Thursday, April 26th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Some time ago new kernel hacker joined team of people working on 2.6 kernel for Zaurus machines — Thomas Kunze gave us SD/MMC driver for collie and works on other subsystems to get this machine working. As result collie got added into list of Ångström supported devices and test images were generated.
Also during last time people were asking Koen Kooi when Ångström is going to be released. He usually answered that it depends on OpenZaurus release plans (OZ first).
But we lack developers to work on two distros in one time. Release of OpenZaurus 3.5.4/3.5.4.1 took me few months of work as I had to organize beta testing program, build images, fix bugs, find someone to work on documentation, build feeds. Then due to limited access to main mirror I had to work on upgrades feeds. Those tasks will be split to more people in Ångström.
As a result I was going to tell world that there will be no new OpenZaurus releases ever. But I did not wanted to sound like dictator — I asked other developers on openzaurus-devel ML what they think. There were 3 options:
- we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for all Zaurus models
- we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for Collie/2.4 only
- we close OpenZaurus history and switch to Ångström
During week twelve persons replied — no one chosen option 1st or 2nd…
So Ångström is a future for our machines — and many others already supported in OpenEmbedded. End of OpenZaurus does not mean that Zaurus models are obsolete or that users need to switch to pdaXrom or Cacko.
It needs work to create nicely working distribution which will use up-to-date technologies, will base on current software etc. Personally I do not even plan to look at 2.4 kernel for Zaurus any more — it was ‘created’ in such bad way that… no comment
What does OpenZaurus meant to me?
For me it was really nice to have OpenZaurus on each Zaurus model which I had in my hands. It started with SL-5500 collie which I bought for quite big amount of cash (about 2/3 of my month salary), then was C760 donated by Richard Jackson. Later I got SL-5600 and SL-6000 donated by anonymous donor from USA. During OEDEM I got SL-C3000 from Mickeyl and gave him SL-5600 instead. Now SL-C3000 is in Rolf Leggewie hands and SL-6000 waits for developer which would like to work on improving support for it (SL-5600/6000/C3000 are OpenEmbedded project devices).
Thanks to OpenZaurus I started to use OpenEmbedded. First as stupid novice, then advanced user finally one of core developers. Without playing with those systems I would not be the person which I am today. Since I left my previous work as PHP programmer I finally do what I like to do (and I am paid for it).
Without playing with it I would not have all those gadgets/toys which I have here.
I would like to thanks for some persons:
- Chris ‘kergoth’ Larson for starting work on OpenZaurus distro
- Michael ‘mickeyl’ Lauer for maintaining OZ
- Richard ‘rp’ Purdie for maintaining Linux-2.6 for all Zaurus models
- John Lenz for starting work on getting Linux-2.6 working on collie
- Dirk Opfer for Tosa part
- Graeme ‘xora’ Gregory for being one of most active Zaurus developers
- Koen Kooi for maintaining Ångström distro
- Scott Bronson and Simon ‘lardman’ Pickering for work on OpenZaurus documentation
- Thomas Kunze for work on SD/MMC driver for collie
- all other OpenZaurus hackers
For all time which they spend on getting Zaurus machines supported.
Tags: collie company consulting donations nokia oedem openembedded openmoko openzaurus poodle progear tosa zaurus 4 Comments »
Sunday, February 25th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
FOSDEM 2007 is ending now. This was my first one and I enjoyed it. I met so many people, which I know from IRC, that I can not even list them :)
Lot of interesting devices we had on OpenEmbedded booth including:
- Neo1973 phone (OpenMoko powered) prototypes
- Trolltech Greenphone (which got donated by Trolltech)
- Skeye.pad brought by Kernel concepts
- Skeye.integral (also brought by KC)
- Motorola A780 phone with GPE^2
- Ipaq 5xxx running OpenZaurus (unofficial image)
First day took more of my attention then second because I spend more time on OE booth answering lot of of questions from users, other developers, giving informations about OE, what software is running on Neo1973 phone (and showing same software on my Progear webpad)… I also managed to view some talks. At the end of a day I was so tired that I get to the bed and slept whole night.
Second day was a bit other. I had more talks on a list, there was GnuPG keysigning party too. One of talks was Lorn Potter talk about Qtopia which was too boring. The funny moment was when I get back to the booth one time and was asked by someone who I do not met before (he was Michael Dominic Kostrzewa (one of Maemo developers)) “Do you have Nokia770 device?” After my negative answer I got brand new Nokia770 device (it is charging now). So probably soon new device will join Angström world :)
Tomorrow we will have small OE discussion session and return to homes.
Next year I will be here for 100% :)
Tags: conferences donations fosdem gpe nokia openembedded openmoko progear travels 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 12th, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Paypal now officially supports Poland in both ways (previously it only allowed to send cash from Poland). So I decided to create account. From now I can accept donations via:
- Moneybookers where I have account
donations[at]blog.haerwu.biz
- Paypal where my account is named
paypal@blog.haerwu.biz.
I did not yet tested Paypal one.
Tags: donations Comments Off
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Over week ago Jeff Garzik wrote on LKML about private mails with support requests. Yesterday RMK started similiar thread on LAKML. After reading whole discussion I decided to write what do I think about it as I am also getting such requests in private.
From time to time someone asks me for help (nevermind which way: email, irc, jabber, forum message) even in subjects which were very often discussed or are in OpenZaurus FAQ. I have many things to do and answering to all such requests are very low priority — sometimes I answer after 2 weeks (if at all). Sometimes I do not know answer and redirect author to forum or mailing list.
On the other hand there are requests are about adding software into OpenZaurus feeds or providing support for exotic hardware. If software == unmaintained, very low quality applications for Qtopia enviroments (I wrote about them already) then I refuse to touch them at all as this takes too much time to get good results (tried once with Mileage). Another thing is hardware support — it is hard to support something which I lack (did it once with CF-XGA card) but even if I have it support can be hard because lack of time (like it was with Ir keyboard).
From time to time I am getting offer or paying development but thats other story :D
Why Ask Questions in Public? is also worth reading.
Tags: donations openembedded openzaurus Comments Off
Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Yesterday I got USB Host cable from Trisoft (donated like I wrote before) so I decided to check how it works.
First try was my TDK Bluetooth dongle which I got year ago. Installed kernel-module-hci-usb, connected dongle and it was not working. So I rebooted and after reboot and manual module loading I got hci0 shown in hciconfig output. But I was unable to do any scanning for devices.
Then I disconnected BT and connected my few years old 64M pendrive. Tosa did not even notice that change… so I did another reboot. After that I got /dev/sda1 mountable and working.
In next weeks (plan to have 2 week vacations) I plan to test some more USB equipment — plan to buy powered hub, already have multiport card reader, will borrow USB keyboard etc. And most important thing — test 2.6 kernel on tosa.
Tags: donations openembedded openzaurus tosa wlan-ng 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
About one month ago one OpenZaurus user contacted me and Michael ‘mickeyl’ Lauer with info that he want to donate two Zaurus machines to project — SL-6000L (tosa) and SL-5600 (poodle). After some discussion we decided that both machines will be sent to me. I will keep tosa for some time to resolve some of bugs, poodle will go to Mickeyl when we will meet in Berlin during OpenEmbedded developer meeting. Both machines are added into OpenEmbedded project devices.
As donor could not send them overseas I contacted Aman ‘TheMasterMind1′ Gupta (one of old time OpenZaurus developers) and he agreed to get them and resent to me. Last Friday I got mail from customs office that package wait for me. I went there, paid 22% VAT (110 USD) and got box with two Zauruses.
Now I’m charging Tosa — it’s huge but this screen is awesome! Now I understand why people want it in clamshells — Sharp do you hear it? Stop using screen from c700 and move to something new! I also played a bit with SharpROM (last time I used SharpROM over two years ago with my collie) and I can say that it looks nice but I feel slowdowns too often, weird behaviour on application close, handling QVGA apps is weird for me too. Too bad that I cannot test USB Host functionality — Sharp forgot to add proper cable and they are hard to buy (USB mini-A connector) but I found them in Trisoft offer so maybe will get it soon.
UPDATE: I contacted Trisoft and they will send me USB host cable for free. I also ordered one for our main tosa kernel hacker Dirk Opfer (also free). It is good that such companies exists — without them getting Zaurus and accessories in Europe would be hard.
During evening I plan to find time to flash tosa to OpenZaurus 3.5.4 + upgrades and check what need to be fixed. Too bad that wlan-ng driver for Prism2 USB lack WPA — I will have to lower security of my home AP — now it is WPA-PSK but will move to WEP so Tosa will connect with internal wifi. Next I will check how poodle works but this machine is something which I prefer to not touch too much rather — it’s 2.4 support was already marked as ‘terrible, awful’ and we want to move into 2.6 kernel on it. I will check how both machines works with 2.6.17 and maybe will try to hack it a bit — time will show.
Tags: donations openembedded openzaurus tosa wlan zaurus 3 Comments »