How do I get started?

["Tyler Akins" <fidian@rumkin.com>]

I have an Aquapad that I'd desperately like to get a system on.  Ideally, I would build this system (from binary packages or from source) on a computer and create a CF image to be sent to my tablet.

I'm fairly good with computers, but I am getting issues with my current approach of installing Linux from scratch (udev + hotplug doesn't work for some reason).  Anyway, I figured that having maintained packages and a good solid base system would be best anyway.  I kept searching the web for more projects, and I found emdebian.org.

I currently am running debian on 14 machines and would love to get emdebian working.  I've also got a working 2.6.5 kernel that boots on the tablet, but I would like to get the rest of the base system going.  Ideally, the device will run a tiny X manager (icewm?), firefox, and a few good tools (ssh, xterm, kismet, etc.).  Would emdebian or emdebsys be better?

I grabbed the CVS version of emdebsys, but I'm a bit lost as to what to run first.  I looked for emdebian packages, but I'm completely missing them.  I've browsed the last few months of the mailing list archive, but I didn't see anything that would help me get started with this.

How do I go about doing this?

Also, how does this thing work?  Do I create a tree on my desktop so I can chroot into it, or I can put it on a CF image and boot from that?  Or, do you need to run the debian package tools on the embedded system?  I need to have everything go to a read-only mount if possible (with configs and whatnot going to a tiny RW partition).

Any tips to get me going would be great.  I've been beating my head against a wall for many months.  If this was a laptop or if I had/trusted a microdrive, it would have been done in hours.  The frustration level is beginning to build...

Thank you!