2006 Timeline

2006 year was good. I did few releases as OpenZaurus maintainer, created own company for my paid OpenEmbedded work, got some job offers from respected companies.

January

• Started OpenZaurus 3.5.4 testing cycle.

February

• Finally got rid of ReiserFS from all partitions (except the one which hold builds).

March

• Released OpenZaurus 3.5.4
• Moved hosting to kei.pl hosting centre.
• Tagged OpenZaurus 3.5.4 in OpenEmbedded repository (branch org.openembedded.oz354fam083). All next releases was done from org.openembedded.oz354x branch because Familiar team was not sure will they use OE or not for their work.
• Wrote small util to control CF-XGA card
• I got Ir keyboard donated but because Ir handling in 2.6 kernel was changed it is unused. Someone want to get it and work on getting it supported under 2.6?
• I got WE19 working on collie/OZ 3.5.4 but decided to not push it for users (no real benefits rather).

April

• Testing images of OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1 for clamshells were in test cycle.
• Tested how OPIE handle Unicode.
• Checked does Mileage application can be fixed to look good on VGA and larger resolutions. It was nightmare but can be done.
• Wrote small howto about grabbing movies from TV using mencoder.

May

• Thanks to one of OpenZaurus users I got original Sharp serial cable.
• Generated new (0x61FFDAAB) OpenPGP key.
• Changed website theme to Barthelme.

June

• OpenEmbedded project got two Zaurus models: SL-6000 (tosa) and SL-5600 (poodle). Both machines arrived to me, poodle is now in Mickeyl hands, tosa in mine. Thx goes to Trisoft for donating USB Host cables (one for me, second for Dirk Opfer — our Tosa kernel hacker).

July

• OpenZaurus 3.5.4.1 was released for clamshell models
• We (Ania and I) were on holidays in Olecko and then in Gdańsk.
• I decided to drop support of 2.4 kernel for Tosa — 2.6 is not yet perfect but works nicer then 2.4 did.

August

• OpenZaurus 3.5.4.2-rc1 released for Tosa, Poodle
• Feed browser provided for OpenZaurus distribution. It was started by Koen Kooi and then fixed & extended by me.
• I got job offer from Google. But I will not work for them.
• Published schematics of Sharp Zaurus JTAG cable. It probably needs vendor application but I think that I can get one if will need to.

September

• Started “HaeRWu” company — my own OpenEmbedded related business.
• 3rd release of test images of OpenZaurus 3.5.4.2 released for Tosa and Poodle.
• After 4 years of usage I switched from Nokia 6310i to Sony Ericsson k750i cellphone.

October

• I was on OEDEM 2006 in Berlin, Germany. It was nice to meet all those developers face to face finally.
• I got Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 (spitz) from Mickeyl. It is OpenEmbedded project device. He got SL-5600 (poodle).
• Created Paypal account. Earlier it was not possible because they did not support Poland.
• I had public presentation of OpenEmbedded at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. PDF provided (in Polish language).

November

• Switched my home machine to AMD64.
• Wrote howto about flashing BIOS in PC machines without usage of floppy disk. It is one of most popular posts last months.
• I got Progear 1050HX+ webpad from one of OpenEmbedded users.
• Got 802.11g card from one company to provide 2.6 driver for it. I found few developers and we created project for it on LinuxToGo server.
• Bought Epson Stylus DX4000 multifunction device (printer, scanner, copier) — works very nice under Linux.

December

• Got job offer from one of OpenEmbedded related companies. Starting from February :)
• Wrote howto about usage of task-base way of building images in OpenEmbedded.
• Worked on self hosting of Ångström and other OE derived distros.
• Reflashed Progear with older BIOS to check for better ACPI support. Nothing changed — still no battery info.
• Started work on OpenZaurus 3.5.5 release.