Having trouble locating SiEd? Fret no more!

SiEd is my favorite general purpose editor for Palm pilot. It’s great, open-sourced GPLed software, that has a bunch of neat features like writing directly to the SD card, split screens, macros. I also love the fact that it writes plain text files.

One thing I wanted to add to the program, thanks to access to the source code, was support for the full 320x480 screen and rotation. However, locating the program and its source has been difficult.

The developer’s domain, benroe.com, has for some reason been taken over by squatters. There are huge numbers of hits for a google search of sied but they all point to the same domain… ugh.

But no longer! I’ve managed to locate an older version of the source and am making both the 0.9.9 source code and the actual SiEd 0.9.11 PRC palm program here, at least until benroe.com gets back in business.

If anyone has access to a more recent version of the source, I’d appreciate a little message on where I can get it before I starting making modifications. For the moment, please feel free to download and use this great program.

Finally… After a few months with my new Palm OS 5 device, I’ve been itching to get some real work done on the road. Graffiti is great and all, but I need keyboard input. However, my insistence in using the Dvorak layout has been causing issues, especially since neither Palm nor MobilityDevices (apparently the new name for ThinkOutside) feel like supporting it anymore.

A rough solution might have been Ken Mankoff’s Q2D hack. Unfortunately, it seems Palm OS5 doesn’t like these hacks so much and as a result the X-Master hack manager just barfs and dies.

TealMaster to the rescue! Seems the Tealpoint folks have figured out a way to sidestep the issue, huzzah. Installing TealMaster worked and it recognized Q2D, so now I’m happily typing away in Dvorak on my Tungsten device.

Since the q2d hack basically converts any input (even from the stylus) to dvorak, this combination should work with any keyboard recognized by your Palm.

The news that’s making me happie is a brand new install of Opie on my iPAQ PDA. This software is solid, polished and performs well. To learn more about it, see my latest addition: the Getting Opie Ready to Rumble review/article. Get happie with Opie today

I’ve got a certain domain that for various reason (well, ok, mainly laziness) has a catch-all address setup. This means that any email you write to some randomschmuck@example.com will wind up in my inbox.

Of late, this has meant an increase in spam that is hovering just below the level at which I’ll actually get typing and do something about it. In the meantime, I’ve been getting a number of phishing scam emails, pretending to be from ebay, paypal and other places that might be likely repositories of my considerable wealth.

Of course, these messages usually get marked as junk by Thunderbird and always end up reported to SpamCop but before I trash them I try to take the time and be a real phisherman’s phriend.

Thanks to the magic of automation and cheap bandwidth, these scammers send out millions of these messages in the hopes of catching those remaining gullible folks that still click on spam, actually buy stuff from informercials, fall for Nigerian scams and generally make the world a sadder place. However, this can work to our advantage: there are millions of us and only a handful of scammers… Ergo, we can perform a distributed denial of service of our own.

In the time it takes to fill a form or two, you can bask in the warmth of the knowledge that you’ve wasted a scammers time and/or resources. How? Just click on that link! By apparently giving the phisher what he’s after and filling that form with bogus information, you can guarantee that his hand wringing and evil laughter will soon turn to anguish–at the very least annoyance.

Part of the art of being a true phisherman’s phriend is knowing what to enter. Don’t just put in random values… sometimes the form will repeat itself to validate your data, so you need to remember what you put in. More importantly, you can use this as an opportunity to make a statement by choosing to enter information based on someone you’d like to see, let’s say, more motivated to effect change in this area. Government officials/congress men and women/senators can all be good choices. So are high ranking police officers, for instance someone from the US Attorney’s office CyberCrime Task Force or the RCMP.

In addition to some fake paypal, ebay or whatever login info, you’ll usually be asked for some credit card data. Make sure you:

• Don’t enter any real information (doh!),
• Enter fake info that actually passes muster.

Credit cards have in-built checksums, so only certain numbers are in fact valid. If you’ve got a computer that can run Perl, such as pretty much any Linux machine, then you can download this small credit card generator script and create your own or just do a quick search.

The only things you need to be wary of are:

• Browser autocomplete: you probably want to avoid saving this junk in your browser,
• Malicious code: avoid using inherently unsafe browsers, such as Internet Explorer (IE),
  when accessing a phishing site (you don’t want a free gift to linger after your done, now).
  Go with Firefox instead, for example, and you might
  consider turning off Javascript anyway.
• Tell your friends to do the same but maybe keep your mom or other non-savvy users from playing
  with this. We want to avoid any confusion…

Share this page and turn your friends into phriends! We may yet get rid of this type of annoyance

The Problem

Psychogenic is pretty much a Linux shop. The technologies we use–such as MySQL, PHP, Perl and Apache–all work under multiple operating systems but development, testing and, most of the time, deployment all happen on Linux boxen. That is, with one exception: design and integration.

To date, everyone on the design and integration sides of the enterprise have been Mac or Windows based. In most cases, the will was always there to switch but the problem has been the tools they rely on: specifically, PhotoShop and DreamWeaver.

Although there’s a definite learning curve involved in switching from PhotoShop to the powerful Gimp, we’ve found that the Gimp is more than enough for our requirements. The major thorn remaining was DreamWeaver.

DreamWeaver, in our opinion MacroMedia’s finest offering, has been at the core of all our integration work. Unfortunately, DW is still unavailable under Linux. The truth is that 95% or more of our HTML integrators’ work could be done with any plain text editor. But the remaining 5%, such as using the built-inWYSIWYG to visually inspect a page and quickly jump to a particular table cell, offers such great gains in efficiency that its been impossible to drop DreamWeaver.

We have often discussed using CodeWeaver’s CrossOver Office to remedy this situation. CrossOver

allows you to install your favorite Windows productivity applications and plugins in Linux, without needing a Microsoft Operating System.

However we’ve resisted this approach for a number of reasons, not the least of which include the extra layer of complexity (and possible problems) as well as the purely philosophical objection to encouraging a product that doesn’t support our OS of choice.

The Solution: Quanta Plus

A recent discovery has changed all that: Quanta Plus!

Quanta Plus (or Q+ to friends) is a feature rich web development environment. Its list of features and interface are so compelling that Helene, our lead integrator, jumped on the chance to use it after a short trial run and she is now our latest 100%-Linux convert.

For a complete description of Q+, you’re better off perusing the documentation and tutorials or, better yet, the program’s own help system. To give you an idea, here are the aspects that have impressed us most, so far:

Multiple Views

Quanta Plus allows multiple views of your document including:

• "VPL" (Visual Page Layout), a WYSIWYG view;
• Source editor;
• DOM tree (structure view).

The most useful view to date has definitely been the split VPL/source editor, with the WYSIWYG view on top and text editor below (as depicted above).

Text Highlighting and Auto-completion

Syntax highlighting is available for HTML, JavaScript, XML, ASP, PHP, Perl and many other languages.

Quanta Plus also provides for a lot of handy autocompletion, including for HTML tags (e.g. <p>), the tag’s available attributes (e.g. align) as well as possible values for the current attributes (e.g. center). You can see an example of the autocompletion popup in action, in the image above. <Opened> tags are also </closed> automatically.

Autocompletion is available for other languages, such as PHP–and this can automatically include custom values, for instance for the methods available in an included class. Wow!

Full PHP Support

This includes not only advanced PHP autocompletion (which works for externally included PHP classes as well), but also a complete indexing of functions in the DOM view and tie-ins for a real-time PHP debugger (using Gubed).

Project Management

Full support for a host of management features, like project creation, updating from and committing to CVS, accessing local or remote files (through multiple protocols including FTP and "fish" for secure connections) is available.

Online Help

In addition to the Q+ help itself, the program provides quick access to full documentation for:

• HTML 4.01;
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS);
• PHP; and
• Javascript 1.3.

Preliminary Conclusions

We are still testing this addition to the Psychogenic toolkit but are quite impressed so far. Quanta Plus fills an aching need on the Linux desktop and we believe we’ll be using it, and hopefully contributing to its growth, for a good while. Try it out!

There are two kinds of end-users who regularly interact with Microsoft products. There are the muggles who can sometimes or usually get by but will call upon a knowledgeable niece, neighbor or friend to get them out of the occasional problem they can’t seem to solve. And then there are the nieces and nephews, neighbors, friends and coworkers that devote a portion of their time fixing up the muggle PCs: installing drivers, installing anti-viruses, getting rid of spyware, setting up networks and printers and the like.

Towering above the IT world, Microsoft’s dominance is assured by an army of volunteer workers: people who devote their knowledge, time and energy to the mega-corp without a thought towards compensation. Here I’d like to address the members of that army.

On the surface, going over to Dad’s place to help setup his email or get rid of the latest W32BlastMyWhatever worm is the decent thing to do. After all, it would take him forever to figure out, while you already know the ins and outs of the system and should be able to fix it in 20 minutes (this usually turns into one hour but, hey, whatever). The problem is that by doing so, the support-volunteer that you’ve become is upholding an entire system, one that’s become a foundation of the MS empire.

By devoting your Sunday afternoons to MS-related tech support, you are perpetuating this system and lending credence to a number of insidious myths. The most important of which are:

• Myth 1: Microsoft’s operating system and applications are intuitive and easy to use.
  If this is true, why are you always getting these desperate cries for help from everyone and their uncle?
• Myth 2: Microsoft products are backed by a solid company and well supported.
  How many people do you know that have actually called MS tech support (no, calling their ISP doesn’t count unless it was an actual network problem)? Of those in the limited number that have, how many actually resolved their problems? How many of those got it done for free, as part of the support included with their product?

You aren’t alone in this: there are likely millions in the same position, devoting countless man-hours to upholding the status quo and keeping Microsoft coffers full. The influence of this monopoly is so great that even hardware vendors (creating drivers and configuration programs) and ISPs (fielding tons of unrelated "my ‘puter don’t work" calls), are effectively working for Microsoft for free in order to satisfy their user base. These corporations don’t have much choice, considering that doing anything else will alienate their dependent users–sending them elsewhere. You, on the other hand, do.

My own father, at 75 years, isn’t about to learn much about a system’s internals or configuring a wireless network. No matter what, I’ll still need to occasionally help out. The question becomes: how can my technical savvy benefit my entourage the most. My experience has shown that opting for a better solution both reduces the number of support calls I need to field and shrinks the time it takes for me to actually get any snags resolved.

To date, this better solution has been setting up Linux systems. This has worked for my father, for the furnished apartments my mother provides for short-term leasing and many others.

With Linux desktop systems, down-time is next to nothing, viruses pretty much non-existent. All the applications these people need are available in free packages with familiar interfaces, the main ones being:

• Firefox, for browsing;
• Thunderbird, for email;
• OpenOffice, for word processing and spreadsheet work;
• Gaim, for instant messaging through AOL, MSN and jabber
• Gimp, for image manipulation

Another advantage is that, so long as the network is still functional, I can do any work through an SSH connection and this includes running graphical applications, such as Thunderbird to mess around with email settings, etc.

If you are one of us–the real front-line workers–those that everyone calls when they can’t figure out what to do next, then I encourage you to consider installing Linux. Start with the most clueless of your unofficial clientele: I’ve found they are most open as any operating system is as wondrous a mystery as the next to them and the learning curves are identical. You can have them try out one of the commitment-free Live CD distributions, such as Knoppix, to avoid any "where’s my windows??" freak-outs.

The advantages of converting your entourage to Linux are many, and include:

• Reducing support requirements (number of calls);
• Reducing support time (quicker resolution, remote management);
• Freeing your users from headaches (virii, spyware, etc.) and illegality (warez,
  unregistered or cracked commercial apps);
• Avoiding doing volunteer work for a huge corporation and instead investing those hours into making the world a bit more free;
• Hearing yourself say: "Microsoft Windows? Sorry, we don’t support that."

If you haven’t tried Linux out yourself, head over to Knoppix or Ubuntu and download one of the ISO files–just burn it to a CD, reboot into Linux and see for yourself!

A new article section has been inaugurated for our favorite Linux-based handheld: the Linux iPAQ!

Within, you’ll find care and feeding tips for your Linux-converted PDA. The section currently contains tutorials on setting up a wireless connection and on accessing all your iPAQ applications from the desktop.

More tutorials will follow as time permits, while quick tips and personal experiences will continue to be related in this blog.

I did a little dance of joy when the used iPAQ I purchased, from a company in Texas via a popular auction site, arrived at our door. Unfortunately, though it was accompanied by its USB cradle, it was lacking the power adapter required to actually recharge the PDA.

The battery had no charge and the iPAQ had been shipped with the “on/off switch” (hidden behind a small sliding door beneath the computer, next to the external power supply input) in the On position – a definite faux-pas as it seems the battery may be damaged by periods completely discharged in this manner (in as little as two weeks!).

Repeated attempts to get the seller to ship the power supply weren’t getting anywhere and I was itching to get started with my new PDA. Though there are some who have modified the USB cradle to suck power from the USB port in order to recharge their iPAQs, I wanted to avoid this method because:

• I didn’t want to carry the cradle around on every little excursion
• I wasn’t certain how much juice the recharge required and,
  if I remember correctly, the USB specs say you need to advise
  the port how much current you require, something the cradle surely doesn’t do, and
  I think the port has the option of shutting your device down if it surpasses these limits
• I didn’t want to have to take my (only) cradle apart, just yet.

It turns out the standard iPAQ power supply, for the 3600 series and my 3765 at least, is a regular wall-wart providing 5 volts DC and rated for up to 2 amps. That’s more current than I expected, but it turns out the lithium-ion batteries used have high current charging characteristics (sucking in about 1A during the first hour of charging). In order to minimize risks, I went about searching for a replacement adaptor with the same voltage and current ratings that would fit into the iPAQ’s jack as well a provide the correct polarity.

Though more expensive than necessary, I did find a perfect match at Radio Shack (now the horribly named "The Source by Circuit City" in Canada because of a trademark dispute). I made the purchase despite the CAD 19.99 price tag, as it was just what I needed and I couldn’t wait to start playing with the PDA. The item in question is a "Sector 7 PSP Power adapter" (RadShack/TheSource part number 581-4207). This particular device provides just the right combination of voltage, current, jack and polarity–the neat thing is that this may also be true for any Sony PSP adapter (your mileage may vary – be careful).

Plugging the iPAQ to the PSP adapter provided instant gratification, as the noisy WinCE bootup began and I got the chance to calibrate the device by aiming for the cross hairs with the stylus. Huzzah!

The sad part was that no matter how long I left the iPAQ recharging, it would die the instant the power supply was removed. On a few occasions reinserting the power adapter simply turned the PDA on but most of the time the disruption caused a hard reset and the iPAQ rebooted, starting from the calibration screen again. What was wrong, why wouldn’t the iPAQ hold its charge? Was the battery dead because of its long inactivation, was it because of the power supply substitute used?

The iPAQ battery is a complex device: a high energy density lithium-ion polymer battery, bundled with electronics that (I believe) handle the charging and provide interfaces to query the battery’s state through a 20-pin connector. My Compaq 3765 had a danionics DLP 305590 installed, a 1000 mAh battery. In the hopes that the battery was the issue, I ordered an inexpensive (CAD 12.00) Chinese replacement, from an ebayer in Vancouver, Canada, with a good reputation (terry66mart). The great thing with this battery is that it has a 1600 mAh capacity, is suitable for 3100/3600/3700 iPAQs and even comes with a Torx screwdriver, suitable for opening up your device.

As soon as I inserted the new battery, the iPAQ began chirping its happy bootup noises: it worked, and even showed a %50 charge. I immediately plugged it into the PSP adapter and waited for the yellow light to stop blinking for the first time. After a while, I unplugged it momentarily to have a look at the battery state which displayed a message to the effect the charge was unknown. This had me worried but only until the battery level indicator reset itself to 65% or so… it seems the battery state is polled periodically in WinCE™–phew! Back to charging for around an hour and, finally, the yellow light ceased its tiresome blinking. Success.

With the battery fully charged and a power supply adapter that is now know to work, I can finally proceed with my plan of replacing the bootloader and then getting rid of the OS for an upgrade to Linux.

For anyone familiar with Unix, the shell (command line prompt) is an addiction worth maintaining. Once you get over the initial learning curve, it is usually the quickest and easiest way to gain intel and solve problems on a web server. But, when it comes to shell access, many web hosting companies suffer from split personalities: on one hand they’ll refuse to grant SSH access while on the other they will let any of their clients upload executable code (CGI programs and PHP scripts) without a second thought.

This foolish behavior is rooted in the myth that shell access is used by “hackers” (by this, they actually mean “crackers”, i.e. a hacker with malicious intent) whereas CGI/PHP is seen as a tolerable threat. This is nonsense:

1. There are more positive uses of the shell than negative, on a well maintained host;
2. As an unprivileged user, you only have access to your own home directory and files;
3. The webserver process, by definition, runs as a particular users – one that must be
   able to access directories for all the users with websites on the system;
4. A script run by the webserver has the privileges of the webserver user, and has potentially
   greater access than anything you could run as another user.

There are exceptions to the above, such as ways to restrict webserver or script permissions (e.g. Mandatory Access Control, or PHP “safe mode"), but in general today the hosting company will bar ssh access and provide full webserver privileges to any random script. This quickly becomes annoying.

To get around this hindrance and actually manage to get things done, we’ve created and released PHPsh – web based shell access for webservers. From the PHPsh homepage:

PHPsh is:

• A simplified version of sh or the bash shell, that allows you to execute arbitrary commands, remotely, through PHP
• A handy way to run simple commands and maintain a history of executed commands
• A helpful environment that allows you to browse the filesystem and fetch or upload files
• PHPsh is freely available for personal or professional use

If you would like shell access to a webserver but are stuck with FTP, then try it out. There are a few conditions on its use but PHPsh is free!

Enjoy

I’ve finally made the move to go 100% Linux, with my recent purchase of an iPAQ. Until now, while home and office have been populated by various Linux systems, my PDAs have all been based on the Palm OS.

Though I still love using my Clié and have never had any problems syncing it with my Linux systems (thanks to jpilot and the pilot-link utilities), the disjunction between the two platforms has restricted my mobile computing to PIM and composition… What I really want is to have access to my usual toolset, that with which I’m most accustomed and efficient for everything from development to browsing. Enter the Linux iPAQ.

The iPAQs, initially introduced by Compaq in 1999 and now distributed by HP, are a family of powerful handheld systems. Though sold with a pre-installed version of MS Windows, Compaq was instrumental in encouraging the development of Linux for the platform, notably through the Handhelds.org site. Though I have yet to receive the actual device, I’ve begun investigating the process of getting Linux up and running on the iPAQ.

When you get an iPAQ it is probably loaded with WinCE or somesuch operating system that you don’t want. There are a great deal of sites with detailed descriptions of the Linux installation process (which can be done through a serial connection, from a compact flash card, and in other ways).

The core replacement for WinCE is the ”Familiar Linux” distribution. When downloading Familiar, you are offered a choice for your palmtop environment, the windowing system and applications with which you will be interacting when using your device. At this time, it’s pretty much a choice between OPIE and GPE. This document is meant as something of a personal analysis and comparison of the two, as well as a short tutorial that should allow you to make your own initial comparison without having to perform multiple installs on your iPAQ. Searching the web, you’ll find a large number of opinions on this potentially flammable topic which is in many ways comparable to the KDE vs. Gnome discussion. My first impressions are that:

• OPIE (Open Palmtop Integrated Environment) has a longer history, broad user base (it started out on the Sharp Zaurus before growing to support iPAQs) and a nice polish to it. It’s based on the Qtopia environment, which means a lot if your a developer (in terms of technological and licensing restrictions).
• GPE is based on the GTK+ widget toolkit and uses the good old X Window System. It includes PIM software but is more like a standard Linux system (using X, providing shared libs, SQL, etc.).

Both environments are a bit “bare-bones” when installed but both support ipkg feeds (which seems to allow you to install software in a way pretty much identical to Debian’s apt-get, in fact the `file` command recognizes .ipk files as “Debian binary package (format 2.0)"). You can search amongst the 30,000+ packages in the database at ipkgFind to get an idea of the possibilities.

Instead of simply relying on hearsay, we can do some snooping around on the filesystems installed by either option. To do so, start by downloading both the GPE and OPIE versions of familiar for your device from the Familiar Linux site . In my case, I wound up with the bootopie-h3600.tar and bootgpe-h3600.tar files. Untaring both you should wind up with a directory with the following files (replace h3600 with your specific device):

	h3600/BootBlaster_1.19.exe
	h3600/bootldr-sa-2.21.12.bin
	h3600/bootldr-sa-2.21.12.bin.gz
	h3600/gpe-image-h3600-20050407124742.rootfs.jffs2
	h3600/md5sums
	h3600/reflash.ctl
	h3600/opie-image-h3600-20050407124742.rootfs.jffs2

The BootBlaster file will be used under WinCE to bootstrap the installation process. For now, all that interests us are the .jffs2 files – these are JFFS2 images of the GPE and OPIE environments and one will be used to fill the filesystem during the install.

In order to get a preview of each environment, we want to mount the JFFS2 filesystems on a regular Linux desktop system. The problem is that attempting to mount the JFFS2 files using the usual loopback tricks, say:

	# mount ./gpe-image-h3600-20050407124742.rootfs.jffs2 /mnt/flash/ 
	   -t jffs2 -o loop=/dev/loop1

results in ”wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop1” error messages on the console and

	Attempt to mount non-MTD device "/dev/loop1" as JFFS2

messages in the system log. The reason this is happening is that JFFS2 is specifically designed for MTDs (Memory Technology Device), such as flash devices. In order to get a peek into the contents of the JFFS2 filesystem, we need a way around this issue. One easy way is to create a fake MTD device in RAM, using the mtdram module. The MTD device driver modules were all installed on my stock Fedora system (mtdram, mtdcore, mtdblock, etc. where all present in /lib/modules/… )–these procedures will only work if it is also the case on your box.

To start we load a few modules, creating a fake 32M flash device in RAM and ensure we have appropriate /dev/ entries:

# modprobe mtdcore
# modprobe mtdram total_size=32768 erase_size=256
# mkdir /dev/mtdblock ; for i in 0 1 2 3 ; do mknod /dev/mtdblock/$i b 31 $i; done

Then we write the contents of one of the JFFS2 images to the MTD RAM device, and take a look:

# dd if=gpe-image-h3600-20050407124742.rootfs.jffs2 of=/dev/mtdblock/0
# mkdir -p /mnt/ipaq/
# mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock/0 /mnt/ipaq
# cd /mnt/ipaq; ls;

The output will be something like:

	bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  media  mnt  proc  sbin  sys  tmp  usr  var

So, as you can see, your mount point is now the root of the Familiar + GPE system. Because this filesystem expects to be mounted on ‘/’, many of the softlinks within will be invalid. Also, remember that these executables are all compiled for use on the iPAQ, e.g.

	#  file bin/busybox
	bin/busybox: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (ARM),
	for GNU/Linux 2.4.0, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

so they won’t be usable on your x86 machine. However, this does give you a good chance to look around. You can start by creating a list of the files with:

	# find . > /tmp/familiarfiles-gpe.txt

From here you can move around on the filesystem, have a look at the various files in bin/ and usr/bin, check the config files in etc/ and the services setup in etc/init.d/
To have a look at the OPIE filesystem, umount the directory and clear the RAM device, then repeat as above, like:

# cd ~
# umount /mnt/ipaq
# rmmod mtdram

# modprobe mtdram total_size=32768 erase_size=256
# dd if=opie-image-h3600-20050407124742.rootfs.jffs2 of=/dev/mtdblock/0
# mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock/0 /mnt/ipaq
# cd /mnt/ipaq; ls;

Now a quick find will allow you to compare files in each distribution, for instance:

	# find . > /tmp/familiarfiles-opie.txt

	$ cd /tmp/
	$ grep 'bin/' familiarfiles-gpe.txt > bins-gpe.txt
	$ grep 'bin/' familiarfiles-opie.txt > bins-opie.txt

	$ wc bins-gpe.txt
	340  340 5866 bins-gpe.txt

	$ diff bins-gpe.txt bins-opie.txt | grep '<' | wc
	100     200    2454

	$ diff bins-gpe.txt bins-opie.txt | grep '>' | wc
	35      70    1075

This tells us that GPE and OPIE share 240 files in various …bin/ directories, while GPE has 100 bin/ files that OPIE doesn’t and OPIE has 35 bin/ files that are omitted from GPE.

Looking at the actual file differences gives us an idea of how things will be on each system. GPE has many X-related binaries, of course, but it also has lots of network related goodies like gpe-aerial and prismstumbler (wireless LAN discovery tools) and iptables.

Comparing libraries in a similar manner:

	$ grep lib/ familiarfiles-gpe.txt  | grep -v ipkg | grep -v fonts/ > libs-gpe.txt
	$ grep lib/ familiarfiles-opie.txt | grep -v ipkg | grep -v fonts/ > libs-opie.txt

	$ wc libs-gpe.txt
	381   381 15817 libs-gpe.txt

	$ diff libs-gpe.txt libs-opie.txt| grep '<' | wc
	148     296    4814

	$ diff libs-gpe.txt libs-opie.txt| grep '>' | wc
	43      86    1665

Indicates that the two environments share 233 libraries, most of the differences being the large volume of X and GTK+ libraries found with GPE.

In terms of services, both environments are sensibly the same. GPE has X services like xmodmap which I’m sure to use being a dvorak keyboard user, though I’m certain OPIE has some manner of support as well. It may be that OPIE allows you to enjoy the wealth of Zaurus apps available, I just don’t know if they are actually binary compatible.

In the end, I’m hoping to install a number of my usual development tools, like perl and gcc, from the ipkg feed and it may be that either environment is suitable. However, from the comments I’ve read and the analysis above, I think that GPE will be the most Linux-standard experience and is probably what I’ll be starting out with.

Resources of interest:

HandHelds.org

iPAQ Linux

Familiar, GPE and OPIE

Copyright © 2005 Pat Deegan
All Rights Reserved