Openmoko platform doesn't run only on Neo 1973, Openmoko runs also on Pocket PC and other devices. This will be very useful when your device will be declared obsolete and won't receive official update anymore (ex. HTC Magician has a 416Mhz CPU but it's freezed to Windows Mobile 2003).

Openmoko and the driver support can't be considered a real alternative for now, but as you can see it is continously improving.


Disclamer: I'M NOT RESPONSABLE OF ANY DAMAGES EVERYTHING YOU DO IT'S AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Ingredients

Haret                (loader) (Use at least version 0.5.x and not 200x)
zImage           (a Linux kernel)
default.txt    (boot script)
Openmoko (or other distribution images) (Download them from here)

SD memory and card reader

Do Backup!

We don't want to lose datas, You will lose software installed, contacts,.. so use the utility x Backup ad do a full backup on SD
It isn't enought because now we are going to resize this partition.
Put the sd memory in a card reader and type:

$ sudo -s # su # or anything to became superuser
# dd if=/dev/sda of=/your-backup-dir/sd.img #Invert the path of if= and of= to restore.

It could take a while, depends of your sd size.
You can access to the backup image with:

# mount sd.img /mnt -o loop

Resize or recreate the Partitions

Gparted is your friend
ALT + F2

$ gksu gparted

(New sd partitioning sda1 fat32 and sda2 ext2 70Mb)

You can try to resize the current partition or recreate new ones and recopy the files in sda1 with drag 'n' drop

$ gksu nautilus

The files

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Copy in /mnt Haret, default.txt and zImage-VERSION
Rename zImage-VERSION in zImage

# umount /mnt

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

Extract Angstrom-image in /mnt, with file-roller or anything you like.

# umount /mnt

First boot

Put the sd memory in the phone and run haret-0.5.x on sd.
Press Run and congratulation, You should see Linux booting for the first time!

The last image I tried is 20070821, the calendar and the web browser aren't there yet, the dialer and the keyboard have problems but it's nice to see that it works and it is improving.

Notes

You want come back to WM press power + hole then reload the complete backup with x Backup.
You can test other images rewriting sda2 but remember to do backup everytime (you can do backup again with dd)
If you don't want to load in RAM the content of the WM extended ROM press "hole" again, it is useless if you have the backup and it will save your time.

Resources

Ph5 Blog - http://poh9.blogspot.com/
http://www.linuxtogo.org/~ph5/magician/
http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/Magician
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/
http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/
http://www.gnome.org/mobile/
A more command line friendly guide - http://www.linuxtogo.org/~ph5/magician/README
Mailing List: htc-pxa@handhelds.org ( https://www.handhelds.org/mailman/listinfo/htc-pxa )
IRC: #htc-linux on chat.freenode.org
Wiki: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=MagicianResearch