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Alex, much of the stuff I've been working with comes straight from the main stream Debian distribution. It's the same stuff people are using on Intel x86 machines, just built for the ARM CPU in an iLiad e.g. it isn't "home brew". I've even got my favorite industrial strength editor emacs (all 50mb of it) installed and running on my iLiad.
The onscreen clock I got working is from the same Matchbox tool kit iRex themselves are using. I just installed and configured a piece of it they didn't give us, even though users have been requesting an on screen clock since forever.
In fact as I've explored my iLiad I've pretty much confirmed my suspicions that 95% of the iLiad is all open source software albeit with some iRex hacks applied to a small amount of it.
The scariest part in all the exploring and experimenting is that iRex has provided no means to re-flash the unit if something goes wrong.
What I would have expected was something like this:
Place a user filessytem image on an MMC/CF card and insert into powered down unit.
Hold the connect button down and turn the unit on and hold the connect button until the unit says it is re-flashing from MMC/CF card.
Wait patiently for this to complete.
Unit automatically restarts.
I've seen their tool kit, they have all the tools to do the re-flash.
Why iRex has been unable to deliver something this simple is something I just can't understand and leaves everyone at risk, not just the experimenters.
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