Sharp Zaurus handheld

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Anyone who owns a Zaurus SL5500 or SL5600? I am now setting my eyes on a Linux-based handheld :) and anyone with any comments on it?

Palm is still ultimately a business tool....too serious, it's not making me smile. PocketPCs are expensive and the expansion slots are either one or the other. What a pain in the neck.

[z0mbix]

I have one. Excellent! I use the netgear cf wireless n/w card which needed no configuration atall. The only problem is, if you forget to charge it you loose all your programs/files stored in memory, so you have to backup regularly. I bought a 128MB SD card for storage and to install whatever programs to it that I can. I also have a 512MB CF card, but as I have the wireless card in most of the time it doesn't get used too often. Go for it, they're great. There's also some great software from thekompany.com. I bought 6 apps from there about a month ago and they are very high quality. I use it as an MP3 player too :) It's also come in very handy when I've been on site installing/fault finding wireless networks.

[LA Smog]

I just got mine about a week ago. Have reflashed the ROM to OpenZaurus already (didn't even spend any time looking at the SharpROM). Of course, I had to flash it a few times and figure out what was needed since I kept messing around, but it is braindead simple to flash.

I bought a 256MB SD card for the root storage and a 512MB CF card for media/ROM/packages/etc storage.

Since the OpenZaurus rom allows you to reconfig the system for different memory usage, the RAM on mine is not being used for any sort of OS storage, so if I reset the unit, I loose nothing.

I bought the 10/100 wired network adapter so I can use the Z for a network protocol analyzer, and the default SharpROM had some issues with the card. The OpenZaurus rom works really well handling connection/deconnection of the card and recognizes it right out of the box.

Now my only issue is getting zEthereal loaded on this thing and I will be a happy camper.

[nko]

I've never played with a Linux-based PDA. Is there an SSH client available for the Zaurus? How "Linux" is it? Is it like a miniature laptop with way scaled down hardware (and matching software)?

Can I get a BASH prompt on one? :)

[LA Smog]

I never used the SharpROM, I flashed directly to the OpenZaurus ROM the moment I got the thing so my experience with the Zaurus is limited to OpenZaurus so far.

OpenZaurus has SSH already installed and ready to use. I don't have a Linux workstation, but I downloaded PuTTY for Winblows and login in directly through the USB cradle (USB networking driver from Sharp).

The system uses a somewhat chopped OS, but you might be surprised with the amount of tools and utils that are available. The OpenZaurus (www.openzaurus.org) uses Opie as the GUI on top of a BusyBox install (www.busybox.net). All of the standard basic tools and commands are available through BusyBox (http://www.busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html.

There is K console (Konsole) available in the standard OpenZaurus install, I am not sure of the console used for SharpROM. You can leave the Opie GUI and will be dropped to a login prompt where you are basically at the standard system console and can perform tasks just as you would on any other system.

The system uses IPKG packages for quick, simple, end-user installs, but supports tarballs too. There is supposedly a RPM package manager available for download too, but I haven't tried it and you would have to recompile the sources to work on the Zaurus.

Yes, there is a GCC available for download and use on the Z or you can use a cross-compile linker to make the packages on your workstation and then send them to the Z.

I am still a Linux noob, so I am trying to link some of the sites so you can find the answers you want, since I doubt I am answering all that you really want to know.

[redhat81]

Can you run Apache, PHP and mySQL on it? I'd be interested in using it to develop a few light applications.

[LA Smog]

For a better list of the software that is available for the Zaurus, I suggest folks go to:

http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/

Yes, you can run an Apache webserver with PHP on this PDA, and it does already have an SQL database and client available for install. Both of these are available at the link I provided.