I have recently had the good fortune of having one of these delightful little toys come into my possession. I've run both potato (via base2_2.tgz) and woody (via debootstrap!) chroots on it, and am completely addicted.
For those of you not familiar with the device, it is an ARM-based PDA (with a spiffy integrated keyboard) which ships with a Linux-based embedded OS. The ARM PDA community (at least Zaurus and iPAQ) seems to be benefiting greatly from the Debian ARM port; folks who are looking for precompiled software for their Zaurus inevitably seem to end up fetching and extracting debs, according to instructions on the various websites. Congratulations to the Debian/ARM porters for maintaining the largest repository of Linux/ARM software, which I'm certain will continue to benefit the growing ARM PDA community. I am interested in creating a full-featured Debian environment for the Zaurus, with all the trimmings (including package management with dpkg and apt). There already seems to be at least one project aiming to create open source Zaurus images[0], but as far as I can tell, none of them are using the Debian package management system proper. Debian already contains qt-embedded for ARM, which forms the basis for the qtopia application framework. So far, I can see that the following components will be required: - Packages for few ARM-specific kernel patches, whatever portions of Sharp's kernel patches are free, and perhaps some of OpenZaurus' kernel patches - Packages for the software from the OPIE project[2], which is a fork of TrollTech's Qtopia, and/or perhaps Qtopia itself. I'm not entirely clear yet on the directions of these two projects - Development of a tool to assemble the kernel and a minimal root filesystem into a ROM image suitable for flashing into the Zaurus, using debootstrap, the above kernel patches, and stripping things down a bit The base system shall fit within the internal storage provided on the SL-5500 (16MB flash ROM + 64MB persistent RAM storage + main memory), however, I hope to work out a mechanism for gracefully expanding the system onto CF and/or SD cards[3], to allow for more installed software, while allowing those cards to be inserted and removed without losing basic system functionality. If: - You are interested in helping with this effort, or - You own a Zaurus and could help to test the system, or - You have ideas, suggestions or information that could be useful, or - You are already doing some work in this area Please contact me. I'll be placing status updates and whatever other information I gather here: http://people.debian.org/~mdz/zaurus/ [0] OpenZaurus: http://www.zauruszone.com/wiki/index.php?OpenZaurusOverview [1] http://more.sbc.co.jp/slj/qa/test/check/source/source_dl.asp [2] http://opie.handhelds.org/ [3] currently, the SD kernel driver is closed-source, but Sharp claims to be negotiating to release the source. See [1]. -- - mdz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
