[jornada] Re: j728/ status of systems + need smaller and more powerfull sys

René on LinuxBox <rbil <at> shaw.ca> writes:

> This is the distro that has been interesting me. But since I just got my J720
> and have found that the battery isn't that great on it, I'm leery about
> trying to run Linux because I don't know that I'll have the battery life, nor
> be warned enough in advance that I need to run to a power source. Is
> there a battery status displayed when running 720 degrees?
>

Battery status on 720degrees as well as in Familiar is done by

cat /proc/jornada/battery

but there is no constant monitoring done on a default install. So you'd
actually have to be a little conscientious about when it's time to check and
when it's time to run.

A battery monitoring utility was written and contributed, but I *still* haven't
packaged it and made it available by the repository. I will likely get to it
this week.

> Also, new to Debian. When 720 degrees is installed, is the package manager
> good to go? How does one deal with installing new packages to be sure that
> they will work properly on the 720's display size? Or does the package
> manager come pre-installed with just those apps that fit this screen?
>
> Thanks for the help.
>
> Cheers,
> René
>

The package manager on 720degrees is, as you put it, "good to go". Because it
is essentially pure Debian, all the advantages touted by proponents of the apt
package management system are there. Of course, there is also a considerable
amount of bloat, and is the subject of debate among members of the 720degrees
team. Familiar's ipkg system is based on Debian's apt, but aimed at being more
lightweight - this is not the approach we are taking with 720degrees. The
consensus for 720degrees is to use apt and the existing Debian mainline
repository, and provide options for using a Slackware-based tarball package
system for memory constrained systems.

Regarding display size, the kernel provides access to the 720 display via the
framebuffer, so things are displayed normally, only like a small window. There
are a number of solutions on how to deal with apps that have windows larger than
the available screen size, but these are currently highly dependent on your
choice of window manager. For most window managers, the easiest solution has
been to find a way to pan the large window around the size of the screen.
Matchbox and Fluxbox have mechanisms for this, I am not sure of others. The
only other option would be to rewrite the GUI's for many of the existing apps,
which can be impractical on a distribution level.
Received on Tue Apr 04 2006 - 12:19:43 EDT