Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 Instruction Manual page 160

my Zaurus SL-C3000 and SL-C3100
This is a screenshot from the pdaXrom 1.1.0 beta1 on the C3000 after a bit of tweaking with the
look and feel.
See my custom pdaXrom
The bad thing about pdaXrom is that after beta3, things go downhill. For each bug fixed a new one
is introduced. The beta4 and its successor r121 are really new versions because of their drastic
change with the introduction of a new boot mechanism and replacement of the stable 2.4.20 kernel
with the faster but buggier 2.6.x kernel. As a result of this, most configuration tools are broken and
many of the applications need to be recompiled. If you want to put up with a buggy distro for
testing, then you might as well move to OpenZaurus instead because it actually fully supports all
C3x00 models.
OpenZaurus
OpenZaurus, or OZ as its commonly known as, is yet another popular Linux distro for the Zaurus.
OpenZaurus comes in two main flavours which you can choose from. There is OPIE and GPE. The
OPIE flavour of OZ is an opensource implementation of a newer version of Qtopia and a likely
candidate as a replacement for Sharp ROM/Cacko. OZ/GPE is the X11 flavour of OpenZaurus and
similar to pdaXrom. There is also an experimental Enlightment version too which is another
powerful X11 window manager. Finally, there is also OZ/bootstrap which is just the bare minimum
bootable image of OZ.
You can also install Opie and GPE on different virtual terminals and thus have both running at the
same time and switch between the terminals. This can be done with a bit of hacking but should
ideally be the default for the clamshell models so you get the best mix of applications from both
Qtopia and X11 environments since they have plenty of space for it.
However, OZ appears to be very developer centric. It is coupled with a build system,
OpenEmbedded, and very much focused on building, packaging and source control. It is a system
build from the ground up and focuses a lot on the kernel and clean builds. The OZ team appears to
be very organised and have a very structural approach. Unfortunately, this sometimes comes across
as being inflexible and stubborn by some end users. It also sometimes appear that usability is given
less importance in favour of portability. The gap for this is filled with the Hentges distro, which is a
more user-friendly distro based on OZ. Hentges is pretty much to OZ what Cacko is to the stock
Sharp ROM. Both are a more user-friendly repackaging of a more rudimentary distro. Hentges is
currently available for Akita (C1000) and Spitz (C3x00).
160 of 212
page to see a list of customisation/fixes that I have applied to my C3000.
http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myzaurus/
16/09/2007 12:23