J-720 Linux Continued

Well, once again, the forum has sadly failed to keep a thread longer than 3 pages.

I think that the servicing is necessary very soon...

I really am not sure what I will do, but this is simply not adequate anymore. I must be able to communicate with all of you, at a central place, and have all the messages go through. Perhaps I will get a mailing list running, or look for some sort of service. Maybe todopocketpc would not mind a completely English thread for this discussion, for the benefit of everyone here.

Anyways, as posted on todopocketpc (did not go through here), I won the bid for a 340mb IBM microdrive. $26.88

I'm glad you got the MD. I'm looking forward to your final product.

I can't wait until I get it. It looks cool.

Have no fear writing to your MD. It's nice to have something that won't die just because it's being used a little harder than "normal." So far my MD has been solid and troublefree. It will be perfect for your product when it's complete.

Yes, exactly. For a long time now, I have wondered what it would be like to truly relax when messing with Linux on my 720. It starts to irritate you, constantly worrying about bad blocks. Now, if I can just keep the microdrive from falling off the table.. (I don't want to mention how many times I have dropped my cf cards)

In the meantime, if anyone has a solid suggestion for a mailing list/message board service I can use for this project, please PM me, or post here. I really hate to be moving possible posts away from Factor, but once I have my microdrive, there is going to be a massive amount of chatting going on.

Worst comes to worst, I will set my server up. But I would not be surprised if it faced the same fate as Kristoffer's forum, because there would not be any time for security. I guess I could chroot the mailing list at the least, and give it its own user. Other than that, I would need to read a book.

Ok, it looks like programsynth.forumer.com is the best of the annoying bunch.

No one go there, post there, look at it, or anything.

It's just there for me to play with phpbb. I would most likely host my own, instead of using a public one, if I ever need to. Why? Because the freaking ads are right where I keep clicking!

Now that I have the microdrive, this thread may continue.

I will get the default woody up to my sarge (why? because it is more efficient, that's why! ), and then send it to snickersmd, karloch, and the other select few helping me out. I will probably be sending you all a gzipped file with a working console, and nonworking X. But now that I have a microdrive, I can do multiple things simultaneously. This includes compiling. Oh yeah, the file will also have gcc included.

Have you taken a look at the tarball I have on my website? It's a pure sarge base install that doesn't start off of woody, and uses the sarge pcmcia-cs package.

I think I will, because the woody is messing with me. It seems that the tar of woody has somehow become corrupted somewhere along the line of the dvd backup I made.

By the way, how did you get sarge pcmcia_cs to work?

Michael himself mentioned the answer in his posts in your previous thread -- he said the default pcmcia-cs config was broken, and all the include lines need to be commented out before starting the cardmgr.

You'll find my tarball an ideal start since it's a pure base system with no extras, aside from the keymap and a few config file modifications for the j720.

Never mind, I got mine to work.

Now, you can see my main intention of the microdrive. I will copy your release, the Matthis one, and mine all onto the same card. Even though I do not have too much space, I will have unlimited r/w cycles. So I can move yours into a folder, and take mine out when I want to work on my release. This way, much more work/experimentation can be done quickly.

I have wifi working again now, and will begin the major fiddling tomorrow. It is so nice to know that I can compile at will!

Snappy - A while ago, you mentioned how the zaurus has all its programs compressed into 16mb of rom. Now, with my limited programming knowledge, and looking at the situation differently, I can tell you why.

The Zaurus was developed by a professional team, and they also developed their own software for the device. The software that they did not develop was carefully chosen. What I realize is this: If they are developing the majority of the software, only the few same libraries will be used over and over again. Now, on Debian, there is such a large variety of software, and it seems that each one needs its own library. 60mb of libraries later, it is about a 2:1 ratio of programs to libraries. That is a lot of space taken up by libraries.

Now, there is a slight chance that I could go and choose programs specifically for the libraries that they use. But that would be an incredible amount of work, and I have enough already.

But if someone wants to go do that...