Distro Release: OpenZaurus 3.0

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Guest

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Guest

Just a FYI, OpenZaurus has just released v3.0 (stable). And also the new website www.openzaurus.org has launched, with lots of handy docs.

Not a lot of use to anyone who doesn't have a Sharp Zaurus, but, you never know who does (I do).

OpenZaurus/OPIE is so much more usable than the standard Sharp ROM with Qtopia (OPIE is a fork of Qtopia). In addition, they've ported standard X onto the Zaurus, and picogui, which looks gorgeous, but lacks in apps at the moment.

Also, this may interest Shak and others, the few Sharp employees who haunt IRC keep mentioning that we should "keep our eyes peeled in a few weeks" so, likely to be some nice new hardware around about Christmas time I reckon.

Regards,

Gav / Coup.
 
Sweet, Debian based just like OpenZaurus.

Have you tried it? what's the speed like? Can you run mySQL and Apache/php?

*edit*

Thinking about it, doesnt the Series 5 have 4/8mb RAM? Presumably the entire OS installs to CF card, so no problems there, but do you have to use virtual memory from the CF? would be worried about card death if so :( But, still, pretty sweet :)

*edit2*

Oh, mate, if you do try this, i'd advise against using ext2 on a CF card, it's damn slow, though seems fine on SD cards, etc.

On the OpenZaurus IRC channel, we were benchmarking and discussing, minix came out as the fastest (not much in it between minix and vfat to be honest, but vfat cant have links etc). So, we're working on a modified minix filesystem which removes the limited length filenames (pretty easily done) and removing the 64mb partition limit (less easily done, but doable).

Regards,

Gav / Coup.
 
Not on the dev-team, though will probably join it in the near future, it's a debian based distro, which I know, but the normal GUI is OPIE/Qtopia, so I need to learn Qt before I could write/support any apps.

Though, they've also got X ported to it, so I could write/port X apps (tho, IMHO, X seems a bit heavyweight and un-necessary for a palmtop OS).

I've so far gotten involved with writing a load of documentation (install guide, FAQs, etc). I'll be doing more of this most nights.

minix source, I think it's in the cvs, but, if not i'll drop it in your mailbox.

Gav.
 
Yup, certainly is, though <grumble>they've just dropped the price of the SL-5500 from £350 to £299 at Expansys, just a month after I bought it</grumble>.

ahh well...
 
Yeah, £299 is a lot, but, i'd rather have the Z than a Pocket PC for the same or more money, so, i'm happy :)

Incidentally, bochs has been ported to the Z, I smbmounted so PC HDD space and installed Win98 last night. Slow, but it worked!
 
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