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Linux Yopy Handheld Preview

Posted by timothy on from the till-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes dept.

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?

2 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Company Links by A+Commentor · · Score: 5, Informative
    You can also see it at:

    yopy.com

    gmate.com

    And the announced that it's shipping end of November on the 'gmate' site.

    --

    Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com

  2. Wrong approach by DocSnyder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...