We are getting many offers of mirroring. I want to thank you all for help and write some words.

Matthias ‘CoreDump’ Hentges is our mirroring maintainer and he decided that we have enough mirrors already. Thanks to his work all of them are available under feeds.openzaurus.org name so you can change feeds locations from http://ewi546.ewi.utwente.nl/mirror/www.openzaurus.org/official/unstable/ into http://feeds.openzaurus.org/ to make use of our mirrors.

Due to fact that no one wanted to work on website and increasing amount of spam I decided to close comments possibility on ALL posts.

Please use mailing lists for sending feedback:

• openzaurus-users
• openzaurus-devel

Third version of OpenZaurus with 2.6 kernel support poodle (sl-5600) and tosa (sl-6000) only (no collie support in this RC).

I will update collie config and then release bootstrap-images for it (no GPE or OPIE images for this machine).

2006.09.05 UPDATE: OPIE images recreated - should work now.

Download from EWI

Small changelog:

• sound on poodle improved
• touchscreen on tosa improved - no more ‘heartbeats’ instead of lines
• some WiFi cards which got orinoco_cs loaded will get hostap_cs now

It is experimental release to get wider testing of our work and to show all of you what we did during last months. Support for those machines needs some love and hard work, but machines are far more usable then they were under 2.4-crapix kernel.

Release notes are available already in wiki. Feel free to add content.

Test it and report bugs, fixes, ideas:

• OE Bugtracker

All feedback goes to openzaurus-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list.

Machine related stuff is provided as preconfigured feed.

After some coding I want to present Feed browser - tool which can be used to browse OpenZaurus 3.5.4/3.5.4.1 feeds to check for software.

This tool was first written for Ångström distribution, then it got improved and filled with OZ data. It need some love to be finished but this will take some time - most important addon would be searching for package names (currently not yet implemented).

I hope you will enjoy this tool.

Second version of OpenZaurus with 2.6 kernel for:

• poodle (sl-5600)
• tosa (sl-6000)
• collie (sl-5000/5500)

is available from http://ewi546.ewi.utwente.nl/tmp/hrw/3.5.4.2-test/rc1/

Image changes:

• collie OPIE image got PIM and Bluetooth apps removed
• poodle/tosa OPIE images got Qpdf2, Konqueror, games and few other things removed
• poodle GPE image got Sylpheed removed (unusable on such small screen)

Collie does not have working SD/MMC and we do not know when it will have it supported. Chip which control SD/MMC is not documented so to get it working under 2.6 someone would have to do some reverse-engineering work on 2.4 binary driver. Our kernel team work on getting other models fully supported.

It is experimental release to get wider testing of our work and to show all of you what we did during last months. Support for those machines needs some love and hard work, but machines are far more usable then they were under 2.4-crapix kernel.

Release notes are available already in wiki. Feel free to add content.

Test it and report bugs, fixes, ideas:

• OE Bugtracker

All feedback goes to openzaurus-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list.

Machine related stuff is provided as preconfigured feed.

Title sounds weird, but it’s true. Some developers from OpenEmbedded team built OpenZaurus 3.5.4x for their non Zaurus machines.

Koen Kooi uses 3.5.4-pre on his HP h2200 and has 72 days uptime with it (running GPE with current upgrades), 3.5.4.1 on Psion Netbook Pro (E17 enviroment - screenshot) and on Ipaq h5550 (GPE). He owns one Zaurus machine but it does run Ångström. Florian Boor uses 3.5.4.1/GPE on h5550 and plans to test on HTC Universal.

I was asked few times about adding non Zaurus machines into OpenZaurus and it looks like it is something to rethink. Looks like history likes to repeat - there were plans for OpenIpaq in old OZ times.

Yesterday Richard ‘RP’ Purdie (our master kernel hacker) got sound working on poodle under 2.6.17 kernel.

Read the rest of this entry »

The OpenZaurus Project is proud to present a new release of its free Linux software environment for Sharp’s Linux-based Zaurus PDAs.

OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1 supports clamshell Zaurus models and includes about 13,000 packages ready to install. The non-clamshell models can use the software feeds from 3.5.4.1 to update their base system.

Additional release highlights of the 3.5.4.1 OpenZaurus release include:

• Opie 1.2.1
• GPE 2.7
• WPA support
• Linux kernel 2.6.16
• Keymap corrections for all machines
• Fixed keyboard repeat
• Lots of Bluetooth base system improvements
• drivers for USB WiFi dongles

Englightment images will get provided later - we had some build problems with them.

The release supports the following Sharp Zaurus models:

• c7×0 (C700, C750, C760, C860, SL-7500)
• akita (SL-C1000)
• spitz (SL-C3000, SL-C3100, SL-C3200)

Release work would not be possible without the OpenEmbedded buildsystem which took most of the work from our shoulders.

You can help to speed up development by donating money and/or devices to our developers. Compared to other open source projects we receive very few donations, although we spend a lot of our precious spare time and deliver lots of good work. So if you are regularly using OpenZaurus, consider donating developers.

See the Release Notes for important notes before you install OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1. Also see Installation instructions.

Release can be downloaded from our mirrors:

• Ewi in the Netherlands
• Hentges.net in Germany
• LinuxToGo mirror in Germany
• Nick Boldt’s mirror in Toronto, Canada

if you want to setup mirror contact CoreDump ( oe (AT) hentges. net ).

Marcin Juszkiewicz OpenZaurus 3.5.4x Release Manager

About one month ago one OpenZaurus user contacted me and Michael ‘mickeyl’ Lauer with info that he want to donate two Zaurus machines to project - SL-6000L (tosa) and SL-5600 (poodle). After some discussion we decided that both machines will be sent to me. I will keep tosa for some time to resolve some of bugs, poodle will go to Mickeyl when we will meet in Berlin during OpenEmbedded developer meeting. Both machines are added into OpenEmbedded project devices.

As donor could not send them overseas I contacted Aman ‘TheMasterMind1′ Gupta (one of old time OpenZaurus developers) and he agreed to get them and resent to me. Last Friday I got mail from customs office that package wait for me. I went there, paid 22% VAT (110 USD) and got box with two Zauruses.

I plan to flash tosa to OpenZaurus 3.5.4 + upgrades and check what need to be fixed. Next I will check how poodle works but this machine is something which I prefer to not touch too much rather - it’s 2.4 support was already marked as ‘terrible, awful’ and we want to move into 2.6 kernel on it. I will check how both machines works with 2.6.17 and maybe will try to hack it a bit - time will show.

OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1 is near to be released. Images was created and tested on all supported platforms (c7×0, akita, spitz/borzoi/terrier) and they work. Next step is generating feeds.

I will generate new feeds for 3.5.4.1 release. They will replace 3.5.4 ones also for any next releases.

So current situation looks like this:

• images are working on all platforms (thx to Mickeyl, CoreDump, RP and few other devels/users for testing)
• feeds need to be built (optimised for arm not armv5)
• images will be rebuilt from feeds and tested
• release of 3.5.4.1

I think that this will take about 1-2 weeks to get feed built.

Please send opinions to openzaurus-devel mailing list.

Status of building is available in OpenEmbedded Tinderbox as “ewi-OZ-3.5.4.1-feed”.