[arrrghhh]

Originally Posted by skreemer7

I have been playing around with Android for a few weeks now on my TP2. Still have a few questions that I haven't seen cleared up anywhere.

What is the difference between the different types of updates, i.e, what is different in the new builds such as froyo 04 vs 05, system.ext2 files, and new kernels? Is there a good similar analogy to WM or even a regular OS or something to clear that up?

When all the first posts say to run all the programs on the first boot, what does this exactly do? Does it just create the program's files so they are quicker to open next time? Would it matter for example if I opened half of my programs on the first boot, then rebooted and then opened the other half on the 2nd boot? I ask because there have been a few times when Android would spontaneously reboot on me after opening one or two programs during my first boot. Would it be optimal in this case to delete the data file and start over or just continue opening new programs on the next boot?

Sorry the questions are kind of long, couldn't think of a better way to word them.

First, you must mean tiad8's threads when you said "When all the first posts say to run all the programs on the first boot, what does this exactly do?" - I certainly never put that in my post, I have no clue why that would be necessary. You'd have to ask tiad8... I don't think there's any reason to do this.

FRX04 and FRX05 are revisions of the same build - Froyo, 2.2.x...

Anything with tiad8 being the threadstarter is his own beast, and usually a hodgepodge of stuff thrown together. Again, talk to him if you want more "information" about his builds.

For your other question, I'm going to quote mankineko from a post on xda-devs as his answer is very thorough:

Originally Posted by mankineko

XDAndroid is a project to port Android onto older HTC phones.

There are two main parts of XDAndroid, which combine to form a complete port:
Kernel/drivers: You can find packages to run Android on old HTC phones from a variety of sources, but whatever package you use, all rely upon the kernels/drivers created by the XDAndroid team to enable the basic hardware.
Android system: The Android system forms all of the parts of the phone's interface that you can directly interact with. Once the kernel/drivers have setup the hardware, you can add on an Android system port of your choice to form a complete build. Many system ports are available, both in terms of different versions (2.1 Eclair, 2.2 Froyo, 2.3 Gingerbread, etc.) and different starting points in the case of ports written by those outside of XDAndroid.
XDAndroid releases an "official" system port you can use, which is directly ported over by the XDAndroid team from the Android Open Source Project, and is very close to stock. Many of the alternative builds you come across are modifications of the XDAndroid system, containing customizations that deviate farther from stock Android, while others have different starting points altogether, and are ports of the ROMs found on official shipping devices that have already been customized (but still use the same basic kernel/drivers found here).

Android is a framework that runs on top of Linux. In order to get Android running on our devices, first we must get Linux running on the hardware with all drivers implemented, and then, we hook Android into these drivers. Thus, broadly viewed, the XDAndroid project is divided into two parts: the kernel/drivers and the Android port.
When you look at the files in your Android directory, you'll probably see something like the following:
zImage: The Linux kernel and drivers.
modules-###: Additional drivers for the kernel. Your system will load without this, but things like wifi may not work, or you may encounter instability.
initrd.gz: Used in the Linux boot process.
system.ext2: Most of the Android framework.
rootfs.img: Additional parts of the Android framework that are customized for our devices.
data.img: This file contains what would be your internal memory on a real Android device. Whenever you install a program it goes in to here. A new empty one will be automatically created if you don't have one.
haret.exe: Reboots you from Windows into XDAndroid.
startup.txt: Commands passed to XDAndroid on bootup that are customized by the user.
ts-calibration: Contains calibration information for the touch screen. If you don't have this file, you will be prompted to calibrate your screen on startup.
AndroidApps: A folder where if you copy any apks into it, they will be automatically installed on bootup.

As always, there's the XDAndroid FAQ!