first linux experience on jornada 7xx :)

of course that is one way - i still say the same though

why are people still fumbling with half-ass ported versions of linux when a stable and supported version of netbsd is readily avaliable for the j720/680 and alike?

That wouldnt be any fun

Besides there isnt much for prebuilt software on netbsd for arm and mips. Sure if you wanted to spend weeks compiling everything source then fine, but the few linux distros/images come with thousands of prebuilt packages to choose from.

I use netbsd on my mobilepro 770 and i have to say it sucks. It's slow, the keymap is crap ( try using midnight commander on netbsd hpcmips, you cant, the Function keys dont work ). X is horribly horribly slow etc etc. The only things i see that netbsd has over linux on a handheld is better suspend/resume and the fact it can reboot itself back into netbsd. Thats it.

And from where did you get the idea that these bases were unstable and poorly ported? Mine has only crashed twice on me, and that was by attempting to run Abiword with insufficient memory. And 720degrees is built right from debootstrap - there is nothing poor about it.

Like RTFM mentioned, X on NetBSD is not Kdrive, so it crawls compared to what we have. Recently, there has also been great progress on the 720 kernel drivers, which will eventually be superior to the NetBSD ones. Want the proof? www.jabba.pl/scinix

since when did fvwm crawl? its also easy to get used to not using x at all. with gcc/perl/elinks/emacs/yacas/ssh

most people want a gui.

Did i say anything about fvwm? Didnt think so

The trouble with Netbsd comes when you want to compile something from its source tree. You need the whole dang source tree available, as far as I could ever find, to build anything. That's 340+ megs or so. That was a show stopper for me, that and the C compiler kept crashing on me.

Unless something has changed recently, you don't need the whole source tree to compile for netbsd. You will need the toolset, and the appropriate source to compile, however.

My reason for wanting Linux over netbsd is simply that I use Linux day-in and day-out, and I get VERY tired of having to remember which config/startup file does what and what directory it's in. With Linux, at least all I have to remember is which directory the file is in, and it's usually only a couple of minor differences in directories.

The entire netbsd startup process - while similar to any *nix - is different than Linux, and file naming and locations is very different. It also seems MUCH slower than Linux (at least on the devices I've tested it on - PCs and HPC/PPC), and seems to use a bit more memory.

Believe me, they will claim that NetBSD uses less memory.