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:

1. we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for all Zaurus models
2. we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for Collie/2.4 only
3. 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…

During next days I will post to both OpenZaurus mailing lists about things which we have to do:

• move of Wiki content to Ångström wiki
• start testing Ångström images on our devices
• provide fixes to packages/system

And one important thing: OpenZaurus was Zaurus only (I do not count unofficial images). But Ångström is not — it is distribution which cover many devices (palmtops, phones, headless servers, developer boards) so our changes has to be done in wise way.

When it’s ready, the wiki will be better than ever. Until then, a read-only copy can be found at http://ozwiki.u32.net.

His patches are now present in current OpenEmbedded metadata so anyone can build 2.6.20 kernel for collie to test SD/MMC. Koen Kooi built images for Ångström so it can be taken as start of support for this machine.

My collie (after charging and removing dust) booted nicely to 2.6.20 powered Ångström console image and I was able to test my cards against driver. Only 16MB MMC card was working so I sent two SD cards (64M and 256M) to Thomas. Now he will have also some not-yet-working cards for testing (all his SD/MMC cards works).

Also worth reminding — there is a bounty for writing SD/MMC driver for collie/2.6 so if you want to appreciate Thomas work you can join ;)

We need more testers for this driver (serial cable suggested to get kernel logs) so we will be able to get working version. 2.6 kernel on Collie has some weak points and need work but now, when we have SD/MMC driver it show that it is worth to improve support for it. If everything will go ok we will be able to release Ångström for all Zaurus models.

You need to load one module after start:

modprobe locomo_spi

After progress bar stop you need to press Datebook + Left to switch to VT1. After login you can remove it with one command:

ipkg remove psplash

Please report your success/failure on OpenZaurus devel mailing list.

To get this release done I need Your help.

Before 3.5.4/3.5.4.1 release we had test cycles with over 100 users so this time I want to do it with the same way so we can give people another great version of our distribution.

Changes from 3.5.4.x:

• OPIE 1.2.3 (this version will be released in February)
• kernel 2.6.20 for all models except collie (which will have 2.4.18-crapix with hacked SD/MMC driver to be able to use >1GB cards)
• altboot root-on-sd for collie
• boot from flash, boot from SD kernels
• Ximageon X11 server for c7×0
• anything other if someone will update it

Someone need to test altboot root-on-sd so we will give 100% working start images.

Ximageon server is new thing from Manuel Teira Paz. It has XVideo working and there are work on XRandR support.

Images

I would like to provide a bit changed list of images available in OZ 3.5.5:

• bootstrap
• opie
• gpe
• opie-minimal (launcher + minimal settings + konsole)
• gpe-minimal (also stripped from apps)

Minimal images provided for collie/poodle/tosa/c7×0 as they can have <32M rootfs so users have problems with fitting. This way they can install rest of software to SD cards.

Of course if they prefer to boot from SD (directly under 2.6 or via altboot on collie) then they will choose normal images.

XFCE, E17 images will be probably not provided. This can change if someone will work on them.

• Feed browser
• Feeds mirror

We will still use mailing lists on SourceForge because switching them to new home would need everyone to subscribe manually and add unnecessary chaos.

Matthias ‘CoreDump’ Hentges is our mirroring maintainer and he decided that we have enough mirrors already. Thanks to his work all of them are available under feeds.openzaurus.org name so you can change feeds locations from http://ewi546.ewi.utwente.nl/mirror/www.openzaurus.org/official/unstable/ into http://feeds.openzaurus.org/ to make use of our mirrors.

Please use mailing lists for sending feedback:

• openzaurus-users
• openzaurus-devel

I will update collie config and then release bootstrap-images for it (no GPE or OPIE images for this machine).

2006.09.05 UPDATE: OPIE images recreated - should work now.

Download from EWI

Small changelog:

• sound on poodle improved
• touchscreen on tosa improved - no more ‘heartbeats’ instead of lines
• some WiFi cards which got orinoco_cs loaded will get hostap_cs now

It is experimental release to get wider testing of our work and to show all of you what we did during last months. Support for those machines needs some love and hard work, but machines are far more usable then they were under 2.4-crapix kernel.

Release notes are available already in wiki. Feel free to add content.

Test it and report bugs, fixes, ideas:

• OE Bugtracker

All feedback goes to openzaurus-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list.

Machine related stuff is provided as preconfigured feed.

This tool was first written for Ångström distribution, then it got improved and filled with OZ data. It need some love to be finished but this will take some time - most important addon would be searching for package names (currently not yet implemented).

I hope you will enjoy this tool.

• poodle (sl-5600)
• tosa (sl-6000)
• collie (sl-5000/5500)

is available from http://ewi546.ewi.utwente.nl/tmp/hrw/3.5.4.2-test/rc1/

Image changes:

• collie OPIE image got PIM and Bluetooth apps removed
• poodle/tosa OPIE images got Qpdf2, Konqueror, games and few other things removed
• poodle GPE image got Sylpheed removed (unusable on such small screen)

Collie does not have working SD/MMC and we do not know when it will have it supported. Chip which control SD/MMC is not documented so to get it working under 2.6 someone would have to do some reverse-engineering work on 2.4 binary driver. Our kernel team work on getting other models fully supported.

It is experimental release to get wider testing of our work and to show all of you what we did during last months. Support for those machines needs some love and hard work, but machines are far more usable then they were under 2.4-crapix kernel.

Release notes are available already in wiki. Feel free to add content.

Test it and report bugs, fixes, ideas:

• OE Bugtracker

All feedback goes to openzaurus-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list.

Machine related stuff is provided as preconfigured feed.