720degrees Linux for the Jornada 720

Hi,

Did not install x-common and xserver-common.
Should I?
oski

Yes. And xterm too, to avoid a boring error with xinit.

So, people, great work on 720. I installed all ok and I got X running with the sole xterm window on it

The apt repository was very helpfull, even with the xtscal depending on etchy packages (I use the sarge release).

Now I'm searching for a environment to do some actual work on my Jornada. I prefer GPE, but debian/sarge has only 2 or 3 packages from the GPE suite.

Some questions:

* 'free' on my jornada shows 32M avaiable, but I have a jornada 728 (theoretically, 64M mem). Is that because of the run memory and storage memory thing? Can I adjust the size of the run memory (like it's possible on Windows)?

* compiling on a CF Card is really bad?

[]s

Yes, install them. That is basically what he said.

Do not look at available memory, look at total. Linux should not have a problem seeing all 64mb on your 728. Hopefully it is not a bootloader problem if it does not.

I am currently using Dillo .8.3 on here. Things look significantly better than with lynx, but the default buttons are ridiculously huge, and it does not seem capable of holding onto Factor's cookie. I think Snappy! said something about Dillo and cookies..
Also, the quick reply box does not show up.

I would like to get konqueror's web browsing without all the kde...but oh well. Jlime slimmed it down, somehow.

Well, that's it for now.

Hi, Thanks to all of you.
Finally I have X working!!!!
Any suggestions for wm?

And anybody has minimo binaries available?

oski

oski, AFAIK Familiar used to use Blackbox until they switched to Matchbox.

One one hand, I'd recommend to try Matchbox first, since it's supposed to have features specifically aimed at handhelds. On the other, Matchbox has lots of extra stuff, some of which are pure eye-candy (such as PNG support), so you may prefer the fact that Blackbox is aimed purely at speed and lightness.

I'm using Matchbox + GPE from the default debian repositories. It works, but there's not enough applications, just contacts, editor and the base GPE environment (desktop and icons).

Any ideia on how to get a full GPE environment on 720 degrees? Using ipkg? (That is, tainting the apt package management).




I'm looking at the total... :total = 30820 :


Trying to get dillo to work. From the default debian repositories



I want firefox

Button size is configurable in the dillorc file. By default they are "medium", and I have mine set to "tiny". dillorc is global in /etc/dillorc, but you can have per user configuration in ~/.dillo/dillorc.

Cookies are denied by default on dillo. To accept cookies, I think you change a setting in ~/.dillo/cookiesrc. But I'm not sure.



Jlime didn't "slim it down". They are using Konqueror-embedded, a lightweight version of Konqueror that does not use KDE. Konqueror-embedded uses QT embedded instead of KDE, and from what I've read about QT embedded systems, QT is an alternative to X on handhelds. You can run X servers in QT, but overall running a QT based system would make the whole system more PDA-ish. Basically this means, no Konq-embedded in Kdrive.

We look to provide the choice for QT/OPIE functionality in the future, but the focus of 720degrees remains to be providing an X based pocket Debian workstation.

With the 720degrees apt repository in your sources,

apt-get install ipkg

and use ipkg to install the missing parts of GPE. I will probably not port these over to the repository, because if I do put GPE in the repository, I want GPE 2.7, which incidentally has not been put in a Jornada 720 installation image yet, so it will need to be compiled.



Make sure the following line is in your sources.list:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org (or your preferred main Debian repository)/debian/ stable main

(720degrees has 'testing' in there by default, you'll need to add stable)

and then

apt-get install dillo=0.8.3-1

It will fetch the working version for you along with all the dependencies, dependencies that are different from those of 0.8.5-4, which does not work.

Incidentally, it's not that 0.8.5 doesn't work, but its Debian package doesn't work. I found a copy of 0.8.5 compiled for the NetBook that run just fine, but it was lacking in some features. If we want it we'll need to compile it ourselves.



Well *you* have a 728, and assuming that the 64 mb ram is accounted for, you may be able to run it. I'm sure you caught my earlier post, where I announced successfully running Firefox-1.5-GTK1.2 on the Jornada 720. slooooooooooooow.
Slow as in tap this text field to enter text, and wait 20-30 seconds for the cursor to show up. That bad.

Any large programs we probably have to optimize ourselves. Firefox is ridiculous, pointless in my eyes. Same with dillo currently, I want something better, maybe with the Gecko engine. My hope is that dillo eventually gets better.

I might do a compile of the new minimo source, but only if that changelog has a LOT of improvements. Otherwise, no.

Snickersmd, remember that this is an everyone-distro. We will probably end up including OPIE. But if things go my way, the users will be able to select the packages they want to install when they set up Linux on their Jornadas, so things will be better sometime.

Yes, libraries are driving me insane. Although, ShadowMaster told me about the strip tool, which can be used to remove junk from binaries. This may include libraries. Personally, I really hope it does. This must be the tool that ipkg people use...and I have seen the term "stripped lib" before. So I hope it works out that way, we would save 50mb or more.



Don't irritate me.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-03-09 9:23 PM

Hey, great work so far, buuuuuuuut,

I have a few requests:

1. Can you sort of make a summary in the first post about what works and what doesnt?
maybe something like a little install manual or release notes etc, that way it's a bit easier for new people who wanna get going on this and complain/whine at you to see if things already been asked without browsing through 10 pages of posts.

2. can you try and see if you can get "centericq" (ncurses/xterm chat program with yahoo,icq,msn) working on your j720? (Screenshot!)

3. does suspend work acceptable (meaning, if I suspend, and turn the J back on after 20 hours, it still has juice without draining the backup battery?)

other then that, still waiting for my ambicom order to come in for my wifi.


Keep it up people, thanks !

Yes, I know, I said exactly that. There *will* be OPIE packages, but priority in getting them out will be a little less than getting basic functionality, and the X-based GPE.



The warning is directed at our visitor, am I right? ...motion seconded. Anyone who wants to belittle our completely voluntary efforts need not pollute the thread. Cooperative help, however, is always welcome.

Edited by snickersmd 2006-03-09 10:06 PM

Most of the basics are on the website itself. I *am* trying to keep it updated and add better documentation, but between working on the distro itself, and well, the rest of my life, I'm spread fairly thin. Agreed that it could be much better, we may be getting to the point that we need a categorized forum specifically for 720degrees.



A quick apt-cache search reveals that this program is in the Debian ARM repository. Are you asking if its available on the distro, or do you have knowledge that the Debian provided package doesn't work?



The first third of this thread deals with the lack of suspend, and this is a hardware limitation of the Jornada without a flashboard. Right now your best bet for long term storage is to shut down Linux and pull the battery. Suspend via the on/off key will get you 7-8 hours at most... it's something to work on.

This edit did not get through: (due to my dsl, now fixed...stupid phone jack) Oh, and I currently recommend fluxbox. It looks like it was made for the 720's screen, everything fits perfectly. Especially after you install xfonts-base, then the text is smaller and sharper, thus more fits. Even though right-click does not work yet, I simply set the menu to pop up on alt-m. And for windows larger than the screen, I set alt-w to maximize them, which really acts as fit-to-screen.

Yes, centericq has been working. Although, I have found a major flaw in the program, and that is that it requires 80x24 lines to work properly. In other words, it will not work in X. I might contact the developer about the bug.

Also, everyone who wants to see a program that actually works with the Jornada's sound get moc. The program name is mocp. It somehow has control over the volume and everything. I think alsa needs to be installed, but that would not make sense, as alsa definitely does not see the sound device. Yes, there is alsa support for it, but unless if I compile the module for it (somehow), we will need to wait for kernel 2.6, where those modules are built in.

Oh, and suspend sucks. I thought you knew that.

To further delve into just how bad the suspend is, I can hear my microdrive parking and unparking every couple of minutes (or more) when suspended. For that reason, I actually cut off power before I go to bed. Oh, wait, it gets more interesting. Remember how the suspend only slows the processor to 60mhz (or 50?). Well, I decided to test that out. When my 720 was *suspended*, I typed in mc at the console. Sure enough, I heard the microdrive spin up. A second later, I pressed the power button. Sure enough, mc was sitting on my console! Now that could be useful for sneaking some computer action in class...

If you have a refurbished ultra-crazy-15-hours battery, you could probably suspend for about 24 hours. If you have an even crazier refurbished extended battery...well, I guess it does not matter much anymore.

Hopefully, we will get a better suspend closer to that of normal pc's, such as shutting off the keyboard (hint, hint), and the compactflash card interface, not just the pcmcia slot. The processor probably cannot be lowered anymore, because that would actually suspend it, and we cannot make it properly resume.

Erm... Again, I'm using sarge version, the ipkg on the 720degrees repository is compiled in etchy, so it depends on libc6 >= 2.3.5-2, sarge's libc6 is 2.3.22.

That means no ipkg or xtscal for sarge image users. There're two paths here:

- Stop distributing the sarge image and focus on the etchy/testing version (bad, IMHO, because sarge is stable and testing can make some nasty surprises.
- Compile all packages to the two versions and make separated repositories (/stable and /testing) (the debian way, but it's not writen in stone).



Dillo is working ok. I installed it without hassle, but my image is sarge and my repository points to the sarge source



Iew.

Well. The thing with the memory: kernel doesn't boot with more than 32M if you don't put
on the third line of params.txt
now my 'free' command shows 64M and I'm trying to see if it makes any difference on the speed of stuff.

About the packaging, I'm pretty confortable with debian packaging (I almost applied to debian developer, but I got tired of waiting ) and I work with 2 more DDs. I'm saying that because I can help in packaging stuff and organizing repositories (not that the work right now is bad, it is great). With time we can make a full repository of 720degrees and make it a fully fledged CDD...

You forgot option number 3: Compile most of it yourself.

I am probably going to repackage many of the debian ones, because they install way too much junk. How much? About 30mb in documentation (not man files), and 50mb in locale data from an average install. Do not confuse locale with zoneinfo, locale is just formatting text to the standard of the country. And only a few are needed, not all. But you get the point - that is an incredible amount of junk. And yet, it is still less than the 100+ mb in libraries...