Slashdot Mirror
NetBSD on StrongARM Handhelds
sparcv9 writes "The
NetBSD Team announced today the offical start of the
NetBSD/hpcarm
port of their multi-platform OS. This port runs on
StrongARM-based handheld PCs. So far, the HP
Jornada 720 and the Compaq
iPAQ H3600 are supported. With this port hot on the heels of the
SH3/4-based hpcsh
port and last year's
MIPS-based hpcmips
port, it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the
handheld arena."
"things like server-class stability are largely irrelevant"
:).
You couldn't be more wrong. Nobody wants to reset their palm PC and lose all their data. Typically the software on this type of machines is running continually. The machine is suspended rather than turned off. Because of this, stability is a very strong requirement.
Another important requirement that is also associated with BSD is security. Consider the following scenario: I walk into the office of my companies largest competitor. I'm carrying a PDA containing very sensitive data. The PDA is equiped with a bluetooth chip (high bandwidth) and I turn the thing on to make notes in my agenda. Tell me security is not important here
All I'm trying to say here is that some of the qualities that make BSD so suitable for servers are also required in a PDA.
Of course there are some limitations as well (memory, speed), but then pda's are generally equiped with faster processors and more memory than some PC's still running BSD in many offices.
As for world domination of the OS. That is an old centralistic view of world. In the modern view a hetrogenous network of all sorts of devices and services replaces it. The OS kernel is pretty much irrelevant as long as the programs running on top of it behave well and follow industry standards. I don't care whether slashdot runs on IIS or Apache, as long as I get the content in a reasonable time I'm happy.
Jilles