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GNU/Linux On The Prowl: PocketLinux
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.
Yea, that's why I said that. Of course, BeIA has the advantage that it takes both less time and less cost to implement. For example, it is much more modular and thus quicker to customize, and it already has a GUI that can easily fitted to a developer's needs. In some cases, these will outweight the cost factor.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Oh and another thing. BeIA is probably going to take less time to implement. While it may cost more, many manufactuerers may just raise the price of the product slightly to beat competitors to market.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Actually, I think we've got several thousand stuffed PocketLinux penguin toys on order, so the answer is ... probably. ;-)
We're actually doing this for the core class libraries on the Helio (which is only a 75MHz machine), in order to shorten the startup time.
We'll openly admit that our solution might have heavier core requirements than a conventional embedded OS written from scratch (eg. PalmOS). But we've got orders of magnitude greater functionality as well (full Linux kernel, full JVM, a set of class libraries which is shared between all the apps, etc). For a buck or two extra for a CPU with an MMU and a decent clock rate, you get the ability to code at extremely high levels of abstraction. As far as tradeoffs go, I think that one's a no-brainer (it's a pity that the current generation Palms are still using a slow Dragonball).
There'll always be language wars, and everybody has their favorite. Java, as a language, isn't that bad of a choice, because it's easy, robust, full-featured, and very modular. The downsides to it are pretty minimal, and mostly theoretical. The worst downside I can think of is just the fact that the trademark is controlled by Sun, who are trying to extract a profit out of it.
We're just tracking the handhelds.org kernel sources as far as the iPaq goes. At the moment, our demos just write to a ramdisk, so you lose the data if the battery runs out and you haven't synced.
:-)
It's looking like Linux is going to have an extreme amount of configurability in how this all gets set up -- so one thing's for certain -- it will ultimately do things the way you want it to.
Well the vtech Helio and the iPaq are based on 32 bit risc chips with mmu's. (MIPS and StrongARM) So unless palm puts an mmu and addresses the other concerns of the tiny hardware then I think youll never see a usable linux on palm hardware. Yes you can work around not having an mmu but it makes everything development more difficult and the hardware slower.
What gives is that your Visor Deluxe has a paltry 16 MHz DragonBall EZ processor, with no semblence of a MMU. uClinux would run on your Visor, provided it had a reflashable ROM (I've no idea if it does or not), and someone thought it to be worthwhile enough to get it running on it.
:)
The VTech Helio, however, has a 75 MHz processor in addition to flashable ROM, making it a worthwhile platform for a PDA version of Linux. And unlike uClinux, the version of Linux which runs on the "crappy" Helio is full-blown Linux 2.4.0, as opposed to a stripped down version of 2.0.36.
Now, what PDA hardware did you say was crappy again?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
First off Kaffe is currently up to 1.06 and the LW review was comparing an old 1.04 release. Why use Kaffe on an embedded device? 1) Its fast, all of the other embedded VM to kaffe and see which one is the fastest. 2) Kaffe is tiny when compared to statically compiled binaries and shared libraries with glibc. 3) Kaffes awt implementation renders straight to the FB avoiding X or any other windowing environment. Think about it with kaffe you pretty much have the kernel and the kaffe binary and thats your os. Since it is java just about every small java application on the web will run on this thing. And BTW: Suns java license is not Free Software. The SCSL is almost as bad as MS license for the win NT source.
Americans love to OWN cars because the population density is so small compared to Europe and Japan, and thus cars are much more a necessity here; buses, trains, subways, etc simply need more population density than most American cities provide. If you're going to use a car for shopping and commuting, you may as well own the dang thing so you can keep your stuff in it. Furthermore, cars are too expensive to have a small one for commuting, a big one for the whole family, and a pickup for hauling. So families have one hauler and one smaller, and someone has to use the big hauler for commuting.
Infatuation my ass. Individual on-demand transportation is a necessaity for most of the population here, and will be for quite some time.
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Infuriate left and right
Please do give us a report of what the PocketLinux distro was like on your Helio. If you don't post it here, please email me.
Do you know if PocketLinux has power management, and the app launcher like the iPAQ version of PocketLinux? I tried out the vhl-tools version of Linux, and it was pretty rough- to be expected, but pretty cool nonetheless.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
>For mass produced embedded use, Linux has the advantage -- zero cost.
And it has the DISADVANTAGE of the GPL.
PicoBSD doesn't have the shackles of forcing the release of source code.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
We like the GPL.
:-)
We weren't motivated release under the GPL because we are all that interested in dual-licensing (although if somebody wants to twist our arm, I'm sure we could do that).
Instead, we chose the GPL because we want to build a real "community" around PocketLinux, and the GPL sets the ground rules in such a way that people that want to go proprietary are on their own.
Ultimately, PDA's are very personal, and we feel that the best ones will be free to their very core. Some BSD advocates feel that the GPL is more restrictive - they may have a point, but it's not terribly material for what we want to do with PocketLinux.
Just because we're located in Berkeley doesn't mean we have to tow the line on the age-old GNU vs. BSD licensing debate.
Just one thing.
The Helios homepage has this stuff about "resetting your handheld" and "locked up applications". Coming from a Palm/Visor background that's sort of stunning. Should I expect this from my Palm device? Until now I've never considered (or had cause to consider) that my handheld would screw up and lockup forcing a 'reset'.
Hmm, maybe I should dig around with the Palm stuff...
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
Also... I doubt that we'll see the end of the PC anytime soon. Sure.. u might beab;r to send ur e-mail from ur small device... but there are lots of people out there who will always need the most powerfull, and biggest computer. 3D modeling comes to mind... and 100's of others...
I predict in 10 years time.. All I will jave wil be a thin desktop computer (wich will have my TV and stereo aswell). And a small portable device, which will be able to do alot of the things the desktop could. Who knows... maybe i could just plug this futuristic PDA into a dock type thing... and just have the one PC.
Anyway... y would i want to carry a PDA, a cellphme, an MP3 player, when I could just carry the one.. maybe this end of the anything box is true 4 some peole... it's the total oposite 4 others
We don't currently have a terminal emulator in our demo, but I do know that there is already GPL'd Java telnet applet available, which could theoretically be made to telnet to localhost, thus giving us the same capability on PocketLinux.
If you've never had your palm or visor lock up, you're either the only one, or you haven't had it very long. I have a visor and know several people with Palm's, and we've all had our's lock up. Sometimes requiring a soft reset, where you keep all of your data... and sometimes a hard reset where you lose all of your data. Usually the lockups result from some 3rd party program that was loaded.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
The author, along with many top people from many companies, asserts that the "anything" box is dead and that the future is moving towards smaller, specialized computers. This is the logic of the network machine, the logic of the compact car. It seems to make more sense than the all-purpose desktop computer + PDA -- and it is also doomed to failure.
The American infatuation with the desktop computer and the PDA is very similar to our love affair with the car. Cars are big, cars are possessions. While successful in many other cities, shared car plans have never really caught on (although there is a plan in the works for Cambridge, or so I have heard). Why? Americans like owning big cars, SUVs and cadillacs. They like owning them. A car is not just a tool to get from one place to another -- it is a lifestyle.
In the same way, cell phones are far more popular in Scandinavia and gadget-crazy Japan than in the U.S. While there are many factors that can help account for this, one important observation is that Americans treat computers like they do cars. We don't want gadgets. We don't want a bunch of specialized devices that each only do one thing. We want a big mother****ing computer fully loaded with an AM/FM cassette, kitchen sink available as an option.
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Given that tools such as Kaffe are no longer needed on Linux now that we have a complete, official JDK from Sun (with a better JIT as well, see the August LJ for info), I think that Transvirtual was thrown into a situation in which there was no future for them in the Linux world. Rather than doing what they did in the past (ie, innovating), we know see that they are hawking a bizzare mixture of Linux and Java (with XML thrown in for buzzword compliance) at the PDA crowd, perhaps the last market in which flash and glitter is more important than real results.
People buy PDA's to jot little notes or as an address book. Anything else is just another feature to list on the box (and listing Linux is guaranteed to make geeks drool). How many people use PDAs to run Java-enabled distributed applications? Not many, I'm guessing. Worse still is the use of Java. Why bog down an already slow processor and waste precious battery lifetime running a bloated JVM when native code would work just as well? For small systems like PDAs, speed is a much more important factor than portability. Client-side Java is dead on the desktop, and I'm guessing it will have a short life on PDAs as well.
All in all, this seems to be YA Linux PDA: loaded with features no one wants, no one needs, and no one will use. But hey, it's got a penguin on it, so that's guarenteed sales to the geek demographic.
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
wasn't there already a "PocketLinux" that was a single floppy distro? (hence the name...the floppy can fit in your pocket.)
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
...or is this being done solely for the sake of proving it possible?
I decided about a year ago that if I ever decided to get a PDA, it would be the Palm. (I've wavered over just which model I should get, but I like PalmOS, nice and simple). The only thing I would do with a PDA is take notes/schedule my day. If I want to hear music, I'll bring a Walkman/Discman/Rio. If I want to watch movies, I'll go to a theater. If I want to read a book, I'll go to my local Barnes & Noble.
Personally, I think it's a waste of time and space to squeeze a Linux kernel on a PDA. It would be hell if you yanked out the batteries, checking the entire flash memory would take a long time. Furthermore, what's the point of shoving a server operating system onto a handheld organizer? To all those who say, "Because I can," I say, "Go ahead, waste your money." I'm not the one using a rocketship to travel three blocks down the street.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
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/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
This brings linux to a different type of user. I have to tip my hat to the guys you did this thanks
I would definitely say that this is not the place for Java. I mean Java at is core was not made to make things faster or less proccessor intensive. When your working in an environment like a these, there are huge constraints on memory use and overhead.
Even though Java does provide a faster development process and more extensibility, as the article says, these things shouldn't be made to do all, they are aimed at doing specific tasks as efficiently as possible. So the main strengths of java aren't even neccesary. I mean, other, more low level languages can read XML and use other 'buzzword' technology just as good, and faster.
-- Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people. Guns just make bullets go really, really fast.
Is there wireless support yet (cdpd, richochet, omnisky, etc.)? I wanna be able to sit in the park, read slashdot, and run nmap on entire networks from the comfort of the soft grass.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Just to get this misconseption out of peoples minds, the iPaq is not a product. iPaq is a product line from Compaq containing multiple things like the PocketPC, WebPC, an MP3 player and probably more down the road.
Considering all the bitching that's been going on with Qt vs. the GPL? I wouldn't be suprised if developers get a little scared, since they have to develop the equivilant of Qt +a WM to use PocketLinux in a product.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
http://www.linuxce.org should have the answer.
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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Ahh, you miss the point here.
If they're developing and licensing it themselves but are committed to going for an open license then yes, the GPL is probably better. Big 'if', though.
What we're talking about here is a pre-existing program which they want to use and which happens to be under an open license.
As it's GPL with Linux, they have to release all their modifications and make the code available. Reduces the chances of them managing a USP.
If we were talking BSD they'd be under no obligation to do anything. They can use it pretty much as they please and don't have to distribute their stuff as anything other than binary.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
> > GPL sets the ground rules in such a way that people that want to go proprietary are on their own.
> If that is your goal, what will you do when someone uses your platform w/o releasing their code?
We've got realy nasty lawyers.
I don't think that anybody has gotten serious
about writing a JIT for kaffe for SuperH yet, although we're certainly open to doing it if some company wants to lend a bit of support (we're pretty busy). It would probably only take a few weeks, if that. We accept patches too. It's probably easy to get it running just as an interpreter.
Interestingly, here is one place BeOS will be competing with Linux. Be has recently announced a deal with Compaq to use it's BeIA OS in some of its machines. Neither OS really has a clear advantage in this field. Since most of the handhelds will use non X-based GUIs, POSIX will be about the only standard that the Linux-Desktop and Linux-handheld OSs will have in common. Since BeIA has POSIX support too, application support will not be a big factor here. Linux has the advantage that it is OSS, which enables developers to customize it. Although BeIA is very modular and customizable also, Linux may have the advantage here. Linux also has the advantage that it is free. However, BeOS has the advantage that it would probably be quicker to work with, since it includes a GUI that is easily customized for a PDA-maker's needs.
The future is really pretty cloudy. It is very probable that the two will compete, because undoubtedly BeIA will scale down from Internet Appliances to handhelds, while PocketLinux will scale up from handhelds to IAs. Neither really has a technical or performance advantage, because most of the speed issues depend on what GUI the PDA-maker chooses to use. I think that the two big factors here are going to be GUI quality, and ease of implementation for the PDA maker.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Given that tools such as Kaffe are no longer needed on Linux now that we have a complete, official JDK from Sun (with a better JIT as well, see the August LJ for info), I think that Transvirtual was thrown into a situation in which there was no future for them in the Linux world.
;-) Even if the more 'important' of these platforms are now covered by IBM and Sun, it's great to have a free JVM that seems to be relatively easily portable to new platforms. So Kaffe is definitely needed! And although Linux JVM's are available, the diversity is a great thing to have.
Kaffe still has an impressing list of supported operating systems and processors. And that list is not even complete, they changed it recently, there also is support for FreeBSD and I don't know what else is missing. They even claim to support the Hurd / i386
Great to hear! Word on the street is that Vtech has been very helpful in helping develoeprs with information about the hardware, but I suppose you've already tried to speak with them. Are you planning on adding microphone support?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Out of the box it outperforms my Palm Pilot. It runs on a 75mhz MIPs CPU with 8MB of ram and 2MB of FLASHABLE (ie. can upgrade the OS, etc) RAM. The unit uses an interesting method that allow you to completely swap in different operating systems.
I _totally_ see a big future for this little device. Below are some links
Transvirtual's Pocket Linux Site
Helio HomePage
Sourceforge Linux on the Helio page
And.. If this isn't enough for you. There is another company that has put Linux on handhelds. They were at LinuxWorld also (I never saw them), and were demoing their Agenda VR3 Linux Handheld. Their web site is at: Agenda Linux Handheld
The Agenda VR3 will not be available til around October according to their WWW site. The vtech Helio is available now. I hope they both do well, but I'd have to say the helio has an edge over the VR3 with it's sound recording features, plus the head start jump on the VR3.
Oh.. Of course TransVirtual's Linux software and Kafee software for the Helio are GPL!!!
I am putting Linux on my Helio tonight. Please post pertinent links and info. Will report back on how it went tomorrow.
This stuff isn't useful in the sense that you can now brag about the number of httpd processes you've got running in your pocket as much as it is to have a familiar OS platform that isn't likely to be obsolete soon.
IPaq comes with Windows CE 3.0 which has yet to prove itself in the market and faces an uphill struggle with the specter of previous Win CE releases over it. The Helio comes with VT-OS so that it may run some basic PDA apps but VTech doesn't seem to be interested in establishing the OS on its own. They're pointing towards Linux for developers.
Sure, PDAs don't need all the features a PC Linux distribution comes with, but then Linux is just a kernel that happens to work on these MIPS processors. The open source concept is just as valuable for developers for this format.
I hope this development will revive some other machines. Most older Windows CE devices generally have comparable specs to the IPaq and the Helio and could have a second life with a nice Linux distro.
Flo