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New Linux PDA Announced At CES Today
It looks like the Royal Linux-PDA project has borne fruit. Bill Kendrick writes: "Linux Devices reports that Royal (makers of the DaVinci PDA) have announced yet another Linux-based PDA, called 'Lin@x' (how do you
pronounce that!?). Unlike the DaVinci (and the Agenda VR3 -- Agenda Computing is owned by the same company as Royal), this PDA sports a 206MHz StrongARM, a color screen, and a CompactFlash slot. Planned price is about US$300." According to the PR, it will come bundled with software for Linux desktops as well as for Windows, which would be a nice touch.
This looks a lot like a Casio PDA... On another note, will this PDA support WinCE applications? Palm OS? If not, I see this going nowhere...
imagine a beowulf .... nm :)
- mescaline - its the only way to fly -
I'm still waiting for the Yopy!
>
All I hafta say is... Even my Handspring Visor Edge is more expandable than this new linux PDA!! Long live the VISOR!! Oh yeah... this is the first (rational) post...
Why would they put a @ in the name, gotta be different.
Ferna of the Fern people.
If it can run Linus, theen it can be ass immilated into my immense beowulf cluster (which, you can imagine, contains well over 5 machines).
Then I will play my favorite game on it, DOOM.
It will be fun, but DOOM is a very, very scary game in which you shoot monsters and evil humans so it will also be scary!
According to RMS from a few years back it should probably be LiGNU@X - obviously pronounced "licks nuts."
The design is nice and it definetly has good hardware (for a PDA), but there's always the issue of compatibility. I love Linux. It's my preferred operating system, but while the OS can do everything (and a whole lot more) than Windows OS, it can't run as many things. That's important in the handheld market as well. PDAs are expensive and to be worth that expense they have to serve a greater purpose than as a glorified organizer.
This is a big reason why I'm still so obsessed with PalmOS. The amount of software available for it is staggering and a good portion is free (it's also a good, fairly fast OS). Unfortunetly, the hardware it runs on generally isn't that powerful and most Palm devices aren't quite a step in the "handheld computer" direction. And since Linux doesn't seem to be making its way into the mainstream PDA market I somehow doubt that it'll ever get the amount of programs it deserves...
If you need to interpret my post, then you don't get it.
It is pronounced Lin(ux) Attacks!
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Linux: a thing that is used on a very few desktop computers.
It is used on a lot of: servers and back-endy type things that very few consumers use.
So here comes this Linux PDA. Okay, that's cool. Proof of concept, etc. But where do we go from here?
Most people use their PDA with their desktops.
If the Linux PDA bundles mostly Win software, it won't encourage puchase by Linux-desktop users (a small market).
If the PDA bundles mostly Win software, it won't encourage purchase by Win desktop users (a huge market).
It can do a combo, but it's a PDA. It has limited space, and if it wants to compete in the PDA market it had better have the same bells and whistles as your average Palm or Handspring with a proprietary OS on it. So, it can't have a 50/50 balance.
It has to pick one, Linux or Windows?
I think Linux PDA's need to be Win desktop compatible. This will introduce Linux by the back-door to many consumers, while maintaining a competitive product!
The only worry is in the minds of Linux purists, who will feel underrepresented here. However, they are (from a marketing perspective) irrelevant.
Anyone who actually wants to make money on Linux will be thrilled to see it in small appliances and PDAs like this one.
Goat sex free since 2001
Oh, wait, I still don't need a PDA, and neither does 75% of the planet... But with that out of the way, it looks cool, seems like a nice PDA, and will show the ordinary user Linux IS just as good, if not better. I wish there were a few distro's that were that easy to use for the novice, and no Mandrake is still not there. When Shit Just Works, and theres no fussing about for sound (mostly done) printing(also mostly done), and just plain accounting for the average StupidUser. I know this has all been said before, and often. Theres a reason for that. But now thanks to more and more cool little embedded devices like this one, maybe I can get some fsckn' Linux coverage on TechTV...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Sometimes you think, marketing departments are useless, then you see something like that...........
What is the point of a handheld computer that runs linux anyway? The only people that will be able to use it will be UNIX gurus that have way too much free time to devote to such a complex operating system. For a handheld device to catch on, it must be easy to use for the _average_ person (not the readers of this site). Those users want graphical interfaces and easy to use programs, not complex command line tools and switches.. the users shouldn't have to be reading technical man pages, written mostly by programmers and hackers, in order to figure out how to view or add contacts in their electronic organizer.
I've seen enough about this Linux PDA tripe. Big deal they are running a modified version of Linux. I'd rather see propertiary tight code on a upgradable eeprom than a larger OS designed FOR desktop/tower/laptop computers. :-) No Microsoft, we aren't going to pay a 1000$ for your "WinCE"ing devel kit.
All I would ask is for OPEN STANDARDS to connect the computer to the pda, wether that be mac or pc. USB would probably be the way to go, since it's on the hardware architecure of both platforms.
I wouldnt mind PAYING for a devel kit for this pda if was at a decent price. They gotta make money somehow, and the devel kit isnt a bad idea, but just as long as they don't go the MS way of Wince.. I mean WinCE
Josh Crawley
I have desktop machines at work that are less useful than my palm. A better link between PDA and Desktop could make an average PDA great.
:).
PDA friendly desktop apps, with a linux standard could be a really good thing
bo
and i stuck to it a ibm Microdrive, and rhen have my drems come true :-
This new naming convention so@nds like q@ite a breakthr@
:)
N@thdot
MS WinCE dev kit is free.
0 .a sp
http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/downloads/emvt3
You may be talking about the platform builder, which lets you custom design a version of CE for your specific hardware.
And that's my $0.32 (adjusted for inflation).
Sure, linux is great. We all love linux. Rah.
But honestly -- both Palm and PocketPC are so far ahead of linux in the palmtop area it's not even funny! I mean, they actually have applications! Ones that work... and well!
So my question is why design and build something that only a few geeks will want... and even then, just because of the "hey, it runs linux" factor?
I guess it's the same reason that GNOME and KDE don't use each other's code -- they don't want to admit that the other might be better in some areas.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
there is a serious problem with royal and customer support not to mention their inability to write software. anyone who has purchased a davinci can attest to this. royal's sync program barely worked on windows 95/98 and failed to work on windows nt only giving uses duplicate records on the pda and the sync'd desktop with every docking. and now, they're telling us that this linux pda will work with linux and windows? they couldn't get their own custom pda to work with their custom sync software. and to think there was actually a small cut following.
i'm still waiting for the promised nt support on my davinci. any day now.
As much as I like linux, I am curious what advantages does it have being used in a pda besides the 'moral' ones of being open-source and such. I mean wince and palmOS have been around a while, and at least palmOS seems to do the job right. I know linux on a pda would make porting easier but do people really want straight ports of desktop applications to a pda? Running on a 240 x 320 res screen? Although ports of software such as quake to linux pda's are cool there isn't much point aside from the 'coolness' factor.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
All I really need is OpenSSH or another SSH2 client and a wireless internet connection (either directly or through my cell phone). Does this do that easily? Is there another PDA or PDA-like device that does it better?
The Nokia Communicator looks like my ideal device but I don't know that there is an SSH2 client for it and they can't sell it in the USA anyway.
Coding Blog
Bill Kendrik, the submitter, is quite amazing all by himself. If you have an Agenda Vr3 Linux handheld, you are quite familiar with his Aliens game, among others.
He kept on top of the Agenda like glue, and develops amazing apps and games for free. I know I am just pontificating, but its guys like this that make Linux so cool.
The interface reminds me of my favorite PalmOS "Applications" button (the little home symbol) replacement, Launch 'Em. It is a really nice setup actually. Also, my vote is for "lin-ax" as the pronunciation. :)
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
If I was Linus Torvalds, I'd be really interested in finding out whether this device sucks or not - because if it does, I wouldn't want a name so similar to Linux(TM) on it.
90% of PDA platforms suck, just like 90% of anything else, so there's a pretty good chance this thing is just going to be another high-profile PDA flop. At least G.Mate (Yopy), VTech (Helio), and Agenda had the decency not to try and use the Linux name to brand their products. If I were Linus, I might encourage Royal to do the same. And I'd royally smack up those LinuxDA fools.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
All your PDAs belongs to us.
The Yopy begat the iPAQ and the iPAQ began just about every other friggin' Linux pda type gadget.
I want the ability to add a 2.5in HDD to my iPAQ. Does anybody make a CF USB host or firewire card?
Well, that issue applies to every PDA out there. Even if you have binary compatibility, you still have to deal with the hardware and peripheral limitations. The Palm machines of course were not as developed at launch as they are today. You need popularity to get apps (See chicken and egg.)
I have an Agenda Vr3. Though to some its already dead, app-wise it is amazing. I can telnet to it, run x11 apps on it or from it, and can program on its teeny-weenie bash prompt.
Linux is great for these things. Its not hard to put a little launcher on an x11 or framebuffer device that could start Mozilla, Balsa, Abiword, Gnome-PIM, or any other reasonable productivity app.
Its not like people choose Palm because it can run Ms Word in a true-color 1280x1024 display...
Compared to the Zaurus, this PDA looks like it wins in the user interface department. Nice icons, simple graphics, and no attempt at fake buttony looking widgets. The screen space on a PDA is so tiny, why waste it by drawing drop shadows and raised lines around buttons, as if on a desktop?
The Zaurus seems to win overall based on its features, but this one seems to have made some good decisions, too. Is that a jog dial on the left side?
I hope it's better than the Davinci DV-3 I have. It can't keep correct time(which renders so many features useless), the to-do list only will show tasks checked as done, and the cursive handwriting system is an absolute joke.
lin-at-x => linatix => lunatics!
Nice, but I'm holding out for the 1337 h4x0r 1i|\|@>< model.
It's a sad day when marketing droids are trying to be fashionably 1337.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Since this pda is based on linux arent they supposed to share the source code to it? If so is the source code to this pda available anywhere?
No, if you liked that, you'd definitely not be gay!
something noone has commented on just yet: did you get a look at that keyboard? Judging from the picture (and probably a sentence that i'm not seeing on my second read-through) there is a built in *physical* qwerty keyboard that you can access by expanding the PDA Transformers-style. Can anyone else say bad-ass? This feature single handedly makes this the best PDA hardware on the market.
Now as to software concerns: this is a first-gen product. I know it will be competing with third and fourth gen products from Microsoft and Palm, but we should also remember that immediately after release, the software will undergo *rapid* improvement.
it looks like the standard PDA apps will be working out of the box, and how many part time hackers will be jumping to work on ports? I can't wait for portable nethack. (and yes i know it already exists)
there are potential problems: it sounds like it takes a few seconds to power-up and boot. that's a big no-no, unless there's a very good standby mode. The name is also a mistake. "Linux" is a scary thing to most consumers, and any reference to it in the name is a marketing mistake. The interface should hide the nerdier aspects of the system completely, it worried me to see a terminal window in the review. Not that the technical side of things should be inaccessible, it just shouldn't be required for anything outside of development or hard-core tweaking.
all in all, i want one, and at $300, it will be the cheapest 200mhz, 64mbit PDA out there. Sounds like a winner.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
???
So who will use this besides people who are linux supporters? .00001 percent of you that want to run X or konq on a 4" screen do not count.
I am not saying both Palm and Pocket PC are without fault, but seriously does anyone expect this to survive more than a year?
I have been hearing about linux pda's for years now and the ones that hit the market so far hold no advantages over the current ones. And no the
Not only are these Linux handhelds competiting with the Palms and Pocket PC's, but they're competiting with each other. What are you going to do when you want applications? Is anybody going to support each of these platforms? Don't get me wrong, I like the options available. But I kinda hope in the 2nd generation (or 3rd if you count the Agenda as 1st gen) there are some standards (QTopia vs. X Window System vs. microWindows).
I p0sted this first.
valinux
No, if you want redundant, there was a program on here in NZ called backch@t.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
There is currently one compact flash based 802.11b nic out there, and it's made by Symbol Technologies. As far as I know it's the only way to keep your PDA compact and have LAN connectivity.
[palmos/pocketpc rant]At first these things only worked on PocketPC but Handera technologies has just released a driver for PalmOS, though unfortunately the Handera 330 is the only PalmOS device with a compact flash slot. Palm really needs to do something about this and their tardiness in getting faster hardware to market. Their secure digital connector doesn't seem to be going anywhere and the current 200Mhz PocketPCs will be using 300-400Mhz Intel made StrongARM processors next year while Motorla won't have it's 200Mhz StrongARM processors ready till q3 2002. I know Palm likes Motorola but they have to ditch them if they can't keep up, the Intel processors are also PalmOS 5 compatible.[/rant]
Anywho, Symbol has been very nice in that they have a developer kit for OEM manufacturers to develop drivers for their hardware and it's available here. This Linux PDA company should invest what is relatively a couple bucks in the kit and develop drivers, Symbol has done a good part of the work already and being wirless capable would increase geek appeal, which seems to be a considerable part of the market for this thing. Imagine walking around the house and using your PDA as a remote for everything, especially for queueing up mp3s, obsessively checking email, controlling x10 devices via a server, starting your car, etc.. A wireless PDA adds a lot of potential to the geek dream of building a truly networked, automated household.
I'd really like to run NetBSD on these
StrongARM based PDAs. I heard DEC had
orginally based the StrongARM based NC
called Shark on NetBSD, then some folks
back East went and starting doing Linux for
the DEC handhelds.
To access this data, it must be able to sync (wireless access, etc. are nice bonus features). Windows users need a good desktop application. They'll need conduits for, as an example, Outlook (which seems to be provided). Linux folk might appreciate "Hey guys - here's some desktop software and some conduits for KPilot ang GnomePilot." But they'll much more appreciate "Hey guys - here's how our PDA talks and these are the internal application's data structures."
Not enough space to cram all that in? Hardly. A single CDROM is plenty large for all this. And then there's the net.
The PDA itself may need the bells and whistles. But then its all about the PDA itself and what its going to do with the data once its managed to get a hold of it. And at that point, where the data came from (Windows, Linux, MacOS, biological entity, etc) is a moot point.
is a very cheap development platform for strong arm embedded linux type stuff...
which is what i did with my extremely sucky YOPY (which is now buried in the back of a drawer) but which cost >$700
I don't know if it is technically sound but it does look damn sexy!
Linux is certainly a great OS and the idea of a Linux PDA is quite appealing. But it would be far more appealing if only I could finally find one in the shops in Austria, where I live.
So far I've heard many annoucements, but what really counts for me is, when will I finally be able to buy one?
It doesn't cost the developer anything to put a Linux OS on a PDA. (Basically) true, but can anyone who is in the know give a rough idea of the cost factor? I'm just curious how much Palm and M$ charge to license their OS's. If a Linux based PDA is a solely financial decision, the savings will have to be pretty substantial.
They have to offset other higher costs of marketing/advertising a new brand to fight two or three really well entrenched competitors. Smaller mfrs also pay more for components and assembly.
Is the Linux PDA mostly a financial choice, or a quality choice for the various companies? In Sharp's case, it seems to be tech/quality; they already own a very successful PDA OS and brand.
Whatever the reason, I still want one. And I'd kill for one in a half VGA clam-shell with a good keyboard like my Hitachi! (Damn WinCe)
Sig?
Sigue Sigue Sputnik!!!
That I have a choice of HOW, not just what, I want to run. I was thinking like you until I bought me an ipaq. After putting Linux on it, I have falling in love with it. I have made it my way. The ease of being about to take the knowledge of your desktop and apply it to your PDA is one of the best things in the world. I can't express how useful it is to be able to ssh into your PDA.
Please don't get me wrong I use to have a plam and I have used the cluster fuck they call CE (you're one letter off billy). They both suck.
The journey is better then the end.
Oh, God, another non-standard window system. What good is it if all these PDAs run Linux when you can't run the same GUI apps on them? Why do people keep doing this? A 200MHz ARM is 10x as fast as the high-end workstations X11 was developed for, and it runs fine on PDAs.
This isn't leading to anything. In the first place, they're using similar hardware (I bet ARM has a reference PDA design for download). On the other hand everyone is brewing their own mix of a more of less current linux kernel, with custom adaptions to the target platform and a GUI layer that is sufficient to run demos.
Given that half of these designs are eventually be sold one day, I bet that writing software for a Linux PDA will mean port this software to at least 6 different {GUI-API, libc-version, FHS}.
The problem is: A Linux PDA may have great hack-value, but commercial success will hang on the fact, that 3rd-party apps are "ready to run" for the standard guys & gals, i.e. you install a binary & it runs. It don't see this with a situation where everyone's making up their own PDA.
My suggestion:
The companies who wish to sell Linux PDA's should develop a common standard, a common distribution (or simply they could d'accord on Midori) and common hardware requirements (Flashable-ROM for example). This "standard PDA-GNU-Linux-Gestalt" has not to be the optimum (unless you hack it), it has to be usable and deterministic.
Marquise
-- I need a new sig.
I'm an embedded systems programmer, and one of the things I'd really like my PDA to do is to be able to carry my code with me when going to meetings, etc. I can sort of do that now with my HP 200LX, but it's honestly too slow to be able to access the entire 500K of source code my current project entails.
What I really want is a PDA that's the same size, consumes the same power, has at least the features mine has, and is just plain faster. I'd like a better OS, but I do have access to tons of shareware progs with DOS as an OS. A color screen, touchscreen, and a backlight would all be nifty, but I do just fine without any of those today.
I really just want a PDA that I can use as if it were a smaller version of my actual computer, and to be able to use it that way, I think it needs a keyboard.
I'm probably just going to have to buy a used Libretto.
Help find a cure for Gidget.
hawkfan, you wrote: "I use my Palm V regularly as a serial terminal for routers and headless machines. I've found, of all things, ed, to be the most usable editor in this environment."
:)
... I hope you have one of the available keyboards or something. I can't imagine entering much text via Graffiti, at least for sysadmin work. I like Graffiti pretty well even, but it does have a lot of built-in tedium from backspacing due to misrecognized characters, at least for me.
:)
This is a serious question
What do you use to input text?!
I know people use their Palms as serial terminals, which is neat just by itself. But
If you're using Graffiti, how many characters at a time are you using it for?! I hope you're not writing long scripts that way
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Look real close at the blow-up version of the photo. The lettering and icons have no perspective. They're photoshopped onto the image.
If they're planning to go to market with a device in less than 6 months, don't you think they'de have a REAL photo of it? Mmmhmmm.
Ahhh, I love the smell vaporware in the morning...
Bowie J. Poag
Run a Palm emulator under Linux on one of these boxes and get the best of both worlds! I would imagine that since it's ported to the IPAQ it shouldn't be that difficult to get on these damn non-X boxes..
Here's a link to an older one, hopefully there is something more recent available now.
http://www.netcologne.de/~nc-metzlema2/arm.html
-- I speak only for myself.
I'm sorry to be bitter but after a hundred "new linux pda" articles, we have yet to see the "this linux pda is the shiznit!" type article from popular media press which details exacty how cool it is and why it is better than palm or wince.
:P
Bleah.
Speak truth to power.
does it use Gnome or KDE? :)