Using The Zaurus

Starting to use the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 in May'2005

Well at least someone is running Python on one.

• he has a more general Mobile/Python page which includes some Zaurus-specific links

• River Bank has a memory-friendly python

• Konrad Hinsen has some other links

Can't find a Command Line: ah shutdown Q Topia then hit '/a' - but when in (this?) command-line the Power button doesn't seem to work.

Wow it's weird to have 'vi' running there.

• the Cancel button acts as 'Esc'. Here are more special characters (control is fn-shift). Some of those don't work in the terminate-qtopia command-line - I'm probably going to have to install a separate Terminal app.

Huh, can't flash the ROM to upgrade without a CF card. I'll have to check whether I'm running 3.x to get the better memory management.

• dang, not running 3.x

  • there was a change in the PIM format in 3.x so need to make sure that my approach will make sense. The 2.x files are XML.

    • the 3.x files are DTM

• hmm, OpenZaurus seems to be an alternative to the standard OS. It's not clear to me what you gain with this, but you definitely give up some stuff (the Han Com MsOffice clones, the built-in JVM, the Opera browser). It seems targeted at the OS-layer developer/hacker, but I'm more focused up a layer or two...

  • some better justifications. It sounds like the memory allocation can be controlled better on OZ. And some like the GUI and its PIM apps better.

• there's also cacko ROM which recovers even more memory.

• but not going to worry about this until/unless I find something big