Hello folks...
Some observations....
The HX4700 is absolutely fantastic running under Linux (my previous
Ipaq, a h2200 was good but the wifi + VGA screen blow it out of the water)
So far I have been mostly playing to see what works and what doesn't
rather than preparing to use the PDA as a serious hand-held (the h2200,
running familiar is still my primary diary and ebook reader...).
So I have tried Familiar with both GPE and Opie, Familiar works fine in
all respects (or at least as well as it does on the h2200) but is
significantly limited once you have seen the alternatives (Gentoo,
Debian and to a lesser degree Angstrom).
As I mentioned hardware support appears 100% (the wifi suspend issue
being easily worked around), the only problem I have had so far is the
apparent inability to boot Familiar from the CF slot (using the SDG boot
loader not Haret, there's no Wince on my PDA!) I am assuming this is a
CF driver issue in the Kernels I have been using and look forward to it
being resolved. Its a nightmare having a nice distribution on the PDA
but so little space for applications.
Angstrom is quite a lot further on than Familiar is with regard to what
is available packaged. A casual glance also suggests that Angstrom is
using more up to date sources, but as with Familiar I am having issues
booting from the CF (Works fine with a Gentoo zImage, but I cant seem to
get a Gentoo kernel that matches the Angstrom version...)
Debian is nice, although a little involved (I built a barebones FS image
on my desktop and then dumped it onto the PDA, then I spent a few hours
working out where to go next...) I have only gotten as far as a basic
system + X11 + XDM. I have little or no experience in Debian-Arm and
even less idea about how to fix it if it doesn't work as expected...
Finally Gentoo. I spent a bit of time looking at the various stages
available on ftp.gentoo.ru dropping different combinations of kernels
and FS images onto the machine until things worked and frankly he
potential is staggering. The ability to have everything I usually use
on my desktop in my pocket and just a single ssh connection away is
fantastic. For some reason software installation generally does just
work (as opposed to familiar where there seem to be untold dependency
issues if you stray from the mainstream. The only problems I have
really had are;
1) I haven't used Gentoo before, I only have 3Gb of storage (2Gb CF and
1GB SD) so some of the stages currently out there + some core
applications mean I run out quickly.
2) I haven't really found a nicely working UI I'm not so keen on fvwm (I
cant seem to get E17 + X11 to work - probably because I tried a while
ago with a kernel that appeared to lack ts related modules.
3) Much of the support info is in Russian!
What I would like to do, (and I intend to do) is to collect the various
distributions documentation together, clean it up and put it on a site
all together. The intention would also be to link to known good FS
images + zImages + Bootloaders + Scripts + configs (Unstable angstrom
feeds for example) etc... so that it is easy to just flash and install
away. One thing that would be nice would be if the gentoo ftp server
had a collection of archives that included *all* the working elements in
a single archive (rather than scouring the server to match up various
elements and hope you have it right)
Oh and finally, kmeaw, your new bootloader works nicely here (on a 128M
hx4700) and is a godsend!
Oh and if there are any resources I am missing (other than the
angstrom-distribution site, handhelds.org and the gentoo.ru resources
posted in this list previously, please let me know! Also does anyone
know what the terms are for distributing the wifi firmware?
Thanks folks, I'll keep you posted.
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