The Ångström Distribution

We now have a few test kernels available for the following machines:

• h2200
• h3900
• h5000
• hx4700

Booting these kernels will present you with an on-screen menu that allows you to select various boot options (CF, SD, Flash, NFS) using the joypad on your PDA. If you wanted an easy way to boot from a non-standard location, here's your chance!

See the mailinglist archives for some background info.

Angstrom 2007.12 images for iPaqs h2200, h3900, h4000, hx4700
were uploaded to the release location,
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/releases/2007.12/images/ . h5000
is expected to follow shortly after testing. For each device, following
images provided:

1. Novice and intermediate users:
* x11-image LiveRamdisk
* bootmanager and x11-image ext2 image
How to use/installs these is described at
http://linuxtogo.org/gowiki/WinCeQuickInstall

2. Advanced users:
* base-image
* console-image
* minimal-gpe-image
* x11-image
What are those are described in Angstrom manual,
http://linuxtogo.org/gowiki/AngstromManual .

Known issues with PocketPC/WM devices support in 2007 release:
http://bugs.openembedded.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1585

Known issues in Angstrom 2007 release (not machine-specific):
http://bugs.openembedded.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1573

Bugs should be reported at http://bugs.openembedded.org .

I would like to thank all testers of iPaq images, especially Joshua Layne and Milan Plzik who joined to be the release testers for h2200 and h5000, and hopefully will be interested to become mentors for these devices.

For the future work, as a comaintainer of PocketPC/linux-handhelds-2.6 devices in OE, as time permits, I plan to prepare unsupported images for all devices supported by linux-handhelds-2.6, and ping known kernel maintainers to join with testing/mentorship for Angstrom. Any help with that is much
appreciated.

-- Paul S.

The h2200 series needs LAB to boot linux.

LAB stands for Linux As Bootloader. Its job is to load and execute kernels. The benefit of LAB is that we can leverage the power of Linux to make a more powerful bootloader than the stock bootloader. On h2200 we use it to boot from MMC/SD, CF, NFS, or even NFS-over-PPP-over-Bluetooth (if you really want to), plus erase and write to internal flash, copy files to filesystems over serial (like fixing a broken kernel), or download and boot a new kernel over serial.