compaq iPaq
[ Please reply to debian-arm and me (I'm not on that list). Posted to
-devel to pick up any interested people who arn't on -arm. ]
For those who don't know, the iPaq is a ARM-based pocket computer near
the size of a palm pilot, that runs linux[1], including X. It has 32 MB
of ram, and 16 MB of flash memory.
I've seen several of them at LinuxWorld, and they look like really sweet
little boxes. I was thinking about buying one, and started thinking
about what I'd do with it (mostly reading email to keep up with the ever
expanding demands of Debian Weekly News), and got to thinking about
distributions.
I don't think I could use another distribution (right now, it's
something they put together custom), on a computer, even if it's just a
handheld. I NEED Debian. On the other hand, fitting a full debian install
on 16 MB of flash is daunting[2]. If this were done, it might make more
sense to provide some way for dpkg to install files onto the iPaq,
without storing all the cruft like /var/lib/dpkg/* there, and keep that
on a desktop box instead.
I also have a lot of other committements in Debian, and not a lot of
time to work on something like this. So I'm just posting a feeler, to
see if anyone else has thought about this, or is interested.
--
see shy jo
[1] http://www.handhelds.org/Compaq/
[2] joey@kite:/var/lib/dpkg/info>du
14M . -- Ok, this is a little unrelaistic, but you get the
idea. It eats about 2 mb on a much more minimal
install.
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