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Full X11-Based Distro For PDAs
omin0us writes "over at http://cacko.zaurususergroup.com, we are working on a Full X11 based Linux distro for the Sharp Zaurus SL-c7x0/860 series of PDAs. The screen has a usable full VGA resolution of 640x480 and the distro uses Openbox/ROX Desktop as its Native WM. But others such as Fluxbox, Afterstep, and XFCE have been compiled for it and run nicely. You will also find a WIDE variety of compiled apps in the Feed on the Cacko website such as a native GCC Compiler, XMMS, Mplayer, prboom, Gimp, Gkrellm, Abiword and numerous others. Many different screenshots of it in action may be found here. This is truly bringing desktop linux to the PDA. Also, another project that has branched from Cacko Linux is Gentoo for Zaurus. This project, at the moment is based on the Cacko X11 environment, but will eventually become a full Gentoo environment. "It can emerge packages, sync, or create Gentoo packages using the -B switch in emerge." This should be an interesting project to watch."
How can it be "redundant" if I funded the project and booked the cacko.biz domain name for Sash, our lead developer, and purveyed the Tomsk lab with hardware and logistics support ?
Has somebody done it before me ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
PXA 255 your highness... Since the SL-C750.
Considering that Linus originaly written Linux on/for a 386 at around 33MHz and 4MBs of RAM I believe the 400MHz PXA CPU and 64MB of RAM is kind of a heaven.
Oh yes. I do own an SL-C750 and I love it!
It's like a small notebook that fits in your pocket.
If you omit the Konsole app no one can tell that it's running Linux, unless he knows about this feature.
Wouldn't a 4Gb hard disk just like whats in the mini ipod go down a treat in one of these things?
:)
Combine that with wifi (as mentioned by another poster) and at least laptop battery life expectancy and i would instantly order one.
I don't ask much
What is wrong with KDE? I have used KDE in 640x480 and it can fit quite well in it. KDE has been designed to scale quite well across a variety of machines, and 640x480 is plenty for it.
Is the Linux desktop really the right metaphor for a palmtop device?
Probably not, but is that relevant. Do you think people run X on their Palmtop because they think it makes it a better PDA? I rather expect it's because more because Linux has a vast range of other software that they want to run.
I run Linux on my Psion 5MX - means that I can hack on my personal coding projects on long journeys without having to lug a huge laptop around. I couldn't do that with the Psion's native OS as it just doesn't have the tools.
Eventually we will have the best of both worlds - a decent PDA interface running on top of X. But first you have to get the basics working.
I work at a bank, and own a Zaurus SL-C700. I work full-time in a tech support call center (noon to 11 PM), and am a full-time student. This means when it's late at night, I have plenty of time to work on homework.
For the past two semesters, all of my programming assignments have been written, built, and debugged on the SL-C700. I'd say it takes me perhaps twice as long to type in code, and GCC runs rather slowly. But the hours would otherwise be wasted. I'm not allowed to put Linux or GCC on Bank computers.
Portable GCC is indeed useful.
One should mention that there exists a project for porting debian to zaurus already:
http://pocketworkstation.org/
Development seems to have stopped in August 2003 but maybe its worth a try - it even claims to enable running evolution just by apt-getting it...
I've been using the cacko X11 Rom within a few days of its appearance and it works great - so well that I donated shortly after. In fact, it (by no small measure) works better than the original sharp ROM. If you own one of the newer zaurus models and haven't tried it, i strongly encourage you to do so. The install is painless, and you get a fully functional linux desktop in your pocket.
Rubbish. X is just fine on a platform like this, if you do it properly. Not to mention, with this box running X, I can access countless fleets of Unix machines which are quite happily configured to allow my X session to work.
... its not as bad as those who haven't worked with it recently would make it out to be ...
"Qtopia", being new and exciting, is of course a nice lib to namedrop, but in fact 'porting Qt applications' isn't necessarily a factor when you've already got a standard, open, fully working window system implemented. you can port anything to X.
X works. and
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Could this be used as a remote X terminal? I haven't looked into the prices of these things, so it'd probably be cost-prohibitive (or at least cost-a-lot), but it could be really useful to have access to my main machine's desktop as I walk around the office.
And that makes sense, sort of. The Zaurus is hugely overpowered for use as a PDA. Almost anyone who needs a PDA, can get what they need done with an old Palm (the ones with the 68k-like processor, I can't remember the name). The question is: is the Zaurus powerful enough to be a good PC? Apparently, these people think that it is.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It definitely is fast enough. I ran psilinux on my old psion s5mx, which is a full linux OS, with x11 and fluxbox. Ran pretty good on the 36mhz arm 7100 :) The zaurus's are what, 400mhz?
btw, the old palms use dragonball cpus. dragonball ez,vz, super vz,
Two words: Lap-Top
Seriously though, they might frown upon you bringing a laptop to work too. Someone else mentioned using a linux live CD, but you probably only have one computer while at work and can't afford to be rebooting it between taking calls and programing. One other thing you could consider is installing virtualPC/VMWare and running linux in a window. But, I'm sure you've thought of all this and using your PDA is probably the mose effective way.