On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 10:03:19AM +0000, Lex Landa wrote:
>
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:29:52 -0800 (PST), "Aaron Diab"
> <abot7-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> said:
>
> > How usable is this distro?
> > Is it ready for every day use?
>
> In a word, 'no' - I needed to install everything from the stage 4
> tarball on top of the stage 0.
>
> Having said that, you're only an 'emerge' away from anything, assuming
> that it builds okay. It's great having a native development environment
> on a PDA!
>
It depends on what would you like to do. It has some nice features, that
I haven't found in any other distro:
* you have lots of packages (you still need to build them, but most of
them does not require any programming skills - just `emerge pkgname'
would work);
* always running virtual keyboard - it consumes some memory, but it pops
up instantly;
* wireless configuration is very simple - just select an access point;
* cellwriter handwriting input, that supports almost any language;
* easy cpufreq configuration;
However, currently it does not have:
* PIM software;
* an easy way to play media files;
* a version, that fits into internal flash.
> > Specifically I would like to have audio playback
> > (mp3, ogg) video playback (xvid, avi), PIM, GPS
> > (roadmap or GPSdrive), IR, bluetooth, and wifi. Is it
> > unrealistic to expect these things to work with a
> > modicum of trouble?
Audio and video playback is possible with mplayer. You can associate
video and audio files with it in ROX-Filer (file manager).
I haven't found any PIM, that is good enough for me in Gentoo portage,
so I am going to write one myself someday.
I don't have any GPS and IR devices, so I am unable to configure the
user environment in a way it will work with it. If you know any way to
make it work in any other distro, please tell me, I will try to
integrate it into fvwm-ipaq, the default UI of Gentoo/PDA.
>
> The software is not the problem - it's whether the kernel drivers are
> robust
> enough. So, video playback depends on the stability of the video
> drivers, and similar for bluetooth and wi-fi. I had some trouble
> getting wi-fi to work since my access point uses WPA and wpa_supplicant
> was not configured for it - I'm still trying to sort that.
You can download wpa_supplicant binary from
ftp://kmeaw.com/pub/iwmmxt/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant-0.6.0.tbz2
>
> Bluetooth works - I did an 'hcitool scan' and it found my phone,
> although hcitool got stuck and needed to be ctrl-c'd.
You can also do scans from fvwm-ipaq bluetooth menu.
>
> Audio works too: there's alsamixer, amixer, arecord, aplay. I did an
> audio test with 'arecord -f cd moo' where 'moo' is the output file.
> Audio recording worked, although audio from the microphone was very
> faint - this was an issue that I had in WinCE, so it might be particular
> to my Hx4700.
There is an audio mixer menu in fvwm-ipaq. It will be improved in future
versions.
Also I have modified today the SDG bootloader, so it displays a nice
boot menu (looks like GRUB ;)): http://pda.gentoo.ru/images/bootldr.jpg
It is capable of booting Windows Mobile from internal flash, the Linux
kernel from CF card and/or internal flash. It allows you to keep
multiple GNU/Linux installations and/or kernel parameters, such as
root filesystem parameters on the same PDA without switching cards.
I currently have Windows Mobile in internal flash, Gentoo and Angstrom
on CF and SD cards and another Gentoo installation, that boots over
network (NFS), so I can have extremly large root filesystem (40GiB) and
don't fear flash wearing.
I will make it available as soon as I remove all proprietary code
leftovers. If you know an easy way to do it, please contact me.
>
> Lex
--
kmeaw
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