Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
A few weeks back I bought a second hand Sharp Zaurus, which is a bit of a strange beast. I would have normally described it as a toy laptop, being as small as it is. But the fact it runs linux means its altogether a bit stranger. For example, when it’s hooked upto a network you can quite happily ssh into it from another PC, and the familiar file structure is there.
When I originally bought it, it had pdaXrom on it, which really ain’t that bad, but it is a beta. I found it a little unstable. The main problem for me though was the pda bit. By default it came with no pda apps (calendar/diary, contact etc.). So I thought, I’ll just pop KOrganizer (or it’s PI derivative) on. I grabbed it from the install stream, but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to run.
So last week I decided to try the Cacko ROM, which appears much more like the original Sharp ROM, including having the various pda apps, as well as a feed of many other bits. Things are much better now. Les crashing, web browsing, email reading and PDA stuff.
However, for a chance I decided to give FigLabs “Full English” a go. This seems to be the original Sharp ROM with everything translated to English and a couple of other useful apps and scripts preinstalled.
The first step with this is resinstalling the original Japanese ROM, which is a little more nerve wracking than flashing to other ROMS (which didn’t need the maintenance menu), and then Navigating the OS in Japanenese to do a backup restore.
That said, now it’s all done, it’s pretty good. It’s stable, got all the bits I need. I guess I’ll keep up with latest developments in the other ROMS, but for now I’ll probably stick with this version.
Posted by Phil on October 04, 2006 09:34 PM | Categories: Technology
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