Online reviews of Linux software for the Sharp Zaurus

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Feb. 27, 2004

PDA Buyer's Guide has published an extensive article reviewing a number of commercial and free applications available for Sharp's popular Zaurus line of PDAs based on embedded Linux and Qtopia.

Applications reviewed include:

Movie players:
- tkcVideo, from TheKompany -- "The more versatile commercial video player available for the Zaurus," this $20 program supports MPEG 1,2,4, MSMPEG4 V3, H263(+) (aka RealVideo 1.0), Raw video, AVI and MJPEG video formats, as well as MPEG1/2/3 audio encoding (MP3s).
- Dr. Z Video Player by PalmPalm Technology Inc. -- A very popular -- and fast -- $18 video player that supports most common formats, including MPEG1, MPEG4, and AVI. Separate versions for ARM and XScale-based Zauruses.
- Kino2 by Cacko -- A free, GUI movie player based on mplayer. Supports AVI, MPEG4, DIVX, MPEG1, MPEG2, ASF, and WMV, but lags behind commercial players in sound quality.
Text editors:
- Nano -- A free editor based on ncurses 5 that is a "capable and user-friendly" alternative to vi that ships on the Zaurus.
- ZEditor by Satoshi -- A free, simple graphical editor similar to NotePad or SimpleText.
- HTML Editor by Zorian Designs -- A $5, open source, basic HTML editor with syntax highlighting, support for multiple open files, an Opera preview function, and more. Develop Web sites on your Zaurus!
Painting and graphics:
- tkcGallery by theKompany.com -- A full-featured $10 PDA image viewer that supports slideshows with thumbnails and light editing of even high-resolution digital photos.
- Petite Peinture by Saki Sakira -- A free, open source painting program that supports pen pressure-sensitive drawing, layers, and basic paint tools.
- FreeNoteQT -- A free drawing program with special features for diagrams, simple flow charts, map directions and simple text notes.
PDF viewers:
- qpdf2 -- A free, fast PDF viewer supporting files up to 10MB with images, many levels of zoom, fit to screen, screen rotate, and more.
Networking and Internet:
- Kismet desktop version by KismetWireless, Zaurus version -- A free 802.11 layer2 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system supporting Prism-based cards.
- tkcFTP by theKompany.com -- A $10 graphical FTP client similar to WS FTP or Fetch.
- Opera 7.30 with multimodal extensions, browser by Opera but multimodal by IBM and offered by IBM -- Part of IBM's "WebSphere Everyplace Multimodal" package, this browser supports speech output and voice control. Fast, 5MB footprint, with many advanced features including multiple windows, popup blocking, resizable text, cookies, SSL, Javascript, and certificates.
- BlueZ Bluetooth Drivers currently maintained by Tumnus -- These free drivers and GUI control applications support Socket CF Bluetooth, Anycom BT, and AmbiCom BT cards.
Security:
- SafeDee by Bundu -- A $15 secure data cache that stores information in either plain or Blowfish-encrypted text.
Doc and eBook readers:
- Just Reader by Dmitri Skachkov -- A free, highly configurable reader supporting Palm pdb eBooks, text, and HTML files (offline).
- Opie Reader (QTRreader) by Tim Wentford -- A free, customizable reader that supports Doc format (AportisDoc format), early non-DRM Palm Reader pdb files, Weasel, or ztxt format, Plucker format, gzipped text, ppms text, HTML, and plain text.

Read full application reviews at PDA Buyer's Guide

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