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Microsoft is holding some sort of launch event today for a pile of new Pocket PC devices. Pocket PC Thoughts has a bunch of news items; PDA Buzz has a report and pretty comparison chart looking at the different models, and I'm sure people will post more links in the comments. So, is this the mighty Palm-killer?

Microsoft is holding some sort of launch event today for a pile of new Pocket PC devices. Pocket PC Thoughts has a bunch of news items; PDA Buzz has a report and pretty comparison chart looking at the different models, and I'm sure people will post more links in the comments. So, is this the mighty Palm-killer?

Microsoft is holding some sort of launch event today for a pile of new Pocket PC devices. Pocket PC Thoughts has a bunch of news items; PDA Buzz has a report and pretty comparison chart looking at the different models, and I'm sure people will post more links in the comments. So, is this the mighty Palm-killer?

An anonymous reader noted that PDABuzz has a bit about henzai (no, I hadn't heard of them either) working on a lightweight version of GNOME designed for PDAs. The screenshots are pretty, but one has got to wonder if the requirements of gnome might be excessive for modern PDAs. Still, there's a lot of potential.

Read on for clarification about the alleged Gnome/KDE collaboration reported a few days ago, which ... ain't. And about the project to put Linux on the Royal DaVinci, which promises slow but steady progress. There's also infernally good news for anyone intrigued by the recent open-source Plan 9 release.

Pardon me, sir, are you in the market for a nice strong bridge? Aaron J. Seigo writes: "A letter from Mosfet can be found at knews.derkarl.org which clearly states the official KDE position regarding the recent "news" with regard to Gnome and KDE getting together on a common component model. Which is: It isn't happening. And for good reason.

KDE2 is in the final stages of preperation, so this is not the time to go messing with the foundations of things. Also, KParts wasn't designed on a whim. The KDE team put a lot of thought into it and came up with something that has some very real benefits to it (speed/overhead/etc). While interoperability would be nice, don't expect it on the component level just yet. Be happy with drag 'n drop and the like. For now."

Fair enough. Also on the KDE front, Joseph points you to knews.derkarl.org, which seems like a useful one for anyone looking for KDE updates.

Will a Linux PDA become their strong suit? jsinnema writes "News on the Linux Powered Royal daVinci from Wayland Bruns, CEO/CTO/Chief Geek CompanionLink Software at PDA Buzz Royal: 'Unfortunately, development is not on the timeline originally hoped. What's shaping out is two 16MB ROM/16MB Ram units, one 4 color grayscale for a low price, the other full color for a higher price. Size and weight are about the same as a Palm III. The color unit will have a flash slot.' and
'One of the interesting aspects of the project is that this is the first time we can directly compare performance of a particular app on both PC and PDA. I'm happy to report the PDA units are surprisingly powerful, except to note that memory access is relatively slow.'"

It sure would be neat if Linux becomes the default OS for palm-top computing; will Royal's project, though, stand a chance against the flashier ones which keep peeking like Monty Python animation over the horizon?

I'm sorry, but I'll have to call you back after I set my computer on fire. rpeppe writes "those who were intrigued by the Plan 9 release but don't have the appropriate hardware, or in fact anyone interested in new languages and OS's should be interested in the following:

vita nuova has released a new edition of the Inferno OS, source code and all, under a new licence, which allows distribution of core OS source code to inferno subscribers only, but unencumbered personal and commercial use of the binaries and the rest of the source code (including a javascript capable Web browser).

inferno is a cousin to Plan 9, but includes a virtual machine and a new language, limbo, and can run hosted under linux, free bsd, windows and other OS's, as well as natively on x86, ARM, MIPS, 68000, 68020 processors. because the whole operating system is virtualised, programs written for inferno are completely portable, something it would be difficult to say about java, for instance.

the language, limbo, deserves some attention - it's C-like, and OO in the deeper sense, but avoids the inheritance pitfalls that languages like java fall into. it's a joy to write in.

in my opinion, inferno was the coolest thing ever to have come out of bell labs CSRG - and we've now got exclusive rights to it, and intend to make as much of this excellent technology as we can. i hope others will too!"

jsinnema writes: "According to Andy Surber (CompanionLink) at PDA Buzz Royal, Royal is trying to put as much into the Linux powered Royal daVinci as possible and still reach the target price range of $199-249. As memory prices change on a regular basis, so does the final specs. As it sits now, they are heading towards a product with 16 ROM and 32RAM (subject to change). The device should also have a compact flash slot, which could also provide additional memory. The product will be based on the Tosiba MIPS processor." Looks very vaporous right now, but if its real, it looks sweet. Kurt the Pope just got WinCE based HP Jornada 548, and now I'm super impressed with PDAs again (although it is only 12-bit color and was until recently advertised as 16). Between this DaVinci or maybe the Yopy, hopefully we'll have a Linux PDA soon too.

SuperJ writes "It looks like the good people of Royal are planning to ship Linux on their line of DaVinci handhelds. Check it out the story at PDA Buzz." We've seen the DaVinci before as the target of a preliminary injunction from 3Com.

PDA Buzz writes "Looks like we may see a color PalmOS device sooner than later now that Motorola has released the Dragonball VZ which supports 256 color LCD on-chip and runs at 33MHz. " One Word: Yum.

PDA Buzz wrote to us with the latest privacy-invasion scheme. The Clinton Administration plans to ask Congress to give police authority to go secretely into people's computers, search for passwords and override encryption programs, "using devices, if needed".Investigators would need to have a sealed warrant to carry this out, but privacy groups are casting this as an invasion of the home. Shades of the Clipper Chip, anyone? Check this out for another report as well.

DaBuzz sent us a fascinating little article where you can read that Microsoft is exempt from trademark law. Talks about Open Source having a variety of meanings, and how MSs definition differs from Linux.