Slashdot Mirror
Linux PDAs in the Field
BorrisYeltsin writes "
A story here at InformationWeek about a guy who has equipped his 3500 feild engineers using the new Agenda VR3 palmtop's. It brings up an interesting issue about the Sharp Linux PDA and how the different libraries and API's will cause problems for developers." Having now seen the iPaq running Linux, KDE, and even Konqueror, I now believe its possible.
Nowhere in the article does it say that ths gentleman equiped his people with Agenda VR3s.
In fact, it quite cleary states the he used:
"Symbol Technologies Inc.'s model 2700 PDA and a custom port from Linux provider Red Hat Inc. formed the basis of the platform."
Doesn't anyone read the articles anymore?
Or do you just let people post anything they want?
The beauty of the Agenda is that when you ssh into it, it is basically like sshing into a Linux box. Complete with Linuxy tools, and a Linux development environment. The Psion might be a cool machine, but there is almost certainly a learning curve that must be tackled before you can develop for it. With the Agenda Linux developers already have all the knowledge they need to be productive immediately (well, you might want to learn FLTK, but how long is that likely to take). With the Psion being effectively dead, there is little point in learning their development tools and API, but even if the Psion weren't a dead end there is more to the idea of handheld Linux machines than "bragging rights."
I think that Linux is cool running on my desktop computer. The idea of being able to carry around a Linux box wherever I go sounds incredibly useful, and the idea of developing PDA applications without having to learn another possibly dead end API is equally appealing. So, while I am sure that your Psion is a nifty gizmo, I am not interested in it.
Unfortunately Palm devices do crash, and so do WinCE devices by all accounts. I've been using a Palm and more recently a Handspring for some years, and I like the system as a whole, but the occasional crashes are annoying. Once I even had a crash a minute or two after an earlier crash... The Palm OS is very similar to MacOS (pre MacOS X) or Windows 3.x - applications have to hand back the CPU to the OS (cooperative multi-tasking), so it's very easy for a bad app to mess things up. In fact it's worse than Win 3.x, because the in-memory state is still there after a crash, so you can sometimes get into a state where you have to hard-reset (i.e. lose all memory state).
The Palm concept and applications are great, but the OS is really quite poor and should have been replaced a while back. The OS's lack of true multi-tasking is one reason why WinCE has done quite well in companies that want wireless applications.
The summary makes it sound as if the company outfitted their workforce with Agenda VR3s. What it really says is that they had a custom solution developed because, at that time, the Agendas weren't available yet.
I'm really looking forward to getting my Agenda VR3 since, yes, I care that it's Linux. It doesn't sound like it's ready to be a Palm-replacement from all the reviews, but hey, I just want to be able to ssh to/from the sucker and take advantage of the wonderful open-source community.
Agenda's backend order processing leaves a bit to be desired as I ordered a developer unit last week and I have yet to hear when they're going to ship it (and yes, I did call them about this).
-- PhoneBoy
The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of anyone, including the poster.
Karma whoring: Here's the URL: http://www.symbol.com/products/mobile_computers/mo bile_ce_ppt2700.html
It happens to be alot better suited for many tasks than Windows. Shrug. I use/develop on it more than any other OS. YMMV.
BTW. Getting useful "newbie" information from Slashdot is pretty unlikely, especially if you aren't a programmer to begin with. My advice: don't worry about it; you need it about as much as a car salesman needs a laser guided mitre box.
Right now, the web is littered with references to tablet computer devices that apparently aren't going to see the light of day, or will be hopelessly obsolescent by the time they do. (Epods' cool but CE-crippled pad is gone, and I don't suppose anyone's actually *seen* an FIC Aqua or ProView iWeb in the real world? See http://netappliances.about.com/cs/padstablets/inde x.htm?once=true& for a run-down of what's out there...)
a bletpc.htm (warning: this site will wedge all your netscape windows momentarily while it loads, but they'll respond again once it's all there.)
It came as a pleasant surprise then, to see those denizens of LCD affordability at ViewSonic take on this market with a choice of CE-based (but possibly hackable) or "vanilla x86" pad/tablet computers: http://www.viewsonic.com/productwizard/superpda_t
It would be nice to see some real hackable tablet hardware that could jump-start the next wave of innovation in really personal computing, bridging the gap between PDAs and PCs.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
On the flipside, it's an ironic fact that there's more software available for the iPAQ on Linux than on CE, due to the explosion in Linux over recent years and the hard work and dedication of volunteers, particularly those at handhelds.org in this case. For example, AFAIK, there's no MAME port for CE, but xmame works (with some difficulty) on the Intimate iPAQ distro.
I'm sure that lots of folks are interested in usability for mobile Linux solutions. After stability, I think usability is critical to commercial success in the handheld PDA market. Developers might want to take a clue from Palm's success, and "dumb down" their UI's so they are simpler to use. Microsoft learned that lesson with CE. 3.0 is much simpler than it's predecessors.
For myself, I'll keep buying the latest hardware and loading the (almost) latest Linux for it because I can, and because it's fun. But my Mother won't get anywhere near an iPAQ running Linux except when looking over my shoulder while I run my latest mame rom. 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Over the years I've learned a lot of different OS's. It took a lot of time. Now I've got Linux everywhere, from my Agenda to my servers. Now I can spend more time writing stuff, and less time learning obscure OS's.
I'm working to make my Agenda talk to my Lego Mindstorms, but other developers are working on usefull stuff.
I think you should have at the top of your list:
--PDA's can include intelligent code logic to give you situation specific information. E.g, the doctor who wishes to prescribe medication and the PDA says "BUZZZZ - drug interaction danger, patient XX is also taking medication YY and this conflicts with your last entry." The point here is PDA's have a CPU and paper does not. Much of course depends on the talent and effort put into the software to be used.
Interesting you mention that. My father is a psychiatrist and he carries around huge databases of psychoactive drugs on his palm. He couldn't live without it.
The advantage of a PDA:
--You can instantly call forth a date or number without flipping tons of pages to get at it.
--It has a backlight. Useful for looking up directions at night, and also if you're using the bathroom and the power goes out (happened to me. I admit it).
--PDA's are often smaller than a paper organizer, but are able to provide much more detailed information. You can compress an amount of information that would fill 100 paper organizers into something that fits into your pocket
--The ability to save a copy of your information in a safe location. True, if you back up your Palm and then lose it, you're out $150. But for some people, losing $150 is not half as bad as losing the phone number of a client with a million dollar contract, which could happen if they use paper (which can't be backed up--easily).
But you're right that there are some geeks who are more interested in PDA's as cool technology promoting such and such OS than as tools for doing valuable work. If linux PDA companies cater to the first group and not the second (which is what they've been doing) and ignore usability issues (which they've constantly been doing) linux will never become a mainstream PDA OS. A linux PDA is destined and damned to failure. A PDA that just happens to use linux, that might have a pretty good shot.
The average PDA user, even more so than the average PC user, willc are less what OS is inside as long as they can organize themselves reasonably well, and connect to the office internet conveniently.
I think thats why the Palm OS has been so successful. Its simplicty over features, although with the recent iPaq success that might start to change. The iPaqs are not simple, but feature rich (and cost as much as a reasonably sized pc these days).
I'm still working on a clever footer.
There is no standard Unix API for telling the system how fast you need the CPU to run, or that you don't need any CPU cycles for the next four hours.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
There is a Linux for Psion project see here
low memory usage isn't the coolest thing about it, though... currently i'm not using any local flash storage; everything is being dragged across via the wavelan card. that includes not only files, but even the network interface !
everything (apart from the itsy bitsy screen) is exactly the same as any other inferno installation... and even though i haven't turned on JIT compilation, it's highly responsive and nicely nippy.
forget java, which is fundamentally memory hungry and bloated... inferno makes it incredibly easy to do things which are hard (or impossible) under other platforms.
now there's just the question of how best to use these funny little devices. typing on this wee sw kbd ain't the easiest, long term! .
Palm's graffiti, while not real handwriting recognition, works great. Once you learn it, you can write very quickly. All the handhelds have really improved on this front in the last 2 years or so.
I think it's far to say, though, that for the vast majority of people, Palm works, correctly, day in and day out. Especially more so for the many users who stick with the built in address book, etc., and never install 3rd party software.
Don't get me started on WinCE. We have 2 devices at work, and nothing but trouble. Twice we've lost all the data in them because the battery dies so quickly if you don't cradle them. (These are the color iPaq that came out about a 1 year ago). For some reason, the sync software will just crap out for no reason, etc. Nothing but trouble.
Anyway, back to my original question - for anyone using a Linux based PDA, how would you compare the ease of use, reliability, etc. to the Palm or WinCE platform? No one is denying it's powerful to be able to SSH to your handheld, but I am wondering if they've got the UI refined to the point where it's good for a non-techie.
Will a Linux PDA just "work"? Or will they need a tech back at the office to troubleshoot when things go wrong? Most PDA users are not the type to compile software, etc.
I was a bit near-sighted in my analysis. Of course there are many in-the-field uses for a PDA, but being an office kinda guy, I totally overlooked that aspect of usefullness.
My bad, I am sorry that I forgot the field guys!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Now I know if I were a field researcher and my boss were to equip me with an IPAQ, my productivity would increase tenfold...in Pocket Quake. I think it's important that even researchers in the field have what office workers have had for years: work computers the growth of whose pr0n archives is directly proportional to the increase in their cumulative Solitaire scores.
If not, I think it makes a lot of sense using Java, as the article states. Does not solve all problems, but should make porting easier.
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The X server binary on the Agenda is a little over 1M and has an in-memory size of 540k. There is also about 2.5M of GUI libraries and fonts installed, although, obviously, not all of that gets loaded into memory. That's not tiny, but it's quite acceptable even on a 16M/16M machine like the Agenda VR3. On the next generation Linux handhelds, which will probably have at least 64M of flash and 64M of memory, this is pretty much negligible.
I think the biggest win of Linux-based handhelds is their compatibility with Linux/UNIX desktop APIs. And the biggest threat to them is people crafting oddball APIs because they somehow believe that these little handhelds can't run the desktop APIs. There is no need. Even the Agenda VR3 is a faster and more powerful machine than many UNIX workstations a few years ago, workstations that ran UNIX and X11 just fine.
I particularly think that trying to push systems like Qt/Embedded onto Linux handhelds "for efficiency reasons" are self-serving attempts by a vendor to corner the Linux embedded GUI market: once a handheld is based around such a non-X11 window system, commercial developers have little choice but to buy the commercial libraries. And there is no indication that systems like Qt/Embedded are more efficient in any practically interesting way that an X11 server.
So, my recommendation is: if a "Linux handheld" doesn't run a standard Linux kernel and a standard X11 server, forget about it and don't buy it--there are plenty that do.
(As an aside, the Agenda VR3 is a great machine. You have to make sure that you have a recent version of the software installed; some of the machines ship with a really ancient version of the OS. The standard calendaring applications aren't quite up to Palm3/4 quality, but for developing and deploying custom applications, it's a lot better than the Palm. The biggest limitation is the lack of expandability--support for CF cards would be really great.)
How well is the recognition of real handwriting supported? I remember _years_ ago it already worked very well in Apple's Newton Message Pad...
The form would be like this, but with real CPU and memory:
http://www.quickpad.com/
But what we are describing isn't really a "Palm Top", but just an ordinary laptop finally done right.
I think it is important that Linux handhelds not do the same thing that we criticize large corporations for doing when a standard is developed. That means it should be an open standard. That means other people (who aren't running Linux) should be able to interface with it easily.
Yes, this does mean you are making it easier for your competitor to steal your work, but that was the whole point of being open. So you don't have to re-invent to wheel, and the person who impliments the standard the best rises to the top.
Word isn't evil because its a Microsoft Word Processor. Its evil because it uses a proprietary file format that is accepted in the business world. Linux hand helds would be just as propreitary if they closed their standards to corporations (like Microsoft) when, and if, they become the defacto standard.
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