Slashdot Mirror

An unnamed correspondent writes:"Transvirtual has released PocketLinux for the iPaq. It features Video4Linux, mp3 playing ability, web synchronization, Kaffe OpenVM, GUI Themes, and displaying in standard or portrait mode. PocketLinux runs on VTech's Helio, iPaq's, and various other platforms." PocketLinux V.P. of Engineering Peter Mehlitz took some time off from the LWCE booth the other day to tell me about Pocketlinux -- read on for some details.

With the buzz that screenshots of X and other windowing systems running on svelte handhelds have generated lately, it's not surprising that the aisle by the PocketLinux booth was swamped with rubberneckers who actually wanted to play with the demos, not just grab t-shirts. If there's a prize for "oohs" and "ahhs" per square foot, Transvirtual may have swept the show with their demo machines, which use an integrated framebuffer device rather than coax on X. The Pocketlinux system consists of an XML framework running on Java -- using Kaffee means no Sun license required -- running on Linux. It's themeable, extensible, and slick.

"Java makes sense for this [because] it makes sense to have a machine that gives you access to distributed apps," said Peter. He anticipates applications equally at home on cell-phones, kiosks and PDAs -- and provides proof in the form of running systems, with handwriting recognition, games, audio players, and (quite nice to see) streaming video."Kaffee and XML let us do just about anything," he says. "With Kaffee, we really learned from the Linux example," he says, adding that Kaffee is now under the GPL.

The LWCE display featured the OS on both a Compaq iPaq and the exotic Itsy, as well as on a V-Tech Helio. While the Compaq machines can also run Windows (for those so inclined), PocketLinux is primed to become the default OS for the Helio, which currently comes with V-Tech's VTOS. Though the grayscale screen isn't as sexy as the Itsy's, the $150 Helio has both more RAM (10MB, including 2MB of flash) and a more powerful processor than my Visor. Helios running PocketLinux were available for sale, too -- not just vaporware -- though the PocketLinux Web site cautions that buyers who want a standard PDA should stick to V-Tech's OS until more PDA features are implemented.

(Interestingly, rather than the obligatory note that only Red Hat-based distros are supported, the installation instructions for the Helio software says instead "our development effort has standardized on a Debian Linux hosted environment and our documentation and operation under Debian is better supported. If anyone wants to write documentation for RedHat installation and submit it, we would be happy to include it.")

Despite their tendency to wolf down batteries, the color machines showed off few things the Helio couldn't, such as a small selection of colorful themes. "They're just XML files -- everything is XML files," said Peter, a point he emphasizes as important for keeping information portable. Streaming video, too -- slightly jerky, but very watchable -- had more than a few onlookers drooling. The important thing, according to Peter, is to rely on hardware to do as much of the tough work of decompression as possible. The video is transmitted with the aid of triggers embedded in Javascript. Viewing compressed movie files is "no problem, he says, "as long as we're not forced to use streaming in user space." Despite Peter's assertion that people will rely on collections of small, nearly disposable appliances rather than an "anything box," some aggregation and assimilation looks inevitable, not to mention fun. All work and no play would probably make for slow sales.

While the software inside the user's machine is free, Transvirtual intends to make money by selling server-based translation software to convert external data types for viewing and listening, as well as by providing businesses (and content providers) with specialized apps.

With the Embedded Linux Consortium, LinuxDevices.com, handhelds.org, and a gaggle of others, Free software for handheld devices has a woven a comfortable net of support for tiny systems. Welcome to the fray.

Thomas Charron wrote to us with the latest Microsoft-Java ">news. Transvirtual, a "closely held start-up funded by Microsoft" has cloned aspects of Java. This new software called "Kaffe" will let programmers write Java that will run only on Windows. What's interesting is that on their homepage, Transvirtual seems committed to working with the Open Source idea - partnering with Cygnus. Does anyone have details clearing up these seeming contradictions? Update: 06/14 08:51 by H : Click below: Tim Wilkinson from Transvirtual e-mailed me. Here's the salient points: Everything they are doing with MS is Open Source, and runs all platforms it can, and they are not funded by Microsoft. They were incredibly misquoted by the Wall Street Journal.
1. Everything we're doing in conjunction with M$ is Open Source.

2. All the extensions we're implementing are cross-platform - they don't just run under Windows as the WSJ article implied (okay, COM integration is a problem if you've got no COM on your platform to integrate with I'll give you that). If developers use Delegates they'll work on Linux (or whatever) and J/Direct is just another JNI-style interface anyway. We're looking at providing some Win32 compatiblity libraries for commonly used J/Direct Win32 library calls.

3. M$ have *not* invested in us - we approached them to about making Kaffe run both Sun and M$ Java and they paid for the work to happen - but we insisted that the result would be put in the Open Source Kaffe version so users had the choice to use, or not to use, the extensions.

Thomas Charron wrote to us with the latest Microsoft-Java ">news. Transvirtual, a "closely held start-up funded by Microsoft" has cloned aspects of Java. This new software called "Kaffe" will let programmers write Java that will run only on Windows. What's interesting is that on their homepage, Transvirtual seems committed to working with the Open Source idea - partnering with Cygnus. Does anyone have details clearing up these seeming contradictions? Update: 06/14 08:51 by H : Click below: Tim Wilkinson from Transvirtual e-mailed me. Here's the salient points: Everything they are doing with MS is Open Source, and runs all platforms it can, and they are not funded by Microsoft. They were incredibly misquoted by the Wall Street Journal.
1. Everything we're doing in conjunction with M$ is Open Source.

2. All the extensions we're implementing are cross-platform - they don't just run under Windows as the WSJ article implied (okay, COM integration is a problem if you've got no COM on your platform to integrate with I'll give you that). If developers use Delegates they'll work on Linux (or whatever) and J/Direct is just another JNI-style interface anyway. We're looking at providing some Win32 compatiblity libraries for commonly used J/Direct Win32 library calls.

3. M$ have *not* invested in us - we approached them to about making Kaffe run both Sun and M$ Java and they paid for the work to happen - but we insisted that the result would be put in the Open Source Kaffe version so users had the choice to use, or not to use, the extensions.

HP is contributing Java technology to Mauve, an alternative to Sun's Java Compatability Kit. This is good news for alternative Java implementations such as Kaffe, since the JCK is only available for a fee.

Dave Shields of Jikes e-mailed me to report that while Jikes did not win the award for best compiler (who did?), Transvirtual's Kaffe VM won the best VM category, beating Sun and Microsoft. I'm happy to see Tim Wilkinson getting recognition -- I remember him from the fledgling days of Kaffe 0.1... On a side note, only 3200 of you have downloaded Jikes' source code within the first day. What are you waiting for? ;-) The previous record for Jikes in binary form was a whole 500. Anyone else know who won what at the JavaWorld Awards? update Apparently Symantec won best compiler.

Snoop Baron writes " The Java Lobby is holding a poll on their front page along with a discussion thread on the question: Should Sun make Java open source? Expect a lot of Java stories next week as the Java Business Expo starts on Monday. Of particular interest are the Java World awards, where many products that run on Linux are finalists: IBM Research's Jikes, Tower J's fast commercial native Java compiler, the GPL'd Kaffe VM, Metroworks' IDE (soon), JDK 1.2 (soon). It's interesting how stong IBM's showing is with 7 entries beating Sun's 5.

Metrowerks have released a JIT for LinuxPPC, and a source code license allowing people to modify it, and post patches or binaries -- but not the full source. Note that only people from the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the European Union (only those countries in it today) will be granted this license. Also the license only lasts a year. Ed Blackdown is apparently happy over this, but I find the restrictions over length and countries very distasteful. kaffe is an OpenSource alternative.

As part of their 20,000 member drive, the Java Lobby is teaming up with the Java Journal to offer every one of their members a free subscription for a year. This offer is unlike most others in that people who live outside the US can also benefit... In related news, there's a rather interesting article about Java Virtual Machine performance showing that Linux has far to go. But has anyone performed a VolcanoMark test under Kaffe? On the other hand, TowerJ's native compiler does rather well... I wonder what performance Cygnus' offering will have (it's based on gcc and compiles native code).

Redhat's president Bob Young argues in an Internet World article that Java has not taken off, because it is not Open Source. Apparently the remedy for Redhat Linux will be including the latest version of Kaffe. With Kaffe and Jikes the ground would be covered. Let's just help and hope.

It's finally here. The JVM for the PalmPilot. But this isn't just any virtual machine - it's a distributed virtual machine. This smells of geek. A bit big at over 180k, but I'm sure that won't stop us hardcore geeks from ripping it apart.
In related news, Tim Wilkinson wrote in to tell us his company, Transvirtual, has released the first beta of Kaffe, an open source JVM for a load of platforms, including Linux. It is a full Java system, and it even does threads! Check out Transvirtual's site for more.

It's finally here. The JVM for the PalmPilot. But this isn't just any virtual machine - it's a distributed virtual machine. This smells of geek. A bit big at over 180k, but I'm sure that won't stop us hardcore geeks from ripping it apart.
In related news, Tim Wilkinson wrote in to tell us his company, Transvirtual, has released the first beta of Kaffe, an open source JVM for a load of platforms, including Linux. It is a full Java system, and it even does threads! Check out Transvirtual's site for more.

Alessandro Vernet wrote in to say "Tim Wilkinson tim@transvirtual.com announced that a new version of Kaffe, the free Java Virtual Machine, will be available in March 1998 with a new license and new AWT (the Java graphic library)." Highlights of the package include Java 1.1 compatibiltiy and a free AWT. Check out this link for more details.