OpenZaurus on your Zaurus Handheld

The news of Sharp canceling the Zaurus handheld line in the United States is now in flux, but regardless of whether they continue support or not, you can rest assured you always have current software if you use OpenZaurus.

OpenZaurus is under continual development, works on all Zaurus models, contains more features, and even has a choice of 2 GUIs or a console version. The extensive library of software at the Zaurus Software Index is still available, and packages will work just fine.

A friend of mine switched his Zaurus to the OpenZaurus system a month or so ago and hasn’t looked back. I’m now debating doing the same, and I’ll share my experiences here after I’ve had some time to play (now that I’m on the laptop more often, the Zaurus generally just tags along).

Switching is easy: simply place the boot file and the system image on a compact flash card, reboot, and the system does the rest. A fuller explanation, as well as a handful of advantages of OpenZaurus over Sharp’s Zaurus, can be found in this Linux Journal article.