Linux on the axim today falls directly into the "Stupid PDA Tricks" category. Lack of suspend/resume and other major deficiencies prevent the axim for being a useful linux based PDA at the current time. If all you want is a look at linux on a PDA or just to drive a linux loving friend crazy with geek envy these directions should allow you to boot linux on your axim. This procedure isn't dangerous to your axim but it will require a hard reset to get windows back

UPDATE It would seem that loadlinux has problems with non-American versions of Pocket PC 2002. Martin is looking at it and hopes to have a fix in a week or so.

Things you will need:

  1. A DELL axim (duh)
  2. A more than casual acquaintance with linux ( I will not be explaining how to make a partition or create a filesystem).
  3. Access to a linux machine that can write to a Compact Flash card. I use a USB CF reader attached to my linux box.
  4. A 64mb CF card you can spare for a while( I used a 512MB but 64 should be plenty).

Steps required to boot linux on the axim:

  1. Back up your axim. This procedure will result in a hard reset.
  2. Make two partitions on the CF card. The first partition should be 5 Meg the second should be all the rest of the card.
  3. Make sure you set the type of the first partion to 'b' Win95 Fat16 or the axim will get confused when you insert the CF card
  4. Put a vfat filesysttem on the first partition and an ext2 filesystem on the second. I will refer to these partitions as the dos partition and the ext2 partition from now on.
  5. Mount the dos partition as /mnt on your linux box.
  6. Download this http://www.clanbv.org/public/dospart.tgz file and untar files into /mnt
  7. Umount /mnt
  8. Mount the ext2 partition as /mnt
  9. Download the latest version of opie (here is the file I used ftp://familiar.handhelds.org/familiar/releases/v0.7/install/files/bootopie-v0.7-rc3-3900.tar.bz2 ), untar the file. A directory with a name line task-bootopie-v0.7… will be created.
  10. Change directory into the task-bootopie directory.
  11. Execute cp –r –f * /mnt
  12. Then execute cp .ramfs.tar.gz /mnt
  13. Delete everything in /mnt/dev
  14. Delete everything in /mnt/lib/modules
  15. Download this tar file http://www.clanbv.org/public/aximfiles.tgz and extract the files into a temp directory on your linux box.
  16. Change directory to this temp directory.
  17. Copy the linuxrc file to /mnt and ensure it is executable.
  18. Copy lib/* to /mnt/lib/modules
  19. Copy MAKEDEV to /mnt/dev
  20. Change directory to /mnt/dev
  21. Execute MAKEDEV
  22. Unmount /mnt
  23. Insert CF card into your axim and execute the loadlinux program.
  24. Wait for 2 or 3 minutes.
  25. Register the screen.
  26. Login as root password is rootme
  27. Reset axim when you want to go back to Windows. You will need to restore from your previous backup.

 

 

Truth requires me to acknowledge that I have had nothing to do with the real work involved with bringing linux to the axim. That work has been performed by Demo over at www.handhelds.org who has single handedly made the current state possible. While this project is a long way from finished I have no doubts that Demo (with a little help from you if you are able) will make the goal of a real linux PDA on the axim a reality.

If you like what you see, a note to Dell to the effect that you think linux on the axim is a good idea can’t hurt the cause.

 

Send questions to aces4me

Updated 7/1/2003