Slashdot Mirror
Linux PDA Part Deux
PolarCow writes: "Everyone's favorite Linux powered PDA retailer is back. Empower Technologies/LinuxDA are releasing a new variant of Linux-powered PDA. The new one is called the PowerPlay V. Its hardware is comparable to that of the Palm Vx. Thin, rechargable and with an enhanced display. I'm salivating already."
..From the product info page:
DataSync Program Only Available in MS Windows Platform
?
air and light and time and space
why does the Slashdot crowd get so excited when some random gadget runs Linux? do people think it has the same features as the i386 version?
an i386 OS (like Windows or Linux) needs to be crippled all over the place before it will run on a PDA or some similarly tiny device. why do people assume that the best OS for the server/desktop is the best OS for the PDA?
i'd rather have a ground-up PDA OS, myself. it's not like you can usefully share code between PDA Linux and regular Linux anyway.
I think PDAs are a great idea, and that everyone should have one. But PDAs have a number of flaws.
1) If everyone is meant to have one, surely it should act as some sort of communications device too? Manufacturers are starting to pick up on this with phone/PDA devices such as the Nokia Communicator or Cybiko, but more effort should be put into this area of the market rather than just the OS.
2) Bring prices down! I really can't understand the prices of PDAs, and that's why I don't have one. For a tiny thing with a color screen and 16MB of RAM they expect me to pay $300? Nuts.
Perhaps Linux will help slash the prices, but do the OS and applications really suck up most of the $300? I doubt it. In fact, I'd imagine most of the costs of the typical PDA are thanks to giant R&D budgets and weird non standard components. Not to mention those expensive screens..
Using Linux in an embedded setting is a start. But until we have a reasonably well functioned PDA for under $99, the majority of the population will not own one. And nor will I.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Every PDA I've seen until now, comes with connectivity to MS Outlook on MS Windows, but none (including the Linux-based ones) come with connectivity to KArm and Kab.
Although I welcome Linux on PDAs, I think it's not really the major issue at hand. What we need is connectivity to KDE.
Runs an OS that looks like a clone of PalmOS but without the ability to run palm apps. Sure it's open source. But do you really need that in a PDA?
Only syncs with Win (even palm syncs with Mac and Win).
Why even bother? These people seem to be showing even less innovation than Palm.
I just cant see a resaon why anyone (except a small minorty) would want this. They could have atleast had a sceen like the Handera 330.
*sigh*
Unlike WinCE and PalmOS, there is no single variant of GNU/Linux on PDAs, and the variety is more likely to increase than to consolidate. Some of them run X and a common widget library like Gtk+ or FLTK, some don't and run QT on the framebuffer. One distribution may use the large glibc 2.2, a different one uses a reduced micro-libc. Of course the PDAs run GNU/Linux on different architectures. Some might even choose BSD instead of Linux for the kernel, or not even a Unix-like OS.
It's simply impossible for an ISV to provide off-the-shelf software for GNU/Linux PDAs of any kind. The user won't install a different widget library or even an X server to run the software. He won't install a statically-linked binary of several megabytes in size. A Java engine is still too large at least for the less powerful PDAs.
No, he should only need to install the _content_ and use it with some kind of standardized application - an email client, a web browser, an addressbook, a PIM, a media player, even a geographical map viewer for GPS or navigation.
Today it's sheer incredible how proprietary data formats and protocols have established especially on PDAs, without anyone complaining about it. Exchange data with a desktop PIM? Read a book? Store news from a Web site for offline reading? In any case you'll need a special proprietary application on either the PDA or your desktop (Windoze) PC, or even on both. And all you care about is content, as much as you want to read Slashdot or some other web sites instead of just playing with Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror, IE, Opera or whatever your favorite Web browser would be.
Fortunately since both PalmOS and WinCE have their market share and GNU/Linux PDAs beginning to appear, there is no single handheld platform with a market share large enough to ignore anything else. So hopefully content vendors will discover that they'll only reach a larger customer base by either providing proprietary data formats and closed-source applications for a dozen of systems, or by using free specifications for their data which can be used on independent applications.
Therefore it's especially the lowest-end GNU/Linux PDAs which contribute to the need of standards. An iPAQ, a Yopy or a Zaurus could easily have two or three different toolkits installed. A VR3 or a LinuxDA certainly can't.