Ipaq Distros - was Re: Looking for HP Palmtops....

MonMotha monmotha at indy.rr.com
Sun Jan 6 16:50:37 PST 2002


Familiar is a good place to get started.  If you don't have a network 
card (in a PCMCIA or CF sleeve) you'll have to zmodem over the ssh 
ipkges and deps and install them by hand, then you can establish a ppp 
session to your ipaq, ssh in, and ipkg install what you want.

If you're not familiar with the "innards" of a linux distro (bootup 
procedures/scripts, config files, etc) you'll want to familiarize (no 
pun intended) yourself with those before you begin as the stock familiar 
isn't exactly useful (it's something like a slackware install where you 
only installed part of the "a" set if you're familiar with slackware).

I'm working on an environment (since competition is good and this is 
opensource after all) based on fvwm to use on my iPAQ if you are 
interested in helping me.

As for the install, the only part where you have to hold your breath is 
approximately 15 seconds where it's flashing the bootloader.  This 
procedure is done entirely from the iPAQ's memory under WinCE so you 
don't even have to worry if your power goes out!  Just make sure you 
have a full battery charge, umkey? :)  If you do somehow manage to brick 
your iPAQ, Compaq Research Labs has promised to fix it for you, though 
they really would rather not have it get to that point.  Once you have 
the new bootloader installed, you just bring up HyperTerminal (since you 
had to use Windoze to ActiveSync the bootloader over) or minicom (if 
you've already rebooted back into linux) to xmodem over the initial 
flash.  Stock familiar takes about 20 minutes to xmodem over.  Note that 
you will need a serial cable to do this. These can be had for about $20 
at your local Best Buy/CompUSA/whatever they have in Hawaii, or you can 
get one from Compaq if you're shady enough to claim that you have WinNT 
4.0 or Win95A and you can't use USB :)

More info about me an my experiences with my iPAQ can be found on my 
homepage at <http://monmothas.shacknet.nu/>.  Click on the iPAQ link.

--MonMotha

Jeff Mings wrote:

> I'm also planning to switch to Linux for my Ipaq, and would like to hear 
> about any distro evaluations.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Jeff Mings
> 
> 
> 
> Steve Anderson wrote:
> 
>> So which distro was loaded onto the IPAQ? One of those from  
>> http://www.handhelds.org/ ?
>> I have an IPAQ and would love to Linux on it, but I don't want to turn 
>> the IPAQ into a paperweight.
>> So how smooth was the IPAQ linux install?
>>
>> Steve Anderson
>>
> 
> 
> 
> 
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