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Some of this may not apply to you, I just wanted to give you a good place to start looking.

garc

If you're interested in putting Linux on PDAs, you might look at this stuff too:
handhelds.org: Putting Linux on iPAQ and Nino
linuxce.org: Developing a Linux Kernel for WinCE devices
linux-vr.org : running linux on your VR series device
uclinux.org: linux/microcontroller project
Yopy: Samsung's pre-installed Linux PDA with color/sound.

hope this helps the interested.

wish
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-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/linu x/arch/mips/config.in?cvsroot=linu x-vr

So all this stuff works, and is available now publicly. I see that VTech seems quite impressed with it too. ;-)

Cheers,

- Jim

• Processor: 32-bit RISC processor operating at 75MHz (most likely a Phillips R39xx 32-bit-only MIPS compatible)
• 8MB SDRAM (however all reviews mention 4MB)
• Memory Expansion: Separate memory board allows memory upgrades
• Display: 160 x 160 pixels (59 x 59 mm), 16-level gray scale
• Power Supply: 2 AAA alkaline batteries power 30 days of normal use or 15 hours of continuous operation

/Tommy

Don't forget all the guys working very hard at LinuxCE who have Linux booting on a number of diffrent platforms. There's even microwindows and nanogui. It *is* possible to have your MIPS and SH3 devices running Linux but... they need more help right now porting over userland apps. If you have a device and are looking to contribute to an Open Source project this is the one...

Plus I've gotta plug my little thing for connecting Linux and CE..

Does anyone want to attempt to lisence the PalmOS and port it over to a wince machine? That'd be uber-cool.

Well, people are trying to port Linux to WinCE. You could probably create a PalmOS like GUI to run on top of the kernel and have yourself a pretty nifty little device.

CE devices use MIPS 4xxx, Hitachi SH3/SH4, and StrongARM CPUs.

I don't know about gcc support, but someone's probably done it or in the process of doing it. Check out linuxce.org for a Linux port.

It would be a cool thing if there was a Linux port to the Jornada, unfortunately, the references I can find on the LinuxCE mailing lists are not terribly specific/useful.

What's really unfortunate is that there has been no progression of the StrongARM series over the last couple years. It came out as a slick, low power, 250MHz CPU. That's still what it is, despite two years of surrounding technical advances. Transmeta Crusoe is becoming a available for similar applications, and may provide an even better mix of computational power and "battery efficiency."

Of course, the funny thing is that Elinux.com sells the Journada 690 as a Linux-compatible product!

Actually it is a valid link. It's just supposed to be www.linuxce.org.

Ahh. Right. Another oops. The link really is LinuxCE. Just as a friendly note to moderators, when you see something like this and see that it is not a valid link, make sure that it is true, that it does work, and that it actually exists. I should have noticed that the first thing, but I failed to do so. Once again, I apologise.

Yes check out http://www.linuxce.org/ (and probably the netbsd guys too - for all i know they had it first) There are touchscreen drivers for some CE hardware. (The z50 has a little IBM-style joystick not a touchscreen)

I think everybody is at least creating an onscreen soft keyboard first before worrying about handwriting recognition. I expect that right now the non-gpl code that OEM's will bundle with their distro's will have better performance for at least another 1-2 years...

• PDAs/Handhelds and Linux: good summary table.
• LinuxCE: Linux for Handheld Computers.
• ucLinux: Linux on Palm Pilot.
• PC110: Linux on IBM PC110 compact computer.

The LinuxCE group is still in its early stages, but they are making progress. If there are any coders out there that would like to help out, please do, as I would love to be able to run Linux on one of those things. The MS operating system has been the one thing holding me back from buying one.

--

There is already a project to port Linux to devices which currently run Windows CE. They have already made excellent progress and Linux now boots on several MIPS and SH3 handhelds, such as the Casio E-100 and IBM WorkPad Z50.

See the Linux CE Project.

Y'all forgot LinuxCE, which aims for MIPS, SH3, etc. devices that in a previously deviant lifestyle ran WinblowsCE.

Regarding your first question, there is a project called LinuxCE that aims to port Linux to CE machines. I have absolutely no experience, ties, or know-how about the project; however, given that there are a few different CPU's used in CE devices, development may be taking longer for your particular device.

Try this to connect a CE device to a Linux box. It works through a PPP connection.

As far as the fuss over WinCE, there are a few explanations. Some people just don't like any Microsoft software, period, and refuse to buy it on principle. However, on many devices (yours being an exception) Windows CE is very slow and complicated. Things like memory allocation and task management allow for more powerful programs, but also can make things unnecessarily complicated for Joe End-User who wants a no-nonsense way to synchronize his personal data. I've owned a PalmPilot since early 1997, and it's a great machine. Sure, it doesn't have all the whizbang features of many CE devices, but it runs a wealth of software and provides ultra-quick (no hourglass, ever) access to all personal data. My dad, who's one of the biggest technophobes I know, even bought one and is impressed with the feature set and the simplicity. He bought a cradle for his secretary, who takes messages and puts information into the Palm Desktop software on her computer. When he gets back from a meeting, all he has to do is synchronize his Palm with his secretary's computer and all of the data on both ends is made up-to-date. It's the so-called "Zen of Palm" that has sold so many units so far, and it's the reason why Palm Computing has held back on cramming every feature possible into every single organizer.

Hope this helps.

Yes, Linux does seem like a good choice. If you compare [Linux] with Windows CE, it is alot [sic] smaller and not as heavy on memory. (compare windows CE devices and Palm OS devices.)

Hmm. I like Linux as much as the next FreeBSD geek, but, frankly, no, you're wrong. (What follows uses the acronym CE in two different senses. CE means Consumer Electronics, in the EU sense; it also means Windows CE. I'll try to use CE device(s) for the former and Windows CE for the latter.)

(1) Linux is not small by the standards of CE devices. It's important to distinguish between kernel size (the Linux kernel is fairly small) and operating size (running Linux w/ X and Mozilla...that's not small, even by desktop standards, to say nothing of device standards.)

(2) The Windows CE-based systems you mention carry a vast amount of baggage. If you're comparing a Palm Pilot to a (say) Compaq Aero, you're comparing aples to oranges. The Aero not only contains Windows CE itself, it also contains GWES.EXE (CE's equivalent of X), SHELL.EXE (CE's equivalent of the WM), a handwriting recognizer, a soft input panel, and a lot of other software. There are Windows CE-based embedded systems that carry a lot less baggage; believe it or not, they're quite slim, trim, and stable.

A better comparison is to linuxce plus microwindows/NanoGUI. The linuxce guys are having a lot of trouble getting things to fit in the Windows CE palm-sized device format. They're having a good deal less trouble getting things to fit in the VR form factor. Frankly, that isn't surprising; X windows was really designed for a device with a keyboard and a lot of power. It isn't terribly well suited to a keyboardless, low-power device. If they're having trouble with microwindows, then true X will be even worse...and unstable to boot! Not a good user experience.

(3) And, finally, Linux still doesn't have a number of features that really are important for CE devices: things like quick on/off, recovery from unplugging, etc. I don't expect that those will be available in any context for quite a while.

Frankly, this sounds like marketing hype to me. M$ is releasing a new generation of their Palm-pilot class devices today at CES (or so cnet whould have us believe.) Intel is trying to snub them. The Wall-street journal reports that Intel is not even demoing devices, for heaven's sake, just talking about the plans?

Naah, this is vaporware and FUD, no more.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Linux has a chance to take the Palm/PDA world by storm if we can only get our collective butts in gear!

The following projects are critical and need our support -

Microwindows/Nanogui

uLinux

LinuxCE

flash memory drivers

And the existing Linux7k project.

Let's get the ball rolling!

Opening CE would do two things:

1> Gather more support for CE and have more companies using it.

2> Get the DOJ off Microsoft's back as MS won't make as much money off a GPL CE as a commercial CE. Also having an open source Windows would show that Microsoft is letting the competition have open access to a form of Windows.

But then having an Open Source CE might backfire and have the DOJ think that it is another product dumping Microsoft is doing to kill the competition like when Microsoft gave out free copies of Internet Explorer? After all PalmOS is not open source, right?

Me? I'd much rather see that LinuxCE makes it as an alternative to Windows CE.

> I think it would be sooo awesome to have COLOR x on my portable palmtop! any ideas / suggestions?

Well, it won't do you much good if you have a palm pilot, but:

http://www.linuxce.org

has information about porting Linux to CE devices, and

http://www.ltc.com/linux-mips/

has some really good info about the MIPS port, specifically (seems like most of the devices use MIPS, and it seems to be the furthest along of the ports).

There are working kernels (with shell and networking!), and they are working on getting the GUI running (it seems to be already running on at least one of the developers' machines).

Love it or hate it, the fairly hefty memory requirements of WinCE over PalmOS have the merit that the machines are more powerful than the PalmComputing brethren. This makes it vastly more likely that WinCE computers might be able to run Linux and actually have storage space left to hold utilities.

Supporting X, or even NanoGUI, would be rather challenging; it would be more feasible to try to provide the basic "Text Mode Console."

It wouldn't be something to run ApplixWare on, but it could be a nice way of Coding On The Road...

Lets assume Microsoft does open source Windows CE. What do we gain? We'll be able to ead the source and see what it really does, and maybe us programmers can fix the occasional bug in our own personal copies.

Will we be able to create our own distributions of Windows CE? Almost definitely not. Will we be able to fix the the underlying architecture problems? Very unlikely. Open source doesn't mean we can do what we want with it, just that it's also available in a alternative format to binary.

So what we would gain with an open source Windows CE is the ability to see what the OS is really doing, which is very useful for application developers.

I've got a Casio E-100 and love the hardware to pieces. Unfortunately, Windows CE drags its otherwise speedy 131 MhZ processor to almost a standstill. It's so bad it can't be anything but an architecture problem.

Check out the Linux port to Palm-sized and handheld PCs. It shows great promise of being able to replace Windows CE on handhelds soon.
LinuxCE.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

...helds is getting a bootloader. There is some substantial progress towards a bootloader for a linux implementation on the MIPS wince handhelds--it's at linuxce.org

Er...there currently isn't a usable Linux kernel for any device that runs WinCE. This being the case, I don't really think you can say Linux is providing WinCE with competition. I wish it were, though...WinCE is a real piece of crap when it comes to small devices. We need more people working on the LinuxCE effort!

Alan -

A lot of effort has been directed toward supporting Linux on palm/handheld/embedded machines. (See http://linux-embedded.com , http://www.uclinux.org , http://www.linuxce.org)

What are your thoughts on these projects and what do you see as the major hurdles to make Linux a viable alternative OS for Palm and WindowsCE machines?

More specifically, when will we see an Open Source flash file system and flash memory drivers for Linux?

Go to The LinuxCE Project website and click on developers and browse the mailing list archives and you should find that the SH3 port is somewhere near the point that the mips port is. This is where Mr. LaRonde and company have been actively discussing development of the mips port also.

And search a bit around.. You'll find among other things ftp://ftp.m17n.org/pub/super-h/ and a few other Linux ports to these chips.

Someone should proofread Slashdot for tech comments.. Or at least learn to use altavista.

Just checked out linuxce.org and they have already contacted Everex and gotten some support. Check it out.

There are some people who want to liberate WinCE devices. Check them out at: LinuxCE.org

Why not by one of them WinCe things and help LinuxCE make a Lionux port to WinCE? A such machince costs around 700$ depending on features.... :)

The closest shipping match to the Itsy are the Casio E-15 and E-100; with 69MHz/131MHz CPUs and 16M of RAM, they're somewhat larger machines than the 8M 486SX/25 I bought to run Linux 0.12, and you can get larger CompactFlash cards (IDE interface internally) than the 60M SCSI disk that was home for a few years. Both Casios are a bit bigger than the Palm III, although I suppose you could get an Everex Freestyle if you wanted the exact size.

If Digital---uh, I mean Compaq---had seeded the right places with proto hardware, I think the excitement about this project would be more justified. I'm glad they're finally releasing their port (dunno where, but this slide has it as a bullet); if nothing else, it will make work on other Linux PDA environments easier. But the commercial marketplace is serving up almost everything the Itsy hardware has except the prototyping ability today. That's where to funnel all that nervous energy you get when you think about how cool it would be to have a Linux PDA.