OpenZaurus:About
From OpenZaurus
Contents |
Background
The OpenZaurus project was created as an alternative Operating System for the Sharp Zaurus Personal Mobile Tool. The original purpose behind the project was to create a system (kernel + root filesystem) which was a bit closer to what the developer community specifically desired.
The method by which this was accomplished was simply to use the Sharp ROM as a base and make alterations, bugfixes, additions and even removals, where necessary, to make the package more open.
Shortly after this, it was revamped completely. OpenZaurus was then a Debian based embedded distribution built from source, from the ground up. Given its debian roots, it is quite similar to other embedded Debian-based distributions, such as Familiar for the Ipaq. This means of doing things also facilitates an easy method for users to build their own custom system images.
Current Versions of OpenZaurus are built from the OpenEmbedded build system, this was again a complete rebuild of the entire distribution from scratch.
Direction and Goals
Our intent is to continue to produce a solid Linux distribution for the Sharp Zaurus. We will continue to use the latest available Opie and GPE graphical enviroments.
Content
OpenZaurus was built from the ground up to be extremely configurable, and powerful. The addition of writable flash extended this further, by easily allowing people to make tweaks to their Z to be just the way they like it. Writable root filesystem means that the user can pick and choose themselves what they want in flash.
OZ does not include Jeode, Hancom apps, or Opera due to license reasons. However, Konqueror/embedded is available for a browser for OPIE enviroment.
Graphical User Interfaces
OpenZaurus has two GUIs:
- Opie, which, though it started as a fork of the Qtopia codebase, has quite surpassed it in nearly every way, and includes numerous additional applications, such as the user manager, drawpad, et cetera.
- GPE, a X/GTK based environment which aims to give you full featured graphic environment like you are used to on a ‘normal’ computer.
