Justin X

Familiar Linux on my Jornada 728 Handheld PC

I got a HP Jornada 728 Handheld PC for my birthday. It comes with a Handheld PC version of Windows with Internet Explorer 4 and it is almost impossible to put any IM programs compatible with Yahoo Messenger on it. IE4 came out more than 10 years ago and a lot of websites won’t even run on it anymore. I started searching forums right away looking for links to a better web browser and IM program.  I kept running across people suggesting using Linux or BSD on the H/PC instead of Windows.  My recent interest in returning to IT having been sparked I decided to take on the task of putting Linux on the H/PC.  I did start using SSH to get onto my website earlier this year but that has been my only experience with *nix based systems in 11 years since early versions of Red Hat Linux.

I won’t give detailed step-by-step install instructions here but I do intend to write a blog soon doing just that.  The most daunting task in all this was that I had to use Linux on my PC in order to get Linux onto my H/PC.  Eh, that had me a little nervous because I didn’t really have a test system running.  Not only that but I had just re-installed Windows a month before because I got hit with a particularly nasty virus.

Then I heard about Live CDs and LIVE USB FLASH DRIVES.  I was running low on CDs and decided to use my USB flash to run Linux.  Ubuntu was a complete disappointment.  I needed a root user to get the permissions correct and I really didn’t see the point of the sudo program.  Then I tried Fedora but I still had trouble.  Finally I find instuctions on how to use Puppy Linux to install JLime Linux onto the H/PC and I used those same basic instructions to install Wicked’s prebuild version of Familiar Linux (available here) on the H/PC (More info here).  It finally worked.  It helps having a Linux distro where root is an actual user!

Once I had the Compact Flash card partitioned and formatted I unarchived the files into the proper places and was ready to roll.  That was when I quickly learned that it was necessary to read BOTH the README and the FAQ that were available.

Other than customizing the desktop (which is NOT as easy as you would think) the only other major change I made was to downgrade the included Word Processor.

While I would rather be running Firefox 3, OpenOffice, and Pidgin, I am quite happy with the installed Firefox 1.5 (Deer Park), Minimo, AbiWord, and GAIM.
Now my H/PC does IM, Word Processing, web browsing and more.  I will post more details on this later and link the post to this blog.

Justin X

And now for some pix:

The HP Jornada 728 Running Windows CE

Here are some screenshots running Linux:

After Linux was installed (after changing the desktop icon from Dillo to Firefox)

This is my customized desktop! This is what the H/PC looks like now.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.