Can the IPAQ Run PalmOS or Linux?

Deslock asks: "I drool over the Compaq IPAQ hardware, but don't want to deal with WinCE (ver3.0 is an improvement, but retains much bloat). According to this story, the IPAQ stores the OS in FlashRAM, so I'm wondering what other OSs I can run on this cool device (Both the next PalmOS and the Yopy will supposedly use the StrongARM)."

Comments

Re: [not so] Definitely!

[adcm]

iPaq is a name, a group of products, not one single product. There are iPaq desktops and an iPaq handheld. This question refers to the iPaq handheld.

Probably Not

[brank]

The different hardware manufactures tend to add strange chips around the processor or actually put a "wrapper" around the processor in order to interface it with their hardware. There are few standards for this (CE hardware is somewhat standardized, but not as much as you might think), so it's hard to get things running reliably. You might get NetBSD going, but it would be hard to find a version of Linux that worked. PalmOS certainly wouldn't, because even the StrongARM version would still be hardcoded for use with Palm RAM, Palm buses, and Palm screens. Sorry the news couldn't be more positive.

Absolutely.

[Andy Dodd]

If you have a CD-ROM, just stick a RedHat CD in and boot.

If you don't have a CD-ROM, stick the HD in another system with a CD-ROM (it's EASY to get out.), install Linux, and boot. This is what I did on the iPaq I have at work. Linux runs like a champ.

BTW, the i810 sound/video can be a bit annoying. You need to download drivers from Intel to get video to work. Sound is easy if you've dealt with ALSA before. (I love ALSA, but creating a proper set of modules.conf entries is pure hell!)

Oh, and another option - Look into PXE network booting for Linux, the iPaqs have PXE netboot support. (If you're cloning multiple iPaqs, VA SystemImager would most likely work. I don't have a link on hand, but I got it from beowulf-underground.org)