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for wireless pdas, the ipaq 5455 is really the way to go.

It's likely to take the best part of a year (going on past experience) for HP to get Linux working on this model as well as it does on the 3[68]00s. Also bear in mind that there will probably never be native support for SD cards, though MMC cards do instead.

You really, really want to avoid being stuck with PocketPC for any length of time, trust me.

Personally, I know running Windows inside and out simply from working on other people's machines.

For users, I help people on everything from Win95 through XP. Sometimes it's their actual workstation in the office, or machines brought from home and they politely ask me "can you fix this?". They already know there's nothing beyond me fixing unless it's a fairly fatal error (like a hard drive failing).

For example, right at this moment I have a WinME machine sitting on my workbench. It had all kinds of extra crap starting up in the startup directory and registry, it hadn't been defragged in 800 days (as reported by Windows), and virus software that hadn't been updated in about a year. It also hadn't had any Windows Updates done at all.

On my networks, there are hundreds of machines. Most are Linux, but some aren't.

One is a Windows Media streaming server that's simply hosted with us, so I haven't touched it since I set it's IP.

Some near and dear to me has 5 machines that are WinNT Server and Win2k Advanced Server that she does customer hosting, and custom site development on. She writes in Cold Fusion, and since some of these sites have existed for years, she hasn't been daring enought to get off of Windows yet. We did come to a compromise though. If I can set up a Linux machine with Cold Fusion on it, and prove to her that it won't be a headache to move the sites over (including moving the databases from MSSQL to MySQL), she'll switch to Linux.. Her concerns are perfectly justified. If she converted and the sites don't work, she'd loose all her income. If there are substantial differences in the way ColdFusion on Windows and ColdFusion on Linux work, her productivity will be down.

We also have some old NT boxes, that are serving sites that they've served for years. No one wants to rewrite the code for all of them, so they remain.

So, of all my machines, there are over 100 Linux boxes, maybe 5 NT boxes, 5 Win2k boxes, and 20 Win98/WinME/Win2k/WinXP workstations. Oh ya, don't forget 1/2 dozen OS/9 and OS/X machines. :)

*MY* machines are Linux. I use one workstation at work, one at home, a laptop, and an iPaq PDA.. Both workstations and the laptop have been upgraded to Slackware 9.0. The iPaq runs Familiar. Even my home firewall is running Slackware (7.1.0).

My girlfriend still uses Windows on her laptop, and her kid has a Win98 machine to chat with her little friends, and play games on. Eventually I'll get the kid moved over to Linux. I can't say the girlfriend will be easy to change, unless WineX handles "The Sims" better than Windows does. :)

So ya, I deal with Windows machines daily. And even though there are a whole lot more Unix machines on my networks, the Windows machines end up being the bigger headaches.

To really keep on topic, I have had problems with the Windows Updates too.. I believe it was on an "e-machine". Normal cheap consumer grade hardware with an "e" embossed into the side. It uses an Intel network card.. Windows Update has an updated driver listed, so I went ahead and let it install. After that reboot, it refused to get onto the network again. Took some fiddling with it to get rid of the new driver, and get the old driver going again. That's the machine the kid plays on, so she was rather upset that she couldn't chat with her little online friends for like an hour. Around the same time, I heard other people telling me that they had done the same upgrade, and had the same problem. Luckly for us, most of our office people don't do Windows Updates on their own, so we didn't have too many machines to fix..

Yes, in fact I bought a used 3630 through eBay just for this purpose! Get over to Handhelds.org for info and browse the mailing list archives whilst you're there.

I run Familiar on my Compaq (now HP) iPaq handheld. Very sweet. Get a PCMCIA sleeve, a wireless card, and you're all set. For those of you doing wireless security work, Kismet runs beautifully. There's also a GTK or Qt base available for you developers.

Or what about the even cooler (but not as mature) GTK+ 2 based GPE? X based so when at home you can have your apps display to your desktop and make use of a real keyboard. Though the graffiti-like Xstroke app GPE uses is excellent and so you might not miss your desktop keyboard :).

I agree with most of what you say, and I think tablets do have a future, but I must take issue with this bit:

the Open Source community couldn't have come up with a working implementation - where would they get the money to actually build hardware devices and market them to volume buyers?

Well, duh! Open Source / Free Software is a software phenomenon. You can't take a new hardware device and use it's existence to bash the Open Source community.

The missed opportunity was for some hardware manufacturer to build a device running Free Software before Microsoft got their effort out. This would have been possible. And the Open Source community would have created, or contributed to, a working implementation of the software.

What the hardware companies should do is agree on an open platform like Opie, sponsor it's development, build devices which use it and compete on the quality and features of their hardware.

In all, my experience has been very good with tablet pcs and I wonder when the open source community is going to think about developing such a product.

Perhaps when 'the open source community' becomes one of the largest software companies in the world with a 90% market share.

Or at the very least when 'the open source community' figures out a way to make 'open source hardware', and produce it in 'open source factories' with 'open source workers' using 'open source materials'.

Actually, you know, I asked the open source community, and he said "You know, I never thought of that. I'll get right on it."

If the open source community does not begin innovating instead of playing catchup to microsoft, it will never succeed.

Yeah, somebody brought that up at the last Linux shareholder's meeting down in Fairyland, but since everybody there was just there for the free beer, it didn't really take.

Here is something (the tablet pc) completely new that everyone I show asks "where do I sign to get one"?

Right on the line that says "I hereby bequeath my (left testicle, first born child, kidneys), that I may have expensive clipboa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Tablet PC"

But you have to recoop R+D.

I'll cut the sarcastic crap and just say : Bullshit. Microsoft doesn't have to recoup shit, they spend boatloads on R&D anyway, and the manufacturers know they have to make huge margins while the hype is still around. Pen-screens are expensive, but there's no technical reason they can't sell one for less than half of what they're going for now.

Where are the voice recognition and handwriting recognition in the open source community? Are there any efforts?

They're in line, after the unified GUI, the unified sound architecture, the a11y and i18n, and other things that users actually want and need. Also, what good are voice and handwriting interfaces to people who use the command line most of the time?

But, since you asked :
Sphinx, open source (BSD-License) speech recognition.

XScribble,
uni-stroke character recognition for Linux on PDAs.

Are we going to let microsoft reinvent the pc while we sit back and simply say... ah... they'll pull it in a year.

Who is 'we'? If you're so threatened by Microsoft 'reinventing the pc', then why the hell did you buy one?

They may thorw millions into marketing though which they haven't yet.

Um...yeah. So, how do you get electricity in your cave?

Do your homework before advocating decisions for the open source community.

If you care so much, then why don't you do something about it?

-dr.badass

I own an iPaq, and I've tried the Familiar distribution as well as the intimate which is a full blown one.

I'm pretty sure that using the last one you may have tools that are WebDAV enabled.

Furthermore, that's all open source. Linux rocks.

I own an iPaq, and I've tried the Familiar distribution as well as the intimate which is a full blown one.

I'm pretty sure that using the last one you may have tools that are WebDAV enabled.

Furthermore, that's all open source. Linux rocks.

The "Familiar" Linux distribution for the iPAQ supports gtk2. Relevant links include http://www.handhelds.org, http://familiar.handhelds.org, and http://gpe.handhelds.org. (Familiar is the base Linux distribution, and GPE is the X-and-Gtk-based GUI on top of that. There's also a Qt-Embedded-based GUI called OPIE; I don't know if that supports Unicode as well, but I would guess it probably does.)

You'd probably need to install your own fonts. Not all models are supported, but the 3800 and 3900 series are, along with older models (the 3900 with some limitations).

All that said, if all you care about is whether it has Unicode support, as other posts have pointed out, Pocket PC has Unicode support, so you could get an iPAQ and skip putting Linux on it. Whether it's easy to find/install the fonts and input methods you'd need for Pocket PC, I don't know.

The "Familiar" Linux distribution for the iPAQ supports gtk2. Relevant links include http://www.handhelds.org, http://familiar.handhelds.org, and http://gpe.handhelds.org. (Familiar is the base Linux distribution, and GPE is the X-and-Gtk-based GUI on top of that. There's also a Qt-Embedded-based GUI called OPIE; I don't know if that supports Unicode as well, but I would guess it probably does.)

You'd probably need to install your own fonts. Not all models are supported, but the 3800 and 3900 series are, along with older models (the 3900 with some limitations).

All that said, if all you care about is whether it has Unicode support, as other posts have pointed out, Pocket PC has Unicode support, so you could get an iPAQ and skip putting Linux on it. Whether it's easy to find/install the fonts and input methods you'd need for Pocket PC, I don't know.

The "Familiar" Linux distribution for the iPAQ supports gtk2. Relevant links include http://www.handhelds.org, http://familiar.handhelds.org, and http://gpe.handhelds.org. (Familiar is the base Linux distribution, and GPE is the X-and-Gtk-based GUI on top of that. There's also a Qt-Embedded-based GUI called OPIE; I don't know if that supports Unicode as well, but I would guess it probably does.)

You'd probably need to install your own fonts. Not all models are supported, but the 3800 and 3900 series are, along with older models (the 3900 with some limitations).

All that said, if all you care about is whether it has Unicode support, as other posts have pointed out, Pocket PC has Unicode support, so you could get an iPAQ and skip putting Linux on it. Whether it's easy to find/install the fonts and input methods you'd need for Pocket PC, I don't know.

Hurray! A slick GUI, in the style of Microsoft Windows XP(tm).

Just look at the new icons compared to the old ones.

Check out the slick coloring- a cool translucent look for soothing, grey-on-grey symbols with gently blurred edges. They'll be especially good in bright conditions, when the LCD screens of a PDA will reflect back all the ambient light and remove all contrast.

Hurray! A slick GUI, in the style of Microsoft Windows XP(tm).

Just look at the new icons compared to the old ones.

Check out the slick coloring- a cool translucent look for soothing, grey-on-grey symbols with gently blurred edges. They'll be especially good in bright conditions, when the LCD screens of a PDA will reflect back all the ambient light and remove all contrast.

It does exist. It is called KitchenSync. Currently, it is part of the CVS tree for kdepim, and is scheduled to appear in KDE 3.2 You can have a look at the latest available tarball here. It works well enough. Currently it syncs to Agenda V3 or Qtopia/Opie based handhelds, and supports syncing addressbook, todolist and calendar to KAddressbook and KOrganizer. Works as expected, but it is still pretty much alpha quality. With enough time, this program should be able to sync just about anything to your desktop. A big thank you to the KDE and Handhelds.org people working on this.

I should finally get around to joining that. Now that I've purchased one of these (should be arriving sometime next week), I can take it with me and have a ball beaming packages back and forth with all the other members :)

Anyone have any experience with OpenZaurus? I'd jump on it as soon as I found it, but it doesn't seem to include a decent PIM suite like the Hancom one that comes with the Sharp ROM image.

If it's anything like the distro for the iPaq, I might think twice, as that's seemed to be a mite crashy every since I installed it.

Guess I did a fabulous job NOT backing up my WinCE contacts and notepad files first. :-/

I could go back to Palm... as a tool, it was superior to PPC. However, I like the fast CPU and large screen PPC has (can't get those features in a Palm except for the Clie NR series, which is big and heavy). The Zaurus software is cool, but like the Sony, it's too damn big.

I'd love to try Linux on the HP1910. It's only 4.2 ounces and has a much nicer screen than the Zaurus. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like much progress is being made on a port.

Karma to burn (not like it really matters anyway)!
OZ doesn't have an email client. OZ is just the underlying filesystem and system, not the gui or the applications. Opie is the default GUI/application set that OZ uses. PicoGUI is really coming along, though, and that's another option for a GUI.

I can't dispute your claims on the Revo, however, because I've never owned one. I can say that I prefer my Zaurus over my old Visor Deluxe, however, even though most people claim PalmOS is "better". The interface surely isn't better and it's a nightmare to develop for, which is a big reason I like the Zaurus. If there's not an application out there that does what I want the way I want it I don't have to go spend hours upon hours learning new APIs just to make a small application. I can just use my knowledge of linux development and qt and directly apply that.

The sharp zaurus is one of the best tools ever. I have used it in many different situations where before I would have had to grab my laptop. Using Minicom I have programmed routers with the nifty serial cable. I have spent many hours playing Dopewars and Wyvern (a pretty nifty graphical mud). The sharp image comes with Opera and is readable even at the furthest zoom (-4 or something.) My options are NOT restricted by sharp, there is even OpenZaurus (or OZ as the Z junkies call it.) The walkthroughs on the pages are mostly made for Linux noobs.

It runs Kismet (with the special socket drivers I can run low power for about 2 hours.) The software library is always growing, and the developers are happy to share their techniques for cross compiling/QT developing.

The wonderful thing about the Zaurus, is people already have developed and even COMPILED programs for the arm that run just fine on the Z, (mostly Ipaq/other linux SA device developers) but that means an even BIGGER software library.

The community is so helpful, you may be asking questions in the #zaurus channel in irc.openprojects.org and the person answering your question, just might have been the one developing the program you are asking about. It is not infrequent to hear "#Zaurus:So_and_so Yeah here that version is kinda buggy, I just compiled the new one here."

I have to mention Zauruszone even though it is no where near the community it used to be, there still are useful links

Also, I don't think they would be making major modifications to the Kernel.

So far, the DoD guys working on FCS (which is still only a raw, raw prototype) use unmodified kernel source code, with no new modules added. They do however recompile their kernels with a specific config file, to improve some kind of networking support.

The distributions they use are Red Hat or Familiar, depending on the hardware (although, so far PDAs only look like a gimmick). For a while they used Progeny (debian) linux too.

Didnt you read the last Linux Uprising article?, Linux is getting hot in the handhelds world and i belive GPE Palmtop (GPL license) will become its best UI in a few years.

Dont get stuck with an useless and outdated OS, meet the future and get a Zaurus (or wait for the IBM Linux handhelds).

X is plenty small. I recently installed GPE and Familiar Linux on my iPAQ, which uses GTK on X for the display. It is plenty fast (as fast as WinCE) and plenty small (16 MB Flash ROM is all it has, and that has to contain Linux itself, a GNU base system (a shell, cmdline utilities, etc), X, GTK, and finally the applications that make it useful). The included TinyX server really lives up to its name, taking less than 2 MB of Flash! With X and wireless ethernet, I can run programs remotely from my desktop (like XMatrix ;-). Actually the setup I have now is: when I plug the ipaq into its usb cradle, my linux box starts up a usb-eth network connection with the iPAQ and then runs x2x. Then I can move my mouse off the left side of the desktop's screen and onto the iPAQ! Fun stuff.

I am glad to see this since it should broaden the Qtopia user base significantly. You may or may not know that Qtopia is also used by the Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA (both the Sharp software and OpenZaurus distros use it). There is also the OPIE project, which is basically a suite of PDA apps built on top of Qtopia. This bodes well for getting more Liunx PDA users on board, and provides some existing apps for those using Qtopia for the first time.

Yet another perfect application for mesh networking! (And another oppotunity for a shameless plug, but I digress...)

One of the products my company makes is a software mesh for 802.11. We have ported this software to PocketPC, so a device like a Compag^H^H^H^H^H^HHP iPaq with a wireless card can mesh with other devices around it. As nodes go down or enter the network the devices seamlessly configure themselves and route traffic around breaks or congested areas. If the access point you were using went down, you could hop through a neighborss handheld and his neighbor's, so on, until you found an AP.

Of course, you could also do this with free software. Familiar + iPaq + AODV would be a viable open source alternative. Once you have the connectivity you could use just about any app. Gnomemeeting or OpenH323 would enable VoIP. Email apps are there too.

Anonymous Coward trolls:
Give us a phone number to call this company:
Well Jim, I would love to confirm your employment when Kevin damaged your system. I imagine your full of it. Just my personal opinion.

Well first off, to confirm that the account belongs to Jim Gettys, this account has been posting to slashdot for years, including posting in articles about himself and his work, and you are the first person I've seen accuse him of being "full of it". If the jg account on slashdot were a fake, I'm certain there would be a number of his friends and coworkers pointing this out. There haven't been, so I will assume it's him.

Secondly, since you appear to have been asleep for the past ten years, you cannot call Digital Equipment Corporation, because they no longer exist. They were acquired by Compaq, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard. Sure enough, Mr. Gettys works for Hewlett Packard now, in the HP Labs division.

His employment at Digital is a matter of public record. He's even listed as a DEC employee in RFC 2068. If you really want to confirm his employment, I suggest you hunt down HP's Human Resources (or Media Relations, they might have a biography) department yourself.

While I am aware that Kevin Mitnick is a more recognized name for many people, Jim Gettys is far more deserving of fame. Both The X Window System and HTTP are the way they are today partially due to his hard work. Kevin Mitnick did something stupid, got caught doing it, and was abused by the government; Jim Gettys actually created things we use every day.

Why don't you go to his web page. And, seeing that his ID is 16880, it seems reasonable that the person really is Jim Gettys, not a troll with an ID of 309385.

Check out handhelds.org for good info on Linux on many handheld platforms.

There is a working distro or two for the 3900 . The 1900 and 5400 use the same cpu but the onboard peripherals are different. No one has started the port for these 2 but it could potentially go quickly because a lot of the groundwork is done.

Check out handhelds.org for good info on Linux on many handheld platforms.

There is a working distro or two for the 3900 . The 1900 and 5400 use the same cpu but the onboard peripherals are different. No one has started the port for these 2 but it could potentially go quickly because a lot of the groundwork is done.

Check out handhelds.org for good info on Linux on many handheld platforms.

There is a working distro or two for the 3900 . The 1900 and 5400 use the same cpu but the onboard peripherals are different. No one has started the port for these 2 but it could potentially go quickly because a lot of the groundwork is done.

Check out handhelds.org for good info on Linux on many handheld platforms.

There is a working distro or two for the 3900 . The 1900 and 5400 use the same cpu but the onboard peripherals are different. No one has started the port for these 2 but it could potentially go quickly because a lot of the groundwork is done.

Check out handhelds.org for good info on Linux on many handheld platforms.

There is a working distro or two for the 3900 . The 1900 and 5400 use the same cpu but the onboard peripherals are different. No one has started the port for these 2 but it could potentially go quickly because a lot of the groundwork is done.

Check out handhelds.org for good info on Linux on many handheld platforms.

There is a working distro or two for the 3900 . The 1900 and 5400 use the same cpu but the onboard peripherals are different. No one has started the port for these 2 but it could potentially go quickly because a lot of the groundwork is done.

However, I don't think it's true. First of all, owning a Zaurus myself, I find its use of QPE the biggest problem with the device--it means I can't use it for what I primarily want to use a Linux PDA for: running regular Linux software. Almost any software that uses a GUI needs to get ported. I can't script with my favorite scripting environments (Tcl/Tk, wxPython, fltk-lua), I can't use my favorite image display programs, etc.

Fortunately, the folks at handhelds.org have been working busily on putting together a high-quality X11-based handheld distribution. And the Opie versions of the Sharp/QPE applications have been recompiled for X11.

To me, Sharp will be a success story when it really does run the entire Linux environment: command line and graphical. Let's hope that in 2003, Sharp will base their Linux distribution on X11. Because of Qt/X11, the user experience and applications will remain unchanged (well, things may actually get a little faster with X11, but that's not going to be that important on a 400MHz XScale).

Actually, in the embedded computing space, there may well be no GNU code on the box. Both of my most recent PDAs have used Busybox utilities in place of the huge (and therefore featureful, but not ideal for a machine with small amounts of permanent storage) GNU utilities.

A previous version of the Linux distro for the iPAQ used the full GNU utilities, but they switched to Busybox a while back for space reasons.

And you know what? A Linux distribution based on Busybox that follows the Linux filesystem standards feels a lot like any other Linux distribution (GNU-based or not). And it doesn't feel very much like a Solaris distribution when /usr/local/gnu is at the front of my PATH. And I've never played with GNU/Hurd, but I bet it doesn't feel much like GNU/Hurd, unless GNU/Hurd has deliberately adopted standards from the Linux community. All of that is part of why I call Linux distros Linux distros. It feels more accurate and more descriptive to me.

People routinely refer to Slackware Linux as Slackware, and to Debian [GNU/]Linux as Debian. If Richard and the FSF want to increase the public mindshare of the term GNU, one good way to do it would be either to encourage Debian to rename their project "GNU Linux" ("GNU" being the name of the distribution), or to start their own Linux-based distribution which they refer to from the start as "GNU Linux". And people would routinely refer to it as GNU, and maybe make the connection that the same people who put it together produced the GNU utilities that show up in other Linux-based distros. That would be a lot more effective than arguing with people about terminology. After all, it's been something like thirty years that people have been encouraging gender-neutral language, a change in terminology that benefits half the population of the planet rather than a small fraction of geeks, and changes in that area are still far from complete. If the FSF wants widespread mindshare for the phrase "GNU", and widespread understanding of what it represents, and if they want it while POSIX-like operating systems and semiconductor-based computing are still relevant, they need marketing methods that work faster than that.

There is NO /Free Software/ SD Card driver for Linux, just MMC.
Sharp uses proprietary binary drivers in the Zaurus.

From http://www.handhelds.org/projects/h3800.html

Why do MMC cards work, but SD cards don't?

The SD Card Association product license agreement does not allow open source drivers for the SD cards. The Multimedia Card Association (which came before SD) does allow open source drivers.

Can't someone release a binary-only SD card driver? We could. We don't for the following reasons: (1) it's a maintenance headache. Someone must compile and update the driver for each kernel release. (2) People who want to hack a custom kernel will not be able to include SD card support unless they join the SD Card Association. (3) It goes against the grain of open-source operating systems and the whole point of handhelds.org. Driver development work is replicated, bugs go unfixed, time is wasted.

We will continue our efforts to change the SD Card Association's policies.

The fact that most of the applications only run on the main display or via VNC might give you a hint; UNIX and Linux servers use X11, and for good reason.

Fortunately, some people are working on making Opie play nice under X11. Let's hope that Motorola's Lineo will see the light and make this the standard way of delivering Qtopia for Embedix as well.

i think the problem is that people view pda's as electronic organizers, which they aren't, and not as portable computers, which they are.

You can get a Dell Axim A5 for $199 and a lot more PocketPC hardware for less than $300. Of course, the PocketPC software sucks, but porting the Simputer software environment to such hardware shouldn't be too hard. The new low-end iPaq might be another good target and might be supported fairly soon by handhelds.org.

However, these things can get out of control in a hurry. My coworkers bought the entire PCMCIA cradle, and at that point it won't fit into any pocket outside of a large winter jacket. Then we threw in my wireless card, and we ended up having this ridiculously obese little gadget with an antenna sticking out that wrung every last bit of life out of the batteries in a few minutes

My iPaq with the PCMCIA cradle and a wireless card is a bit on the big side... and the screen is a bit small for browsing the web, but the battery does last for several hours (the cradle has an extra battery to help with the extra draw from the PCMCIA card). I don't remember off hand exactly how long it runs, but longer than my laptop. If your friend's iPaq is only running for a few minutes in that setup, there's something wrong with it.

You can install the Familiar distribution and Opie, and have basically the same thing as the Zaurus... Though the install is not for newbies, and it's not quite ready for prime time. (I'm not saying that you should buy an iPaq instead if you want a Zaurus... but if you already have an iPaq...)

There's also the Intimate distribution that lets you run a full Debian distribution off an NFS root. Not the fastest thing in the world, but it does work.

See Handhelds.org for more information.

Now they just need to fix the largest problem of all: it's running palm. :P Actually, I'm sure palm OS is great for something like this, I'd just rather see Pocket PC OS. Better yet, Opie (OSS palmtop enviroment, FYI).

Intel X-Scale Processor at 400MHz/300MHz, 32-64MB SDRAM Memory, 32-48MB Flash. Looks like it could run Linux quite easily.

So, Dell, how 'bout the specs? I'd love a $200 linux handheld!

It has a 400Mhz XScale processor, 64/32MB RAM, one SD slot, and one CF Type 2 slot. The battery is claimed to be able to support 4hrs 50 mins of active use. It's reasonably sized and weighs 225g, but the capacity to record sound is lacking.

Unfortunately, Sharp currently have no plans to release this beauty outside Japan. An alternative might be the HP Jornada 720, which has a 640*240 display and a keyboard. Its expansion options are arguably better. It has a 209MHz ARM processor, which may be good enough. However, it weighs half a kilo, it costs $1000(!) (at least officially), and Linux is still being ported. Yet another alternative might be the 640*480 HNT Exilien 00101/00201, but where or when that thing will be available beats me.

It's all very frustrating, because an SL-C700-like PDA with 128MB of RAM (instead of 64MB), somewhat better expandability (say one CF Type 2 slot and one Type 2 PC Card slot) and built-in sound-recording capability would solve all my life's problems. ;)

• Debian Effort
  
• iPacking it
  
• Handhelds.org sports all these Platforms
  

Why? So you can compile programs and walk around with them and have access to all the free software goodness you might need. Oh yeah, it also makes sure that you own your handheld rather than donate it to the cause.

But if you are impatient, you could drop by Office Depot and buy an Zaurus today. I got one and like the form factor. I have not used it enough to really comment on it, but the interface is slick and works well enough. I liked my handspring visor's graphiti system, but I'm told that I'll get proficient with my thumbs on that keyboard. Having compact flash and SD interfaces rocks. Work out your program, what have you, on your laptop then drop it into compact flash and it's in your pocket.

One things for sure, I'de wait for a Linux port (if indeed there is none yet) before purchasing one of these. The WinCE and Pocket PC handwriting sucks eggs and the Windowz interface did NOT scale well at all. Hard to use big, impossible to use small, you gotta toss it out.

• Debian Effort
  
• iPacking it
  
• Handhelds.org sports all these Platforms
  

Why? So you can compile programs and walk around with them and have access to all the free software goodness you might need. Oh yeah, it also makes sure that you own your handheld rather than donate it to the cause.

But if you are impatient, you could drop by Office Depot and buy an Zaurus today. I got one and like the form factor. I have not used it enough to really comment on it, but the interface is slick and works well enough. I liked my handspring visor's graphiti system, but I'm told that I'll get proficient with my thumbs on that keyboard. Having compact flash and SD interfaces rocks. Work out your program, what have you, on your laptop then drop it into compact flash and it's in your pocket.

One things for sure, I'de wait for a Linux port (if indeed there is none yet) before purchasing one of these. The WinCE and Pocket PC handwriting sucks eggs and the Windowz interface did NOT scale well at all. Hard to use big, impossible to use small, you gotta toss it out.

• Debian Effort
  
• iPacking it
  
• Handhelds.org sports all these Platforms
  

Why? So you can compile programs and walk around with them and have access to all the free software goodness you might need. Oh yeah, it also makes sure that you own your handheld rather than donate it to the cause.

But if you are impatient, you could drop by Office Depot and buy an Zaurus today. I got one and like the form factor. I have not used it enough to really comment on it, but the interface is slick and works well enough. I liked my handspring visor's graphiti system, but I'm told that I'll get proficient with my thumbs on that keyboard. Having compact flash and SD interfaces rocks. Work out your program, what have you, on your laptop then drop it into compact flash and it's in your pocket.

One things for sure, I'de wait for a Linux port (if indeed there is none yet) before purchasing one of these. The WinCE and Pocket PC handwriting sucks eggs and the Windowz interface did NOT scale well at all. Hard to use big, impossible to use small, you gotta toss it out.

Well, you might look at SynCE, but it does not look ready for production.

Of course, under certain circumstances you can run Linux your pocket pc, but then syncing is still a bit crude.

There are many efforts to putting Linux (and other UNIXes) in places with limited amounts of space.

handhelds.org is all about running Linux on ipaqs. Space is a concern, of course, so various things are done. The conversion to Busybox has recently been made, saving almost 2MB of space as I recall.

There's also uClibc. The smallest I've ever seen glibc is about 1.5-2MB. uClibc clocks in at about 200-700kB. That's small. This is used when you just don't have space available, such as on the TuxScreen with only 4MB of bootable flash and on many rescue disks and floppy based Linux systems.

Remember you don't want to cut corners all the time. On your desktop, it's probably best to run the full-blown GNU utilities. They have extra options that, while not commonly used, have obviously proven useful enough times to be included.

However, if you only have 16-64MB to work in, and you want to have lots of other stuff, busybox is a very viable option that I would reccomend if you have trouble fitting stuff in. Don't use it when you've got gigs of hard drive space to play with though.

And many functions of pen computers don't require handwriting recognition at all (ink notes, browsing, e-books, etc.)--just getting rid of that bulky keyboard alone when it's not needed would be worth the pen computer.

There has been some buzz regarding this recently from the handhelds.org crew as they port Linux to the H39xx series iPAQ. From what I gather, PocketPC is StrongARM optimized (and since you don't have the source, there's not much you can do about that).

The X-Scale (armv5) is completely backwards compatible with the StrongARM (armv4), but some instructions are faster than others. I believe the conclusion was that compiler optimizing for xscale would be beneficial to both platforms as the armv4 should run at about the same speed while the armv5 runs faster than before.

Note however that part of the reason you don't see huge performance increases is that (at least on the early xscales, possibly current ones too) the write-back cache is disabled due to some flaw in the chip. Oops :)

First, it's big--even PocketPC machines have gotten much smaller. Sharp sells a Zaurus in Japan that's much smaller (no keyboard, no CF), and they should bring that to the US.

Second, while they have managed to create some decent apps in it, the use of Qt/Embedded causes problems. Qt/Embedded eats up lots of memory (much more than X11+XLib+FLTK) and it makes porting software to the Zaurus a lot of work. Also, it has some annoying bugs, for example, locking up the GUI with focus problems. I thought I could live with Qt/Embedded, but I can't. Having a standard Linux command line environment on the handheld has turned out to be great, and I want the same convenience for the GUI, not some oddball hack.

The main reason for getting a Linux PDA for me is to have something that it's easy to port software to, and something I can carry with me, and the Zaurus just falls short on both accounts. I think the iPaq running Handhelds.org or a Yopy may be a better choice.