line terminal program provided. I have discussed this with many folks who own or are considering buying a Zaurus, at the Zaurus home page at www.zaurusone.com and several of them have also taken an interest and are trying out Python programs on the Zaurus.

I recently read an interview with Guido van Rossum (I think it was in Linux Journal) where Guido commented that programming for PDA's or handhled computers might be one of the brightest spots in Python's future.

I am intrigued by this. The Zaurus' command line BASH shell, combined with the built-in keyboard is great for this purpose. I don't think that a command line without a built in keyboard would be nearly as good for this purpose; I need the keyboard for entering data and such, and the Zaurus' keyboard is almost as good as a real keyboard for me, to my surprise; it feels natural.

Does anyone know if the Compaq IPAQ and PALM devices have command line interfaces? I guess they must , since I believe I have read about Python ports to both the Windows CE and the PALM operating systems. Still, with its thumboard, the Zaurus is pretty hard to beat (The Zaurus also features an online "keyboard,", a "pickBoard", and handwriting recognition, but the thumboard makes the Zaurus pretty hard to beat.

The Zaurus also comes with a built-in JEDOE JVM in order to make porting Java programs easy, and to make developing new Java bsed code for the Zaurus easy.Also, the Zaurus has its native QT-based Qtopia environment.

I am trying to learn PyQt and Black Adder to make GUI programs for the Zaurus (although I don't know if or how hard it would be to port PyQt to the machine?) But even on the command line, Python shines in my opinion.

So, if anyone is looking for new realms to conquer with their Python skills, I heartily recommend the Sharp Zaurus.

• It's cheaper ;-)
  
• It's designed with this purpose in mind - you have 'random' access within songs, and quick access to other songs should your Worship Leader deviate from his/her songlist.
  
• It allows different displays for control, front of house and foldback
  
  • 
    As for the remote control on your Zaurus, go for VNC, you can get it from Zaurus Zone and, of course, it's free.

The QTopiaDesktop software does exist for Linux, it's even free (beer). It can sync with the Zaurus over USB.
QTopiaDesktop HOWTO

Other option: You can use KDE's KOrganizer on the Zaurus and synchronize it over TCP-over-USB with the KOrganizer on your PC.
KOrganizer and sync scripts

mpeg_encoding_howto

Enjoy

Benjamin Meyer

For those that have a Sharp Zaurus pda we have been doing this for a while.

How about Apache with PHP


Or maybe the smaller Boa web server


How about a GUI Server manager for these? (screenshots)


Maybe put MySQL on it too have some more fun!


How about instructions on how to set up all of the servers (including smb)

There is nothign quite like getting your data by putting your sd card into the Z, selecting it as the root page and then browsing to it from another box.

Benjamin Meyer

P.S. How would you like to play Doom full framerate, multiplayer on the Zaurus! (for free too) It is coming soon! (Quake is more of a technical demo, can't do much without a floatingpoint, but if you want to see Quake on the Zaurus packages are already made.)

I think some people might disagree with the being no linux alternatives.

I'm in the process of reviewing a couple cards for the Zaurus, and I can tell you with certainty that the Symbol and Socket cards do not use the Prism chipset found in the Linksys and SMC cards. Both the Linksys and SMC cards bind to the prism2_cs driver provided with the Zaurus. The Symbol and Socket cards need the spectrum_cs driver available from the feed on ZaurusZone (make sure you have at least version 1.1, or suspend/resume will hang the Z).

While I haven't tested the Symbol card, the Socket card (which is pretty much the same AFAIK) gives much better battery life. There's a catch, though. The 2.12 ROM on the Zaurus SL-5500 was compiled without wireless extensions. While the prism2_cs driver doesn't need these, the spectrum_cs driver uses them to pick up WEP settings. The upshot is that WEP won't work for the Symbol or Socket cards, at least not with the current driver and the stock Zaurus ROM.

The Linksys and SMC cards run neck-and-neck for battery life and work fine with WEP. The SMC card is probably the preferred choice, since it doesn't block the stylus silo. I've heard of a few people who've machined a notch in the Linksys card to allow the stylus to squeak past, but the SMC card is a hassle-free route.

One last thing about the Linksys: if the firmware on the card is below version 1.03.04, you'll see a "Vcc mismatch" error logged and the card won't initialize. If your Linksys card isn't working, check for this by running dmesg in a terminal.

I have the same complaint. I wish I'd found this page first. It has a column that tells you what cards block the stylus and audio.

I signed up to be a developer for the Zaurus several weeks ago. I placed my order and had it in my hands within two days. The first thing I did was update the ROM to the latest image. I also updated the drivers for my PC. I hooked up the cradle to my Windows 2k workstation, that does in fact use Outlook. It worked perfect the first time. And with the developer edition no less. Everything synched perfectly.

I seriously have loved this thing since I got my hands on it. That is saying a lot since I have hated every single PDA I have ever had before this. I think the keyboard is great, but it is definitely not for the fat fingered user. One thing that you can not tell from the pictures is that the keys are a hard plastic, not soft rubber. At first I made the mistake of trying to punch them with the stylus. It slipped off for the most part. So I went with the double thumbs technique that is popular with the text messaging via cell phone crowd. Now I can rip right through the keys, oh and they have a very nice tactile click when pressed. I could seriously go on all day about this product. But here are some cool links to an open source version of the Rom image that removes the Jeode JVM and Opera (which has now been replaced with Konqueror). I just have to assume the guy from the WSJ is a fat fingered dolt.


Sharp Developers Program

The OpenZaurus Program

Program Overview

OpenZuarus Downloads

I signed up to be a developer for the Zaurus several weeks ago. I placed my order and had it in my hands within two days. The first thing I did was update the ROM to the latest image. I also updated the drivers for my PC. I hooked up the cradle to my Windows 2k workstation, that does in fact use Outlook. It worked perfect the first time. And with the developer edition no less. Everything synched perfectly.

I seriously have loved this thing since I got my hands on it. That is saying a lot since I have hated every single PDA I have ever had before this. I think the keyboard is great, but it is definitely not for the fat fingered user. One thing that you can not tell from the pictures is that the keys are a hard plastic, not soft rubber. At first I made the mistake of trying to punch them with the stylus. It slipped off for the most part. So I went with the double thumbs technique that is popular with the text messaging via cell phone crowd. Now I can rip right through the keys, oh and they have a very nice tactile click when pressed. I could seriously go on all day about this product. But here are some cool links to an open source version of the Rom image that removes the Jeode JVM and Opera (which has now been replaced with Konqueror). I just have to assume the guy from the WSJ is a fat fingered dolt.


Sharp Developers Program

The OpenZaurus Program

Program Overview

OpenZuarus Downloads

I just got the Zaurus 5000D from JavaOne this year and I have had very few problems. It syncs with Outlook without any problems. I was also able to setup internet connection sharing through the USB connection so that I could use the Zaurus to browse while it was in the cradle.

In addition to that, for the geeks out there, I have installed sshd, boa (webserver), and a samba server. I also saw Perl and Python for the Zaurus, but I am waiting on my SD memory card before I install too much more. There are many programs out there already that make this a PDA I might actually use, and most of them are Open Source.

There are several good development sites out there: ZaurusZone and sharp's own Developer Site. You can download the kernel for it from Sharp's site and recompile it yourself because they have detailed instructures and supply a link to a gcc cross-compiler for the ARM processor.

In the Zaurus development guide they explain that the easiest way to do development for it is to NFS mount a shared drive onto the Zaurus. That is just cool.

I would totally agree that it is not for suits, but for the geek in me it has been one of the coolest things I have played with in a while.

~Giliath

The source for many of the applications (or at least the code they were based off of) is available from the QPE website. http://qpe.sourceforge.net

There are two related project to improve the applications and replace closed source applications with open source equivalants: OPIE and Open Zaurus.

For the time being OPIE will only run on Ipaqs, but OpenZaurus will be using it as the environment in the future

I picked up one of these at Fry's a couple days ago and am very impressed with it so far. The form factor is very nice, and the Linux OS powering the PDA is very peppy (running on a 206 Mhz StrongARM, a very fast chip compared to the competition).

What I love most about this PDA though is its openness. Need to get a file onto the PDA? Use NFS, scp, ftp, http, etc.. Want to develop an application for the PDA? Use Java, Qt, or C, all with open API's and no NDA nonsense.

Some good places for more information:
Zaurus Zone has some nice (but often too busy) forums. And of course the Sourceforge project for Zaurus.

In short, I love this PDA. I will try to answer any questions people may have here about it.

I have a development unit of the Sharp Zaurus ... and it is sweeeeeeet.

The user software is still being fine tuned (for consistancy and "missing" functionality, but when the consumer version is released ... watch out.

Go over to ZaurusZone to check out what the open source community is doing (the entire shabang).

Sorry I can't give you links to the developer sites, but I will say that the Trolltech contest alone will result in 1000s of available (and many free) applications.