Re: [REQUEST 2] Simple answers re usability of iPaq Linux

I'll answer from my point of view.

>Simple question #0 before I flash away Windows CE on my iPaq: do people
>find a Linux iPaq useful as a PIM? I know that there is Mingle, but is
>there a convenient set of apps for tasks, calendar and contacts? I see
>that there is QPE, without an email client...

Not counting QPE (which I have not played with, I'm hoping to stay in X so I
can run all of my tools at the same time) I find that it is not currently
useful as a PIM. There is a major dirth of applications.

I took my iPaq with me to USENIX Security a couple of weeks ago. I found it
very useful for taking notes with the keyboard, keeping in touch with the
office though ssh to my mail server using the 802.11b wireless card and the
built in support for it (no issues what so ever in getting it to work. With
out the keyboard I find it quite frustrating at times, the gesture
recognition is not there yet (it works but has some nagging problems), though
is good enough to surf with Dillo.

It has to be charged _ever_ day. It will not last a weekend at home with out
running out of juce.

But, all of that aside I'm sticking with it for now. It shows a lot of
promice, and I'm going to see if I can build a calendar application for it
that fits in with the PTE. Mingle does not meet my needs (to used to all of
the fields in the Palm) but time will tell with that. :)

>Simple question #1: is there an email client in any of the Familiar
>ipkg's that would enable me to use a CF modem to dialup my ISP, download
>my POP3 email and read it (with the ability of saving attachments)?

No ipkg at the time, but I have heard that you can use the Debian ARM tools
on the iPaq so I don't see any reason you can't do that. This is a linux
system so you can use what ever tools you can fit in the 'disk' space
available (and can get to display on the limited screen space).

>Simple question #2: what are the care and feeding instructions for a
>Linux iPaq? Under WinCE, I turn it on and off while using and recharge
>it every day or so. I've read somewhere that, even with power off, I
>have 8 hours between recharges or else poof.

I needed to charge the iPaq every day, I usually leave it charging over night
and have it in a cradle while at work. At USENIX I used it with the backs
with helped, I would pull the wireless card when ever I was not using it so I
was able to survive the huge drain that it caused. I did not use it during
the tutorials for notes so I don't know what an entire day of keyboarding
will do to it, but will probably find out soon as I want to see if I can do
all of my admin duties from it for a day (being the nut that I am.)

>Simple question #3: should I do version 0.4 immediately, else wait for
>0.5? Anyone know an ETA for 0.5?

*grin* Can't answer that one, to move from .4 to .5 will require blowing
away the install you have because the kernel requires a larger partition. But
that may be changed by the time it is 'released'.

>Simple question #4: with my 32 mb iPaq, how much free space is there to
>work with using task-familiar-complete? I would plan to keep a CF card
>for /usr/local, however, I'd need room for basic things if I needed to
>switch to a modem.

Actually a 32mb iPaq has 32mb of RAM, just like your PC at home. What you
need to worry about is how much FlashRAM you have (some people are refuring
to it as ROM here in the list.). You most likley have 16mb of FlashRAM,
which is what Linux is going to use as it's 'disk space'. I found that a bit
restricting once I started playing with the tool so the two iPaqs here off
for the upgrade to 32mb of FlashRAM.

With 32mb of FlashRAM I currently have 39mb of stuff on the file system and a
reported 12mb free (this is because the file system is a compressed file
system, so you can get better use of the space than you do with exfs2.)

For most things I think 32mb of RAM is plenty, we got these upgraded to 64
for development, but we think that when/if we roll these out to the rest of
the company we might leave them at 32mb of RAM.

Hope that helps!

-Sean
Received on Thu Aug 23 11:37:04 2001