Slashdot Mirror
More On The Compaq iPAQ Linux Handheld
alee writes "Here's what everyone's been waiting to see: screenshots of the Compaq iPAQ (PocketPC) running Linux. No, you're not going to see it running a plain-jane shell -- you're going to actually see it running X! This project is a lot more mature than I expected. Here is
Photos of iPAQ being opened, and running X and
Screen captures of the iPAQ running X." Ummmm.... wow.
Why dream? The technology has been available for years.
Wacom LCD Tablets
I remember seeing a drawing table/screen the size of a drafting table at SIGGRAPH a few years ago. It was in the Alias/Wavefront booth and they were running Alias Sketch on it. Quite cool.
Check out Wacom's PL Series. You hook them up like a monitor and you can draw on them. Very cool, and very useful. Not positive about Linux support, but I'm sure someone is working on it.
Looking at this the first thing I notice is its geared for right-handed people. Can you flip the screen upside-down?
To finish my rant, many of these palmtops are geared for right handed people. How about offering left-handed models (or trade-ins), or being more neutral?
Xscribble is a part CMU part SUN graffiti like inputting stuff. It seems to recognize graffiti like inputs. Get it at handhelds.org in the download apps src directory. It needs a few tweaks for i386 and it is picky about where its config files are located.
---------------------------------- I like fig newtons...they're tasty
It actually represents one of the "better" of the ways of running Linux on a handheld; TRG describes this... The original way of booting Linux on a PalmPilot required that you have a TRG memory board in your PalmPilot.
The more important overreaching point here, to stay on topic with this being an alternative to iPAQ, is that I don't yet see that there is a set of PIM software to make the "Linux-running" palm-held machines useful.
For instance, the iPAQ appears to require that you hook it up to something that pretends to be a "dumb terminal," or that you can control everything using pre-programmed apps that use the onboard buttons. In other words, if an application needs a keyboard, you're left "grasping" for that.
There isn't perfectly suitable Linux software to run on PDAs for the PIM needs of:
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
What I like about the tech is that I won't be locked into some closed PDA system. I won't be limited to the apps which the manufacturer created, plus those from the few people who paid to get the SDK. (The Palm is the exception to this, as there are already many apps...)
Well, it runs X, however the screen is only 1/4 VGA. Some applications happily create dialog boxes larger than the screen (duh). Apparently there are several parties working to create PDA-screen-sized X applications.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
--
It's a stroke recognizer. Strokes are similar to Graffiti(tm) but not identical. It's linked off www.handhelds.org. Keith Packard wrote it.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The only tweaks for i386 it needs are to run xmkmf on the IMakefiles. And you do need to edit a header file to change the config file location. Other than that, it works fine on my x86 box.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
DOS versions of GCC require huge chunks of memory and a 386 chip. It will not run on an 8088.
Now, your suggestion for coding on the Palm V is intriguing. What C++ compiler works on the Palm V?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
...and since x doesn't enforce policy it should be possible to make a wm that would only show one window at a time, a single button click to call up a list of running apps (one might be an app manager). maybe the os could have the buttons on the ipaq respond as mouse buttons - x supports at least five mouse buttons.
in fact i recall a wm called the tile wm what would tile windows and not let them overlap.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
XFree86 4.0 is even better at memory managment, and, while running under the iPaq, actually consumes *LESS* system resources then CE's explorer.
So you're saying that the GUI takes up less resources on X than an app running on Windows CE?
Say it ain't so!
How about telling comparing X with how much system resources *the GUI* takes up under CE instead of an app running on top of it?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Obviously haven't progressed much past the larval stage, then :-)
The above is only true for monochrome. Using colour antialiased text,
as the original poster suggested, you can do better than that.
3 vertical pixels is just about readable, although it only
works well for upper case characters, and you really need some context
to give your brain a helping hand. 4 vertical pixels is fine...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Sorry, I made a mistake. There's an errant strcpy() prototype that needs to be deleted. You'll know it when you see the compilation barf on it. Also, edit ScribbleP.h and change the path to the classifier files. And it installs a library, so you have to make install it before you can do anything.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I want something the size of a psion (preferably with a small keyboard) which can run gcc, has a serial port, uses AA batteries (so I can replace them with a quick visit to a newsagent), has at least a 24hr battery life, has a PCMCIA slot (probably for a 340mb IBM microdrive or an ethernet card) and fits nicely in my pocket.
I've looked at all sorts of devices, but they all fail on some criteria. The tiny librettos don't meet the battery criteria, psions and palms don't have the horsepower, the Aero and the Cassiopeaia (sp?) and similar things don't have PCMCIA (or ethernet/HD).
I'm thinking that a hacked lart might do the trick, but I lack the skills to build it.
Please Santa.....
What I want to know is how long before x-copilot is ported to this thing? Just think, once it's ported, you probably won't have to give up your favorite palm apps. Even under emulation, it will probably run faster than a real palm, and with better color???
I think speech recognition is where this is taking us, but the software for that is too bulky and requires too many resources to run on a PDA, for now.
Just send the voice packets to your central server, have it convert it and send it back.
Wouldn't that be iiPaq?
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
iPaq refers to both the handheld and the slim NT workstations... confusing naming, indeed.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
X works fine on a handheld. X applications might not work so very well. That's why some people are working on Gnome on a PDA. It was on slashdot a few weeks ago. If I were a moderator, I'd mark your post down as *redundant*.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I had one of these little guys for the longest time (Actually, it's younger brother, the 100LX). I loved it, sold it when I started using my pilot more though - I didn't have the money to get any more PCMCIA space for it, and it's built in memory was limitied at 1 meg (I belive there are people with 8 meg 200LX's, and the pcmcia card lets you expand that as big as you want!). This little gem had a wonderful keyboard - nice HP keys - and a seperate notepad. It ran DOS; I had a old version of Tubro C++ for it, although I'm sure it could run the DOS versions of gcc just fine.
Unfortunately, HP didn't continue developing this technology, so it's stuck with an 8088 series processor (IIRC) and while snappy, it won't run linux (it did run minix, though!). The Windows CE crap devices took over.. if HP put a clocked down 486 in one of these packages, it would be an incredible piece of hardware.
However, if you want some free advice, don't try to get an all in one unit, get a Palm V and a folding keyboard to write code on whereever, and then pick up a old Sony Vaio 505 for your breifcase and run Linux on it. This combination (although I use a Pro, not a V) has proven to work the best for me.. you get the best of both worlds.
..don't panic
E already runs on the Netwinder, so I expect you could just copy it over as a binary. Except, of course, it's incredibly bloated software, so you probably couldn't even fit it into 16M of flash.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Note that the TRG card was not solely providing 8MB of RAM, but also supplied some flashable ROM capabilities; I'm not sure which part was critical to letting Linux boot.
If you look at the uClinux web site, it really seems quite directed to use in embedded applications, and part of the documentation there suggests that many apps won't even need multitasking, which isn't terribly compatible with this being a "generally" useful platform.
I don't think you'll be running a uClinux PDA any time soon, suffice it to say...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Great, they named it after a dead rapper.
kwsNI
It's cool and all that they fit X onto such a small handheld, but i don't think common X window managers will work well.. i mean, look at the real estate that the title bars take up. As Palm showed us, handhelds work better with a different kind of UI.
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
With wireless stuff, you could admin the network from anywhere.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
You can get binaries and the kernel Here (that's if you're mad enough to try :-)
X isn't nearly as 'bloated' as many people believe. XFree86 4.0 is even better at memory managment, and, while running under the iPaq, actually consumes *LESS* system resources then CE's explorer..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Ok, so now we make X just a little smaller and throw it on the watch that IBM put out. Then we run an X server on the watch and run X-clock.
Information wants Coq
What's this xscribble program I see? Where do I download it? How does it work? Does it recognise graffiti? Why isn't there a website for it (at least in google?)
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
You can't just go buy one. They're backlogged.
But basically what you have to do is use a Windoze machine to install CELoader and bootldr. Using CELoader, you start bootldr. Then you have to communicate over the serial port (you can convert the USB cradle into a serial interface if you know how to count pins and solder), and download new flash images using xmodem.
Yeah, it's only for hackers right now, but jump in! The water's fine!
-russ
p.s. I'll have mine at LWE. Find me and ask me to show it to you.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The "Hands Off X!" which is mentioned apparently was a talk about how Scheifler had helper programs interface to X. I think the software is used in Xtalk and a2x
Imagine connecting the Xserver on your handheld to the Xclient on your PC :) All you'd need is networking support for the PDA.
With a fast network this could really rock, you could offload all the processor intensive stuff onto your PC/whatever and just have the handheld render the graphics.
With the coming of net appliances and such this seems to me like a really great way to run your household.
But unless we do stuff like this, why would we run X on a handheld at all? I mean it might be better than Windows CE, but Palm OS was designed from the ground up for PDA's I can't see taking a huge piece of software like Windows or X to a handheld unless there are some inherent advantages in doing so.
It would really be cool to see this evolve beyond just another "neat hack".
Yeah, I always by the machine with the most original name, because it says so much about it. It's not like the name is a marketing tool, completely irrelevant to all but the most foolish/ignorant consumers.
An original name says almost as much about a machine as the color and translucency of the plastic in the case.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Yes, I know this is somewhat offtopic, but I can't help but dream about this.
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
This looks very much like the screenshots of the Itsy using the pen entry system. Perhaps we can still have Linux on handhelds.
Does anyone know what is going on with Linux on Palm hardware? Last I checked you needed a special 8-meg TRG card. But now that Palms ship with 8-megs of RAM... I'd like to hear from anyone who knows anything!
Nothing would be worse then having to stare at a 500$ doorstop a few days after buying it..
Knowing Wince, it'd probably be more useful as a doorstep... hehe...
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Isn't an iPAQ a server appliance running NT?
sigs are a waste of space
wonder how long it will be until someone tries to turn one of those into a webserver?
This is the biggest issue that worries the hell outa me with all this, and one of the ONLY reasons I'm not gonna go do this untill it's more mature..
If this installation fails then your iPAQ could become unusable.
This procedure has been tested on less than a handful of units. This version, however, has a check sum code to validate that an uncorrupted bootlader is being installed, and is less likely than the previous installation process to result in an installation failure.
If you install Linux at this time then you can not return to WinCE.
Work is underway to enable you to save your WinCE image before installing an operating system, but at this time implementation is not complete.
I'll wait at LEAST untill I have the failsafe to back to CE in worst case. Nothing would be worse then having to stare at a 500$ doorstop a few days after buying it..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Hmm...need at least five vertical pixels, for 3, 8, B, E, and S, and you need at least five horizontal pixels for M. That gives you a maximum resolution of 64*48. You can sort of get by with four horizontally, giving you 80x48. I figured this sort of thing out when I was a ten-year-old larval geek...ah, youth! (wipes away tear)
Having to actually write out each letter of a command is too much of a PIA to do anything useful with it.
:-)
Perhaps, but the good news is that the original developers of Unix figured that typing on a teletype was a PIA too, so most Unix/Linux commands are just a few letters.
Cryptic? Not at all, just PDA-friendly.
-- Alastair
Now we just need to wait for the hardcore geeks to make small little color bitmaps to represent text characters in a smaller space by using pixel color to squeeze extra bits out of a smaller space, so people can have large "text" screens (at least 80x50) on a 320x240 display =:-) and then we're all doomed to turn into cyborgs =:-)
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
...but I'm not about to pay $500 for just that. Okay, if I had an expensive net connection I could run telnet too, or check out that GNOME article from my lean-to...
One thing I love about Transmeta's devices is the x86 compatibility. Okay, I'm biased, but I think there's some value to being able to run DOSEmu or Wine, or for that matter RealPlayer 7...
But also, I just can't see a lot that I'd want to use this for... Maybe I'm just not a PDA kind of person. I guess I could run 'cal', but I despise post-it notes, and I'd want to use that stylus as little as possible.
Okay; end of useful content.
Wow, imagine a beowulf of these things!
Where are the warez for the StrongArm, dude?
Hey, can it play mp3's? ;)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Ok, I rephrase.. The X Server and the twm window manager consume less memory then the CE explorer. The Linux kernel also consumes less memory then that of the CE kernel, whcih leads to an overall reduction in memory usage over that of CE using CE's explorer..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The X Server and the twm window manager consume less memory then the CE explorer. The Linux kernel also consumes less memory then that of the CE kernel, whcih leads to an overall reduction in memory usage over that of CE using CE's explorer..
So what you're still saying is that:
The X Windows GUI consumes less memory than WinCE with an App running on top of it?
TWM is a Window Manager. Get a real app running on top of that and then you can make the comparison between that and CE with a real app running on it (namely: explorer).
Also, presumably you have some hard data to back up your theory?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra