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Openzaurus 3.0 Released

Posted by timothy on from the happy-to-see-you dept.

numatrix writes "The first major stable version of OpenZaurus was released today. The 3.0 build offers the stability of the official Sharp ROMs, the freedom of open source, and a number of features the Sharp ROMs lack. Most importantly, the built-in 16MB flash ROM area of the PDA is read/write, instead of read-only as the sharp ROM uses it. A community effort, the only piece that isn't open source is the SD driver module taken from the Sharp ROM since no OS equivalent exists. The updated ROM also includes the newest version of Opie, the opensource fork of Qtopia, Trolltech's embedded version of QT, and will soon include PicoGui and X support."

3 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. First major s/w project error? by gruntvald · · Score: 3, Interesting

    According to joelonsoftware, this statement "OpenZaurus is now a debian based embedded distribution built from source, from the ground up." is a fundamental flaw. The project started out as a rewrite/tweak of Sharps work, and then "progressed" to a complete re-write. Sigh. I wonder why they made this decision?

    1. Re:First major s/w project error? by numatrix · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Because the sharp work was a complete hack. It was a sym-link nightmare, full of all sorts of oddities to make things work instead of being cleanly designed. OZ will (and already has) benefit greatly from being a fresh rewrite.

  2. PocketPC is sexier by CmderTaco · · Score: 0, Interesting

    No matter how I admire the idea of running linux on my handheld, instead of something which smells of microsoft, it seems that PocketPC looks much better.

    Compare with this. The problem with the opensource guys is that they don't think "eye candy" like MS does.. and that's one reason which prevents me from buying a Zaurus.

    --
    - Marco