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Linux PDAs in the Field

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sometimes-little-is-better dept.

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.

3 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Read the damn article! by szcx · · Score: 5
    It is not an Agenda. Jesus.

    The only problem was that there was no commercially available Linux PDA in June 2000, when Richards started the project. Sun solved that problem by outsourcing hardware and software development to other companies. Symbol Technologies Inc.'s model 2700 PDA and a custom port from Linux provider Red Hat Inc. formed the basis of the platform.
  2. there is no problem with APIs--unless... by janpod66 · · Score: 5
    I have been developing for the Agenda VR3 for a few months, and it's great. The Agenda runs a 2.4 Linux kernel and standard X11. Standard Linux applications usually require little more than recompilation. For development, you can telnet into the device, use rsync, have workstation applications use the device as their display, or have agenda applications use the workstation as their display.

    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.)

  3. Developing Standards Under Linux by Thomas+M+Hughes · · Score: 5

    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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