Linux Kernel 4.9 and a (not so) happy Jornada 720

It's been awhile since I dealt with partitioning and formatting disks, but just occurred to me that perhaps the problem noted in my post above has to do with either mounting or unmounting disks?

Yes, definitely. Make sure you unmount all partitions on your CF card before start partitioning it. Keep in mind that most Linux WM mount USB media automatically, so you’ll have to check on whatever file explorer you have to be sure that there isn’t anything mounted

Thanks, ntware. Makes perfect sense now...

Will try process again....

Hello!
Sorry, i forgot to mention that in my guide, updated it Thanks ntware for answering Marks question!

Good news!

I have Devuan running on my J28 now!

Cool to see the Debian logo on desktop after opening fluxbox.

However, I have found a way to do anything there. Tried tapping on taskbar on bottom of screen with stylus but nothing happens.

Is there some keys I need to use to use it or ?

UPDATE
Just tried tapping on taskbar a few more times.....

When I tapped in lower left corner of taskbar, it opened up toolbar menus.

How do I get to menu to open terminal or other programs?

____________________________________________________________________________________


Also, on a side note, the only way I am able to use the 32GB or 64GB CF cards I have on 728 is by putting them into an adapter and then in the PC card slot. They don't get recognized when I put them in the CF slot on bottom of 728. Is this normal or is something wrong with my 728. I just received it about 2 weeks ago.

I'd like to be able to use CF card in CF slot so that I can use my WiFi card in PC card slot.

Thanks,

Mark

Edited by ArchiMark 2020-09-25 5:09 PM

Hey Stefan,

I finally got some time to give your Devuan build a try. The system started up correctly despite my J720 having only 32MB of RAM. Terminal seems quite stable and works very well. Fluxbox on X is another story... I don't know if there is much to be done in there, since no WM nowadays will expect a 640x240 resolution. On Fluxbox I had issues bringing the main menu, since it requires a right click. I tried using common shortcuts like Ctrl+Esc (Task Manager), Alt+T (Terminal), etc, but none of them worked. By smashing some keys I eventually managed to open XTerm, which was enough for me to launch a few apps. The ones I tried looked horrible. They were all cutting the first half of the screen, probably because the window can't get less than 480 pixels on height. I'm wondering if there is any way to reduce the expected DPI for X, and see if icons, fonts, windows can get a bit smaller and fit on the tiny Jornada screen. How is you luck using X on the Jornada? Does it work well for you? My main point here is to use it with ssh X forwarding and launch a few things from my remote server on the Jornada. I don't know how well that will work also, not only due to the small screen, but also to the poor X server performance on the little ARM chip.

In between I also need to figure out how to make my PCMCIA WiFi card to work. I have a Cisco Aironet 340, which is great for WinCE, but never tried it on Linux. Do you happen to know any modules I might need to get?

Hi Stefan,

If it's possible, can you try using either LXDE or IceWM instead of Fluxbox?

Several past linux on 7xx setups have used IceWM successfully.

I've used LXDE on other little low performance systems and it worked quite well.

I'm pretty sure that with apt configured and Devuan repository in place, you can just run a simple "sudo apt install lxde" from terminal to install LXDE on the Jornada. This, however, will probably take a while and I'm pretty sure will run way worse than Fluxbox. In fact, Fluxbox is derived from Blackbox, one of the earliest and most lightweight Window Managers. Perhaps the only one that might compare with Fluxbox in terms of speed is IceWM.

I think the main issue here is that any modern version of any WM won't expect a device with Jornada's specs to work with. So, whatever WM is chosen, I'm sure that many screen optimizations (DPI, resolution) will have to be put in place for it to work well enough.

Thanks, ntware....

Agree that Fluxbox is one of the most lightweight WM's.....and the WM's will likely need tweaking....

About 10 years ago, when I last had a 728, I did run one of the linux distros with IceWM and it ran quite well and looked good.

Will try to get it running on my 728 and see what happens.

ntware,

Are you able to use a large 32GB or larger card in the CF slot on your 720?

Hello!
Iam very happy that you guys tried it, and got it running!

Fluxbox:
I forgot to edit the keys file in the directory ~/.fluxbox

For example with vi:

vi ~/.fluxbox/keys

The first 3 config lines have to be edited like this:

# click on the desktop to get menus
OnDesktop Mouse1 :HideMenus
OnDesktop Mouse2 :WorkspaceMenu
OnDesktop Mod1 Mouse1 :RootMenu

Then you can open the RootMenu with Alt + Tap on the screen! And let it disappear with a single tap on the screen somewhere else.

Mod1 is the key Alt on your keyboard. You can open the console (xterm) with Alt+F1 (which is the Internet Explorer button) and fbrun (like the "run" windows in the Windows world) with Alt+F2 (the mail button).

You can also use Alt + Click and hold on the screen to grab and move a window. So you can access the maximise button for the application being displayed.

Strg+Alt+del quits fluxbox and brings you back to the shell.

right click
I currently try to get a tool working that emulates a right click. -> https://github.com/PeterCxy/evdev-right-click-emulation

Aironet Wifi card
Currently i have compiled the kernel with drivers for wifi cards with the Prism chipset and NE-2000 compatible ethernet cards. I dont know which chipset the Aironet card has and if there is a driver available. I will look into that.

CF problem
This is strange, can you tell me which brand and model your cards are? Did Windows CE recognize the cards?

Bye
Stefan



Edited by _dev-null 2020-09-25 7:05 PM

Sorry forgot this: Yes you can install whatever Wm you like. Fluxbox is just my favourite for a lightweight WM!
I also choosed fluxbox, because it doesnt need dbus or elogind (which are memory hungry services)
Here is some info on a dbus free Devuan: https://beta.devuan.org/os/documentation/dev1fanboy/en/devuan-without-dbus.html

What you ran was probably JLime, which is still available here at HPC:Factor. In fact, when JLime was released about 15 years ago, Linux kernel was much older (2.4 or 2.6 for JLime) and the requirements on the WM were much less as well. JLime will probably be quite snappier than a modern kernel with Fluxbox from 2020. But then you get to the same issues as running WinCE3.0. Lack of modern apps, outdated drivers and network protocols, etc, etc. The main point here is to be able to run a modern OS, and JLime is far from being modern nowadays. My feeling is that the Jornada probably won't be able to deliver much more than a terminal shell experience with a modern Linux distro. It is a miracle that it is capable of running X at all. I doubt it will get usable in any degree.

Edited by ntware 2020-09-25 7:05 PM

I'm using a small 4GB card I have laying around which I know is compatible because I used with with JLime in the past. I never tried a larger card like yours on the Jornada, but I would guess this is a hardware limitation. Try a smaller card, around 8GB. You won't need a lot of space on the Linux partition anyway.

Windows CE recognizes only the first FAT partition of the card, and I think Mark has partitioned it correctly with the FAT partition only 20MB big. So Windows CE should recognize it! Maybe the CF slot is faulty, because he said in the PCMCIA slot it works ...

PS: I use a 128GB card in my Jornada without problems, because Windows CE only sees the 20MB FAT partition.

Edited by _dev-null 2020-09-25 7:28 PM