[iPAQ] common questions...

Kosenko Daria wrote:

> Can I find in this "distribution" some tools I need for my work like
> keyboard program, voice recording, some kind of editor (like joe.. :?)?

The distribution is very minimalistic. There's no virtual keyboard (I hope
I have time to make one, out of, say, xkeycaps), but there's xscribble for
Palm-like stroke character recognition. Only editor I found from the
system is ed, but you can install precompiled joe afterwards.

You can probably use "cat /dev/audio > file" and the same backwards with
some window manager bindings (?) as a voice recorder. ;)

> An... for better life... where can I find browser (linx @ least) and
> GUI mp3 player (like xmms)? (hmmm... may be I want 2 much... then sorry)

I don't know about linx, but I there has been discussion on browsers on
the mailing lists, please check out the archives...

Base "distribution" has gqmpeg mp3 player (with GUI). Due to widget sizes,
playlist window and such aren't usable, though. :(

> And another couple of questions:
> 1) There is the X program that I want to have under my iPaq (like
> dictionary, ghostview, xdvi, etc...). What happens if I'll try to
> compile it for this device? Will I succeed in these attempts? Will this
> program work properly? Or shall I need to tweak the code?

You can find many programs precompiled (originally for Netwinder) at
handhelds.org download section. I think compiling is the least problematic
part. Linux distribution has no development environment due the storage
constraints, but you can telnet/rlogin to skiffcluster[12].handhelds.org
with guest account (emtpy password) and compile the stuff there. Of
course, some software written and tested only on intel platform can be
quite incompatible with RISC platforms without hacking.

Much bigger problems are the size of display practically all X
applications expect to get, and the amount of free space on base
distribution ramdisk (4.4M if I remember correctly).

> 2) And does anybody know something about perl under pocket PC?

There's at least a RPM at Carleton collection.

> Thank you very much.

No problem.

My opinion of installing linux on iPAQ is this: if you just want to take
notes, keep you calendar on organised form, and such stuff, stick with
that evil Windows for some more time. OTOH, if you're interested hacking
interesting applications on device where *nix has not gone before, install
it! :)

-kirma
Received on Sun Aug 27 02:06:15 2000