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The Official Zaurus Thread RAWR! |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #96664, posted by Phlamethrower at 02:27, 5/1/2007, in reply to message #96551 |
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To get colour in console nethack, it's just a case of 'export TERM=linux' (And making sure colour is enabled in nethack's options  ). But I still haven't worked out how to get the cursor keys working (Does regular nethack support the cursor keys, or just the numpad? I forget)
Also, the version I'm using lacks a default config file. And doesn't install using the graphical ipkg installer. And it puts the files in /usr/local/games instead of the usual place. But you can get it from here if you're desperate for a fix. |
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richard cheng |
Message #97300, posted by richcheng at 17:37, 17/1/2007, in reply to message #96664 |
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So, I've had my Zaurus for a couple of weeks or so, and I love it.
The good:
- The screen is better than I was expecting, even though...
- ... It's smaller than I was expecting.
- The keyboard is acceptable.
- NetFront is pretty good, and its AutoCruise feature is much simpler than faffing about with sitescooper, although a bit limited.
- I'm learning (more) about Linux.
- Once I've got it all set up, this thing is going to be just awesome for on the go web-browsing, emailing, writing, and generally faffing about.
- Smaller keyboard notwithstanding, it basically is the colour screen, wifi enabled, Psion-a-like I've been waiting all these years for. Rock out!
The bad:
- It can be very unresponsive, in terms of clicks and whatnot apparently having no effect for a second or two, before suddenly springing into life. For some reason, I don't find this as irritating as I do on a desktop computer, however.
- In my first week, I managed to repeatedly get it into a state where it would hang on shutdown, requiring a full reset and restore. I think I've narrowed this down to the vim ipk on the ZUG feed, though.
- Although I'm not exactly afraid of Linux, I'm not sure if I'm willing to commit the amount of time and effort required to reallyget the most out of my Zaurus.
- Pine doesn't play nice with Messenger Pro Server, and neither does the preinstalled email client, and neither does OM/Pi, and neither does Sylpheed, and neither does mutt. Thunderbird does, but with my current setup, it is s-l-o-w, leading onto:
The questions:
- I have X/Qt and Thunderbird installed via the cramfs images from the Customization page you linked to a while back. Do you have any idea how much of a speed increase I'd get if I installed them properly? How about if I left the X/Qt in the cramfs image, and just installed Thunderbird (as that seems to be the slow part). I'd ask in the forums but it sounds like the sort of newbie/RTFM question that gets people lynched on Linux forums.
- I'm sure there were more, but I can't seem to remember them right now... |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #97301, posted by Phlamethrower at 17:49, 17/1/2007, in reply to message #97300 |
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- It can be very unresponsive, in terms of clicks and whatnot apparently having no effect for a second or two, before suddenly springing into life. For some reason, I don't find this as irritating as I do on a desktop computer, however. If there are apps you use a lot, then you might be able to cache them in RAM. (In fact, there may already be a few apps you don't use which are cached in RAM, taking up valuable space). Hold down the stylus over the icon to bring up the properties page, and enable/disable quick loading/caching as required. Most of the PIM apps that came with my Zaurus were cached, IIRC.
Also, I'm guessing the 3200 will use a pagefile on the internal microdrive. This may slow things down a bit, depending on how much it gets used.
- In my first week, I managed to repeatedly get it into a state where it would hang on shutdown, requiring a full reset and restore. I think I've narrowed this down to the vim ipk on the ZUG feed, though. Yes, it can be a bit tricky finding all the right ipks for something to work.
- I have X/Qt and Thunderbird installed via the cramfs images from the Customization page you linked to a while back. Do you have any idea how much of a speed increase I'd get if I installed them properly? No idea! But if they try writing to the cramfs images (Is that even possible?) then I guess it would speed them up a lot.
What's so slow about it? Just general usage, or loading, or switching between apps? |
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richard cheng |
Message #97305, posted by richcheng at 20:38, 17/1/2007, in reply to message #97301 |
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- It can be very unresponsive, in terms of clicks and whatnot apparently having no effect for a second or two, before suddenly springing into life. For some reason, I don't find this as irritating as I do on a desktop computer, however. If there are apps you use a lot, then you might be able to cache them in RAM. (In fact, there may already be a few apps you don't use which are cached in RAM, taking up valuable space). Hold down the stylus over the icon to bring up the properties page, and enable/disable quick loading/caching as required. Most of the PIM apps that came with my Zaurus were cached, IIRC.
The only apps I'm using a lot currently are NetFront and Terminal, and I've already disabled Fastload on everything else. It's not so much app startup I'm complaining about. More just random pauses every now and again.
Also, I'm guessing the 3200 will use a pagefile on the internal microdrive. This may slow things down a bit, depending on how much it gets used. It doesn't use a pagefile by default. You can set one up, but I've not tried doing that yet, as I don't seem to be having any memory-running-out type problems.
- I have X/Qt and Thunderbird installed via the cramfs images from the Customization page you linked to a while back. Do you have any idea how much of a speed increase I'd get if I installed them properly? No idea! But if they try writing to the cramfs images (Is that even possible?) then I guess it would speed them up a lot.
What's so slow about it? Just general usage, or loading, or switching between apps?
Thunderbird is *really* slow to start up - like, minutes - but even once it's started, it's just all around sluggish. Almost anything I do takes a few seconds to happen/complete.
The X environment itself doesn't seem to be so bad. Sylpheed, for example, runs quite nippily (although it can't download my IMAP emails  )
The only reason I've not tried installing it yet is that I suspect it'll require reformatting the harddrive to be ext2/ext3, and I'm not feeling quite up to that level of beardiness, yet. Also, I'm still occasionally connecting to my work machine with a USB cable, and that won't work if it's not FAT formatted. |
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richard cheng |
Message #97365, posted by richcheng at 15:04, 18/1/2007, in reply to message #97305 |
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Excellent resource here!
http://www.daniel-hertrich.de/zaurus/zps_cacko/
In other news, I'm going to buy a 2GB SD card from crucial and format it as ext2 for program installation etc, so I can be a wuss about re-partioning/formatting my HDD, which I plan to only use for storing nature documentaries to watch on my commute. Is it safe to backup from
Could someone administrative please rename this to "The Official Zaurus Thread RAWR!"
thenkyou |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #97367, posted by Phlamethrower at 15:29, 18/1/2007, in reply to message #97365 |
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Is it safe to backup from 
Could someone administrative please rename this to "The Official Zaurus Thread RAWR!"
thenkyou Seems to have been done by some anonymous sneaky thread renamer. |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #97368, posted by rich at 15:31, 18/1/2007, in reply to message #97367 |
 Dictator for life
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I was re-writing the template so that the title doesn't have raw HTML in it
________
 Cheers,
Rich.
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #97370, posted by Phlamethrower at 15:33, 18/1/2007, in reply to message #97368 |
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Well, you're forgiven, or something. |
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richard cheng |
Message #97372, posted by richcheng at 15:41, 18/1/2007, in reply to message #97367 |
Posts: 655
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Is it safe to backup from
I have no idea what that means! Strange.
Could someone administrative please rename this to "The Official Zaurus Thread RAWR!"
thenkyou Seems to have been done by some anonymous sneaky thread renamer.
Yay! |
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richard cheng |
Message #97377, posted by richcheng at 15:52, 18/1/2007, in reply to message #97300 |
Posts: 655
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Pine doesn't play nice with Messenger Pro Server, ... and neither does mutt. Oops. Sorry for the libel, Messenger Pro. In fact, mutt (on the Mac mini) plays nicer with MProSE than any other client I've yet tried! It didn't work before because I compiled it without IMAP support  . So if the Zaurus version is comparable, very soon I'll be able to email on the train! Rar!
That's presuming mutt is happy to work offline. I know it can cache email headers and bodies for speed, but not sure if it sulks if there's no net connection. Otherwise I might have to get my hands dirty and try to compile one of the various offline imap synchronisers myself .
Really hope it doesn't come to that though. |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #97382, posted by Phlamethrower at 15:55, 18/1/2007, in reply to message #97377 |
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Otherwise I might have to get my hands dirty and try to compile one of the various offline imap synchronisers myself .
Really hope it doesn't come to that though. Zaurus development only becomes hard if you decide to jump through too many hoops in order to use the compiler. |
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Bryan Hogan |
Message #97440, posted by helpful at 13:31, 19/1/2007, in reply to message #97365 |
Member
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In other news, I'm going to buy a 2GB SD card
Careful, there have been problems with the Zaurus not accepting 2GB SD cards. I've got a 1GB in mine which works fine. |
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richard cheng |
Message #97444, posted by richcheng at 15:45, 19/1/2007, in reply to message #97440 |
Posts: 655
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In other news, I'm going to buy a 2GB SD card
Careful, there have been problems with the Zaurus not accepting 2GB SD cards. I've got a 1GB in mine which works fine.
Too late! I ordered it this morning. Apparently the 4GB one by the same manufacturer (Transcend) works okay, though:
http://www.tyrannozaurus.com/?q=wiki/SDCompatList
Fingers crossed! |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #97509, posted by Phlamethrower at 03:59, 21/1/2007, in reply to message #97365 |
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which I plan to only use for storing nature documentaries to watch on my commute. Have you tried any video conversion yet?
It doesn't look like ffmpeg writes the muxrate of MPGs properly, which causes immense difficulty for the Sharp video player. kino2 seems to cope fine, but I haven't found a way of getting it to play fullscreen
Also, producing MP4's seems a bit tricky. In that, just asking ffmpeg to make an MP4 will result in one that plays without sound in kino2 (or videolan on my PC)
Maybe there are some newer packages available which make kino2 more user-friendly. |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #97510, posted by Phlamethrower at 04:13, 21/1/2007, in reply to message #97509 |
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Hmm, newer versions of bvdd/mplayer available at the website. Also some japanese instructions which say something about fullscreen playback. I guess I'll try playing with those, then 
[edit]
Ah! magics.
Out of the two fullscreen options, it looks like -fs is for the w100 driver (as used in the old zauruses). -vm is for the bvdd driver (as used in the new ones). And -vm works with the mplayer version that came with my zaurus. yay!
Erm, shame that kino2/Qt doesn't realise it's running fullscreen, though. Once you stop playback you're left with a white screen and have to tap the right bits to trigger a redraw
[edit #2]
Also, it won't switch to fullscreen if the video is too large. I'm guessing that all it does is switch to the 320x240 mode, so anything bigger than 320x240 will fail (e.g. the 320x256 which I just tried). The sharp player will play fullscreen at 320x256, but part of the bottom of the image was wrapped round to the top
This could make it a bit tricky when trying to find a nice resolution for widescreen programs
[edit #3]
480x270 seems too large for it to display at full framerate. So no sneaky widescreen playback in portrait mode
[Edited by Phlamethrower at 04:47, 21/1/2007] |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98113, posted by Phlamethrower at 09:00, 5/2/2007, in reply to message #97510 |
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Handy hint of the day: Using Dejavumono 14, you can get 79 columns of text from Qkonsole if you turn off the scrollbar. If you also play fullscreen, this will give you 29 lines of text - so is almost perfect for playing NetHack at a more readable resolution. If there weren't the borders in fullscreen, you would get 80 columns - but so far 79 seems to be enough. Just remember to set everything up before you launch the game, otherwise it will detect the wrong screen size.
In other news: Have you found a terminal app that has a borderless fullscreen mode?
[edit]
In fact, this version of NetHack allegedly has screen clipping enabled, so should work fine with only 79 columns.
[Edited by Phlamethrower at 09:04, 5/2/2007] |
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richard cheng |
Message #98250, posted by richcheng at 17:03, 7/2/2007, in reply to message #98113 |
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Handy hint of the day: Using Dejavumono 14, you can get 79 columns of text from Qkonsole if you turn off the scrollbar. If you also play fullscreen, this will give you 29 lines of text - so is almost perfect for playing NetHack at a more readable resolution. If there weren't the borders in fullscreen, you would get 80 columns - but so far 79 seems to be enough. Just remember to set everything up before you launch the game, otherwise it will detect the wrong screen size. Interesting. I've mostly been using Fixed 12, which is pretty bloody small, but, to my eyes, just about readable.
In other news: Have you found a terminal app that has a borderless fullscreen mode? Nope. Let me know when you've found it |
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richard cheng |
Message #98251, posted by richcheng at 17:13, 7/2/2007, in reply to message #98250 |
Posts: 655
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Tried this yet?
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-zaurus.html
I think you should become the official package maintainer they're looking for.
And then you should use the experience gained to port VLC to RISC OS  |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98252, posted by Phlamethrower at 17:14, 7/2/2007, in reply to message #98250 |
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Interesting. I've mostly been using Fixed 12, which is pretty bloody small, but, to my eyes, just about readable. Readable, yes. But Dejavumono 14 is a lot better |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98254, posted by Phlamethrower at 17:21, 7/2/2007, in reply to message #98251 |
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Tried this yet?
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-zaurus.html Nope, and don't have much reason to, either. VideoLAN on my PC can't even cope with some of the videos ffmpeg produces
I think you should become the official package maintainer they're looking for. I don't fancy trying to compile ~40MB of source under QEMU.
And then you should use the experience gained to port VLC to RISC OS ...or attempting to port ~40MB of source to RISC OS |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98260, posted by Phlamethrower at 23:17, 7/2/2007, in reply to message #98113 |
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In fact, this version of NetHack allegedly has screen clipping enabled, so should work fine with only 79 columns. I can indeed confirm that it will scroll the map when you reach the edge of the screen. Hurrah!
However, the redraw rectangles for some of the Dejavumono 14 characters seem a bit buggy (perhaps just upper-case W?), which for a short while had me worried that I had a (previously unnoticed) dead pixel |
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richard cheng |
Message #98274, posted by richcheng at 11:09, 8/2/2007, in reply to message #98260 |
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In fact, this version of NetHack allegedly has screen clipping enabled, so should work fine with only 79 columns. I can indeed confirm that it will scroll the map when you reach the edge of the screen. Hurrah!
Good news. I will try installing it soon.
However, the redraw rectangles for some of the Dejavumono 14 characters seem a bit buggy (perhaps just upper-case W?), which for a short while had me worried that I had a (previously unnoticed) dead pixel I have a dead pixel on my DS, which I only notice when I'm running north in Animal Crossing, and then only because I think "Ooh! A bug!"
Disclaimer: I've not played AC since before Christmas. In all likelihood my town is now a ghost town. Or possibly has been bulldozed to make way for a bypass. |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98387, posted by Phlamethrower at 10:33, 11/2/2007, in reply to message #98274 |
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If, for whatever reason, you must play in portrait mode instead of landscape, Dejavumono 10 is the right font to use |
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Phil Mellor |
Message #98388, posted by monkeyson2 at 11:46, 11/2/2007, in reply to message #98274 |
 Please don't let them make me be a monkey butler
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Disclaimer: I've not played AC since before Christmas. In all likelihood my town is now a ghost town. Or possibly has been bulldozed to make way for a bypass.  |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98389, posted by Phlamethrower at 11:50, 11/2/2007, in reply to message #98388 |
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*turns on DS to check town*
It's still snowing. Yay!
*goes looking for corpses* |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98390, posted by Phlamethrower at 12:09, 11/2/2007, in reply to message #98389 |
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I could only find one of the snowballs needed
But no corpses! |
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Ian Cook |
Message #98397, posted by ilcook at 17:21, 11/2/2007, in reply to message #81531 |
 Resident idiot
Posts: 1075
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Tl ll (MtwTtvjivl£TIAow-(_T ic L Tctloc =(_TßTlj rc£--<MOotw Who's been pressing the keys too hard then. |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98402, posted by Phlamethrower at 19:21, 11/2/2007, in reply to message #98397 |
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Tl ll (MtwTtvjivl£TIAow-(_T ic L Tctloc =(_TßTlj rc£--<MOotw Who's been pressing the keys too hard then.
No-one? |
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Phil Mellor |
Message #98405, posted by monkeyson2 at 22:48, 11/2/2007, in reply to message #98402 |
Please don't let them make me be a monkey butler
Posts: 12380
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Tl ll (MtwTtvjivl£TIAow-(_T ic L Tctloc =(_TßTlj rc£--<MOotw Who's been pressing the keys too hard then.
No-one?
ME! |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #98796, posted by Phlamethrower at 23:55, 18/2/2007, in reply to message #98405 |
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Zaurus hack of the day: Console Brandy. (Although, it's questionable whether changing 4 lines in the makefile constitutes as a hack or not)
"Try and guess what I'll be using this for" etc. etc.
Ignore the garbage in the screenshot, I can't be bothered tidying it up
[Edited by Phlamethrower at 00:25, 19/2/2007] |
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