Linux Yopy Handheld Preview

Isamu Noguchi writes: "The Samsung Linux-powered Yopy is coming back with a fliptop screen and an odd keyboard. A developer unit is previewed at infosync." After a series of design flip-flops, changing release dates, and nice-looking prototypes, could the Yopy actually be released?

Comments

slick

[nate1138]

That's one slick looking unit. Much better than the I-paq. Has anyone had any experience porting KDE apps to a portable like this (one that uses QT-embedded I assume)? The article didn't mention a JVM (at least not that I saw), but that could be a big way to drive application development for PDA's in general. If you could write one simple little app in java, and have it run on PocketPC 2002 (Via the Geode JVM), on the Yopy, and on the new unit from sharp. That's really the only stumbling block I see to Linux PDA's doing great things is applications. Nice pretty user-friendly applications, and lots of them.

non qwerty

[sehryan]

thats a dealbreaker right there. why go with a "calculator-style ABCDEFG" layout? odds are, anyone using a PDA is going to be familiar with normal sized computers, and normal sized computers usually have qwerty keyboards. i know personally that anything non-qwerty slows me down. sure, i could get used to it, but i am already used to qwerty, so why up the learning curve of the thing with something like that? just doesn't make sense

Re:non qwerty

[dda]

That's probably because of the shape of the keyboard, it would not be possible to fill completely the spqce offered by a PalmTop shaped PDA. That's probably why they prefered to use a user known layout (the alphabet), rather than creating a new one. After all, everybody's used to the GSM one (for the sms), which is even worse, so why not. Everybody knows it's really hard to find good compromise in this sector.

Re:Tech specs

[beme]

That info is kinda stale.

http://www.gmate.com/english/overview.htm

Wrong approach

[DocSnyder]

The Yopy would not only have been the first GNU/Linux-PDA, but also the coolest. Today, the Yopy still isn't there. Agenda VR3 and Compaq iPAQ have taken its place. The very reason for this is G.Mate not having focused on getting an external community around it.

About a year ago when the Yopy was hyped, I really wanted to get one, or at least look at the distribution. The hardware has been delayed forever, and the distribution was still "under development" accessible (AFAIR) only with some sort of click-through NDA. That is, the distribution was non-free, though they promised to GPL it once it's ready.

I ended up with a Compaq iPAQ H3660 which is basically the same hardware (16 MB flash and 64 MB RAM instead of 32/32 on the Yopy). The distribution ist entirely free-as-in-speech and quite easy to install. Compaq provides some infrastructure (the site "handhelds.org", the Skiff cluster, even some pieces of software like the bootloader or some kernel adjustments), and the rest is getting glued together by an independent developer community the same way Debian is being made (Familiar is widely derived from Debian and works quite similarly).

The hardware - i. e. the case, the LCD, the cradle etc. have matured away their worst child diseases. Meanwhile the Yopy (as in hardware) is still under development...

The secret to sucess

[Lumpy]

If they want linux people to adopt it fully, then open it fully. Tell me how to access the hardware from my software. tell me everything.

Dont want full disclosure? ok then make it a super stable, easy to use, and powerful PDA.

mpeg video playback? only good for "geee, that's neat" comments.

and make it 100% open for people to write apps.
Palm destroyed and continues to destroy windows CE (or whatever they label it today) is anyone can write apps for it, and the dev tools are 100% free to everyone.

dont make development tools free or the info to write apps free? it's doomed for failure.