[wplug] Zaurus UPGRADED

[Robert Coutch]

Howdy all,

I downloaded the latest ROM (V 3.10) from Sharp to try in my Zaurus.

It includes kernel 2.4.18 (embedded) and Qtopia 1.5.4.

My impressions so far are mixed.

They have revised the filesystem layout but it still doesn't make sense.
Many of the PDA type programs have been updated and include much needed 
features missing in the previous versions.

Some utilities that had to be downloaded from the internet have been 
intergrated into the new ROM.

Wireless setup and use has improved and includes a taskbar utility to turn the 
card on/off as well as show signal strength and network info.

The desktop (or what ever you call it) now uses themes that can be loaded in 
and include wallpaper, buttons, icons and more (not just color schemes like 
the old themes).

Everything is not done as root as it was before.
You are now username: zaurus and must su to root which has no password by 
default (Hey - It's a start).

On the downside,
Some of my old favorites (VNC, Kismet, ZSafe, OpenSSH) have not been made to 
work with this ROM version yet.
The old versions won't run or run with problems.

I had to format my SD-RAM card back to FAT because I couldn't figure what 
user/permissions to assign to the ext2 file system that was on the card.
I kept getting errors about write permission (I'll fix this later).

I can no longer sync with my Linux (SuSE 8.2) system because Qtopia-desktop is 
no longer compatible with the new ROM.

Sharp does offer updates for Windows users (isn't that special?) to allow sync 
with Outlook.

The old ftp daemon running on port 4242 of the USB interface is gone and 
replaced with (brace yourself) a built-in samba service (what's next, a 
Windows XP version?).

I can at least drag and drop files to it from Konqueror using the smb:// 
protocol. The PIM/PDA programs no longer use XML format for data storage
but are now using a database of some sort.

I really miss my old utilities but REALLY like the improvement in the PIM/PDA 
software.

If you want to know more, tell me.
I'm going to give the new ROM a good test trial before making it permanant.


Thanks for listening (errrr, reading),

Bob