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Not yet.

:-)

Probably in the embedded market. That's one reason you won't hear too much about them. Look at http://www.linuxdevices.com for a few examples.

I think this form factor is a great idea. I started to write an opinion piece that we need a commodity architecture (as is the desktop x86 market) for a Linux computer in the handheld PC form factor even more than we need it in the laptop market.

I didn't find out what processor the OQO is going to use from their rather frivolous website or from the Yahoo article, but I imagine it is using a PIII-M. I'm wondering if it makes more sense (at least for Linux) to go with Xscale instead. True, it doesn't have floating point and probably can't run Windows XP, but Linux/ARM should work great (and people are building prototype devices now - see Tiny SBCs for Embedded Linux based projects).

I was bullish about the Crusoe initially, but now I'd rather have an Xscale which is more efficient for most computing I do anyway. I think I can handle the hit that floating point emulation causes for the programs that need it.

What do people think the best architecture for these class of devices is?

Dara Parsavand

Found here yesterday.

It seems that there is a lot of electricity in India :-)

However, I am not at ease with all that Simputer stuff. There is much hype, but what's behind?

It looks too closed to succeed. You have to licence a 'design' which is not much more than an Arm-chip Application Note. All seems one-way (there seems to be no forum, no call for participation, just a couple of guys trying to exploit the (nice) idea of 'a computer for the poor', no SourceForge community, nand OpenHardware one or the likes. If you look at the Google/Open_Source/Simputer directory, it is just hype, there is no forum, no CVS repository.
When you look at Simputer.org, there is no activity (the pages are ages old) and it links you to similarily dead 'commercial' pages (where people don't answer when you ask for information).

Why not just start from a LART or one of the existing LinuxDevices?

Don't get me wrong. I'd be pleased to see a Simputer succeeds, but when you start by asking money for a 'class-room design' with no community support, I am not sure that 'a computer for the poor' is more than an empty dream.

Sharp released a brand new zaurus in Japan today ( or it was at least scheduled for today ). The main site is in Japenese and is here http://sl.ezaurus.com Linux devices is also carrying the story at http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3610510159.html

This just breaks my heart. I submit a story on the hot new linux powered Xscale pda hitting the shelves and my story gets rejected. Later that same day I see a story on "feather-powered circuits". I kid you not :)

Microsoft's presence at the linuxworld show will be about their offerings for embedded devices, and how they compare to Linux; a statement made my a Microsoft rep. can be found at linuxdevices.com.

Yeah, and they'll be collecting that $200,000 too.

Far be it from Microsoft to leave money on the table.

They were consistently profitable, and then were bought out by Red Hat. The former CTO of Cygnus is the CTO of Red Hat today, and makes a similar point to the one you did at this article.

It should already run on this. Montavista had Linux running on the XScale architecture in February (story here). Also, the XScale CPU can run code written for the StrongArm SA-1110, which powers the HP iPaq, Sharp Zaurus, & other PDAs (specs here).

If you're conviced that something can be done cheaper and better using open source software, go to the management and ask for permission to set up a pilot for just a single mission critical application.

Yep, did it, now waiting for some sales numbers to see if we get a success....

Open source doesn't make a profit by adding to the revenue line: it helps make a profit by decreasing the expense lines. We used Open Source to pull off a project that we would have taken tons of money and time with closed-source software (and believe me, we tried).

Open source is great for the consumer (as defined by those who USE it, which can mean businesses), as evidenced by how quickly Linux is making its presence known in the server room, but it's not as great for the vendor, as evidenced by Linux-related stock prices. Slashdot posters get so frustrated because they can't draw the line between the two. We all agree it's great for the consumer - but as this Ask Slashdot post will point out, it's a lot harder to make sense for the vendor.

Rik van Riel VM (RMAP) or Andrea Arcangeli VM?

Not so recently it was shown that BOTH are better.

• hippo
  
• snom
  
• Aplio
  

• hippo
  
• snom
  
• Aplio
  

• hippo
  
• snom
  
• Aplio
  

You definately want to go with a zaurus then.

tcpdump, rdesktop, ssh, ftp,... have all been ported to the zaurus. Also important, linux on the zaurus flies!. You can start a command line and run multiple apps, saving a lot of valuable memory which would be used by a gui. Try http://www.debian.org/ports/arm
, http://ipkgfind.handhelds.org, http://zaurusoft.com,... for a lot of those ports.

You can do stuff yourself if you develop in linux or java, the zaurus is simply a 2.4 kernel running on a ARM chip.

Other cool stuff on the zaurus. zMame.

There's a linux distro for the PDA called, http://opie.handhelds.org. It runs on the z and ipaq. Should check that out.

I have a zaurus, and I plan to use it for this exact purpose, when I get my NIC compact flash card.

There are other
Linux PDAs out there as well, if you're on a budget.

Compaq supports linux on the iPaq
Yeah, after you've handed out your hard-earned cash to MS.

The zaurus is bulky and unlikely to succeed in a big way
I take it, you have some kind of proof to back that up? Another poster has already brought up the fact that the zaurus is a relatively small pda ( compared to other ARM pdas )

Especially since the iPaq is going to have (iPaq only) 144 kbps both ways worldwide...
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just clueless. This service is most likely just another GSM/GPRS service. Sure you might have heard it from a compaq/hp rep, but all the wireless providers ( major ones ) are rolling out GSM/GPRS. And the CF cellular modems exist for zaurus, ipaq, journada, and most other pdas.

I say don't buy another MS license, if you don't want too! If you want a linux pda, then get a Linux PDA

Here's another useful article called 'The Real-time Linux Software Quick Reference Guide'

A link to a rundown of the chip at linuxdevices.com:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/products/PD2840630960. html

Here's a rundown of the chip at linuxdevices.com:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/products/PD2840630960. html

In fact, the specs look identical to a discontinued Ericsson consumer device, called the Screen Phone, which shipped with Linux (except the ViewSonic device doesn't include built-in Bluetooth).

FYI. I just read this article.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4958883656.html

As a former employee of Merinta (an embedded Linux company that went under in May 2001), I am very sympathetic to the Lineo employees. I guess I was fortunate--at least Merinta never bounced a paycheck, and our CEO (Camillo Martino) gave us a heads-up before we actually ran out of money.

Linux shows so much promise in the embedded market, but it will never get there until companies wise up and start using sound business practices. I am so sick and tired of seeing companies with great ideas and talented people fail because they have incompetent management with poor spending practices.

Having millions of dollars in venture capital funding does not mean your company is "successful" or "wealthy". It means you have been trusted with money to make your idea work. Don't go out and blow the money on Aeron chairs, fancy offices and glitzy parties. Spend it wisely, and use it to get your product out the door. When your company is generating REAL revenue and profit, THEN you can consider celebrating.

Blowing venture capital on stupid things is about the same as maxing out a personal credit card on luxury items in my book. It's just plain stupid.

I feel so passionately about this issue because I've seen so many companies go under, where the workers suffer because of poor management. Enron is a really big example, but there are hundreds if not thousands of "dot-coms" that did the same thing to their workers.

I hope TUXIA is still doing well, and I hope they learn from the mistakes of others in the marketplace.

Don't miss the thrilling link to the debate on whether it is PreemptAble or PreemptIble...

I'm talking about the Zaurus SL-5500 SL-5500. But at that price I doubt that the census people will be packing them around. If you want to take a look at one you'll find it here.

It's amazing how much technology has changed. I wonder if they'll have a "Get the hell off my property and leave me alone!" checkbox.

As far as performance goes, Gnome/GTK/Corba/X is downright snappy on my aging Athlon 700. I have to turn down the graphics in Tribes 2 but it's plenty fast for Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament.

They have a tendency to sneak their way into practically everything: cars, mobile phones, PSIONs, even your Gameboy Advance.

And this is a problem?

The ARM architecture has consistantly shown to be a cheap and easy to use processor with low power requirements, and a complete set of integrated components. Whats more, the ARM chips are fully supported under both Linux and Pocket PC.

It is not by chance that most of the PDAs being readied for production this year are StrongArm based (see here
for a list of those PDAs that support Linux).

I'm not one to support a monopoly for the sake of having a monopoly, but if a company manages to crawl to the top based on superior products, I can only say one thing: w00t.

1. CPU: High speed, low power 32 bit MPU (18-74 MHz)
2. Input devices: Touch panel, a winding crown switch, button
3. Display: 320 x 240 dots, monochrome liquid crystal display
4. Memory: 8MB low power DRAM, 16MB flash
5. Interfaces: Bluetooth wireless technology (v1.1, voice-enabled), IrDA (V1.2), RS232C (via a cradle)
6. Others: Speaker, microphone, vibrator, fingerprint sensor, accelerator sensor

I have several of these machines lying around, and I've always meant
to gut out the PCB/CPU/RAM inside and replace it with a really small
SBC (like the ones shown here). What's held me
back is interfacing with the Model 100's keyboard and LCD controller.
Has anybody done any work like this, or does anybody have advice to
impart about the task?

The NIC, which AC told me about, is currently the best box of this kind to my knowledge. I would prefer, however, if it had no CD/modem/flashdisk and was cheaper without any stuff I don't need. I would love to see a box which is able to act as an X terminal, booting from network, without any moving parts, for something like $100. If the NIC cos ts $200 with all of the features, it would be possible to build a stripped version for $100.

I generally nead exactly TCSX-1, but four times cheaper... If only there was a TCSX-1 priced as optimally as the NIC, it would cost below $100... Oh, well... I'll try to find out where and for how much I can buy parts which they use. If anyone has any experience with buying and using such integrated board, similar to this board (I don't know what exactly it is, they only say in the spec what it has, not what model it is), please let me know. Thanks.

Another related topics,
What are the cheapest stand-alone:

• x86 processors (50+ MHz)
• mainboards
• ethernet adapters (100 Mb/s)
• VGAs (1+ MB)
• sound cards

It's very hard to find a low-end PC parts today, they don't sell processors with clock rates not measured in GHz in computer stores, you know...

After a quick Google search, I see there are lots of different single board PCs. I'll try to read about them and post the most interesting suff. If you know any of these boards, especially if you have used one of them with Linux Terminal Server or something similar (generally the most important is if you can run Linux on them without any problems) then please post it here. Btw, are there any cases available for them?

I think you're missing something.

True. I actually didn't express well my opinion in the first post (I also missed this response to the slashdot submission system or to mozilla 0.9.8 forms :).

Kernel versions with an odd number in the second position are development versions

I know that. What I was surprised with was the quick acceptance of such patches, in particular the preemptive one. Judging by the following interview, I think that even Robert Love was skeptical about it:

Love: Linus said at ALS this year he was interested in the preempt-kernel patch. That doesn't mean anything to me until we are in, though, but it is a good sign.

There is opposition. There are various issues that need to be dealt with. I believe it is a sane move for 2.5. The patch has seen a lot of testing and we have a lot of users.
I do not want to predict whether it will be merged for 2.5. Time will tell.

IMT-2000

This article should be on some where like Linux devices

Slashdot has become a cesspit of crap "news" and a lair filled with stinky trolls. Real nerds don't use slashdot!

Very recently I started evaluating the different approaches to realtime in Linux. As i gather in the Preemption Enhancement "Linux kernel code is modified to reduce the amount of time that the kernel spends in non-preemptible sections of code..."
As pointed out this approach has problems:
* increased complexity and hard-to-maintain code.
* extra context switches can be counter-productive
* who will track the code-path?
* This approach places an onus on the kernel developers to put together pre-emptible algorithms which is definetly not easier than developing non-preemptible algorithms. (Logically this woulld cripple the development rate of kernel enhancement and debugging!! )

On the other hand there is "Interrupt Manager", or the "Micro-Kernel" approach. Its a neat trick by veteran RTLinux hacker Victor Yodaiken. Read more here
I quote from this source "...entire kernel is made preemptible by having a separate hardware-handling layer intercept and manage the actual hardware interrupts on a system. This hardware abstraction layer has complete control over the hardware interrupts, and simulates the interrupts up to the Linux kernel in a way that allows the kernel to run unmodified on the real-time scheduler. linux kernel remains largely untouched"
If you want "hard guarantees" you make Linux kernel loadable modules software modules(just like device drivers etc.) otherwise make regular threads in the user space.
There are arguments against this approach as well-.. "its not linux" , "unique programming model" etc. The most important is ... that there are certain context switch latencies involved when a process is switched into in user space (due to MMU processing overhead, cache line flushes, and other things), that will inherently yield more jitter, and thus worse case guaranteed task switch latencies.
taking into account the pros and cons of both approaches it seems that balance tilts in favour of "Interrupt Abstraction" approach as from my point of view it should put lesser burden on kernel developers. Can somebody point out to me what was the reason for going otherwise?

Very recently I started evaluating the different approaches to realtime in Linux. As i gather in the Preemption Enhancement "Linux kernel code is modified to reduce the amount of time that the kernel spends in non-preemptible sections of code..."
As pointed out this approach has problems:
* increased complexity and hard-to-maintain code.
* extra context switches can be counter-productive
* who will track the code-path?
* This approach places an onus on the kernel developers to put together pre-emptible algorithms which is definetly not easier than developing non-preemptible algorithms. (Logically this woulld cripple the development rate of kernel enhancement and debugging!! )

On the other hand there is "Interrupt Manager", or the "Micro-Kernel" approach. Its a neat trick by veteran RTLinux hacker Victor Yodaiken. Read more here
I quote from this source "...entire kernel is made preemptible by having a separate hardware-handling layer intercept and manage the actual hardware interrupts on a system. This hardware abstraction layer has complete control over the hardware interrupts, and simulates the interrupts up to the Linux kernel in a way that allows the kernel to run unmodified on the real-time scheduler. linux kernel remains largely untouched"
If you want "hard guarantees" you make Linux kernel loadable modules software modules(just like device drivers etc.) otherwise make regular threads in the user space.
There are arguments against this approach as well-.. "its not linux" , "unique programming model" etc. The most important is ... that there are certain context switch latencies involved when a process is switched into in user space (due to MMU processing overhead, cache line flushes, and other things), that will inherently yield more jitter, and thus worse case guaranteed task switch latencies.
taking into account the pros and cons of both approaches it seems that balance tilts in favour of "Interrupt Abstraction" approach as from my point of view it should put lesser burden on kernel developers. Can somebody point out to me what was the reason for going otherwise?

Here is a comment by one of the MontaVista people addressing this very issue: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5152980814. html

Thought this might be interesting.

Also look here

It is said that emulation is the highest form of praise. hehehe Kewl anyway.

IBM Voice Systems: ViaVoice Software
IBM Voice Systems: IBM ViaVoice speech recognition software lets you use the power of your voice surf the Web, execute online transactions, dictate text and ...
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for Linux's Dictation's text-to-speech feature reads text out loud to you; ...
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IBM Voice Systems: IBM ViaVoice speech recognition software lets you use the power of your voice surf the Web, execute online transactions, dictate text and ...
Description: Big Blue's ViaVoice offerings in the desktop continuous speech dictation arena. Competes with Dragon,...
Category: Computers>SpeechTechnology
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You'll have linux up and running on the thing in no time, and you'll be able to play around with writing device drivers and fixing kernel scheduler bugs and stuff. All on the SH4 processor, which is much simpler than the x86 you're probably using.

Cryptnotic

Perhaps one of the embedded Linux distributions might help, they often have demo versions already tailored to run stripped down and "headless" etc.

This review of LynuxWorks' BlueCat Linux discusses some utilities ('mkrootfs' , 'mkkernel' and 'mkboot')that might help.

Oh, God, another non-standard window system.

I wondered about that too. The base article says that this device and the Agenda are owned by the same company. But, the link to the linuxdevices article says the Royal Lin@x includes software derived from Century Embedded Software's PIXIL PDA environment. Meanwhile I am pretty sure the Agenda uses X Windows.

Did you get a look at that keyboard? Judging from the picture (and probably a sentence that i'm not seeing on my second read-through) there is a built in *physical* qwerty keyboard that you can access by expanding the PDA Transformers-style.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/files/misc/lin@x.gif,

Underneath in the related stories:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5240238742.html

A useful link would be here over at LinuxDevices.com. The board I might suggest to you in the Bitsy with its PCMCIA slot on board. With 16MB of RAm and 32MB of Flash ROM you'd have plenty of space to stick some software to run your car. Grab an off the shelf 802.11 PCMCIA card you can find drivers for and you've got it networked. The board also has USB which works for a camera and total of 21 digital IOs that you can use to control the components of the RC car. A bonus is the card also has audio in and out so you can turn your little car into a little talking robotic badass.

1) Software availability
2) Cost
3) Learning curve
Those are the iron rules of mass market consumer electronics. The first two are more heavily weighted than the last. It doesn't matter if you are discussing VHS vs Beta, Cassette vs. DCC or DAT, Mac vs. DOS in '87 or Mac vs Linux vs XP in '02.

Mac advocates should have learned this back in the '80's when the Mac OS and hardware was technologically superior in every way imaginable yet MS/Intel kicked Apple's ass.

It's not the GUI, stupid, it's the apps and the cost.

Furthermore, it is somewhat questionable that a workstation class desktop system will continue to be relevant at all outside of specialized environments like engineering and graphic design. With Linux poised to become the worlds leading embedded OS, the usability and application availability issues evaporate.

There is also a response from LynuxWorks

Gods I hope they shot the 'designer' who unleashed this horror. I take it they don't put that in the promo screenshots.
Shiver, shiver. Run Away!!!