PSION Resurrected By Linux

razzer writes: "The PsiLinux.org team have worked magic with getting Linux to squeeze into its new home of portable computers. Thanks to the falling prices in hardware the PSION 5mx is the most powerful, cheapest and smallest way to carry your best friend Tux in your pocket. Something no geek should leave home without. But now its gone one step further, check out http://thomas.de-ruiter.cx/projects/psion which is Tader's site. You really need to see these PicoGUI ( http://www.picogui.org/ ) screenshots. The best one has got to be this one which shows the oustandingly attractive aqua theme."

Comments

Shafted by Psion, but probably not there fault...

[rixster]

My personal experience with Psion is that had a great history of leading edge technology PDA's that worked, but when I jumped on the bandwagon with a netbook (or notbook - see later), I was less than impressed with their promises of continued development
The netbook is an awesome machine - it still gets 'oohs' and 'aahs' from co-workers who haven't seen it. It's got a 640x480 touchscreen screen with full keyboard in a clamshell type design. I've got the 64Mb version with a 340Mb microdrive for any rubbish that I need. Here are the things that I absolutely love about it :
* Instant on - i.e. within a second. Beats the hell out of booting a laptop, even from sleep mode.
* The bundled apps, although minimal, are perfectly functional. Wanna write a doc, do a spreadsheet, read / write email ? Absolutely no problem
* It stops me tinkering. It just does the job
* 6 hour battery life. speaks for itself.
The things I despise :
* It's called a netbook. It's networking drivers are still 0.1, support the barest minimum of devices and frequently crash. How can you call something a netbook if it doesn't network ???!!!
* It's TCP/IP over the Irda is shockingly bad. Probably goes back to comment 1.
* Minimal, some say none, Mac support. Oh well.
* Lastly, FORGET about any further development about Epoc 6. Oh yeah I was an idiot to believe the rumours about that !!

To have a usable *nix ported to a netbook would be an absolute godsend. I could code here, code there, email, etc etc. Man I would *pay* (and I mean pay) at least 100 GBP to get my netbook running a reasonable X with just the simplest apps working.
Anyway, please keep up the great work linux -> psion porters. PLEASE !!

PicoGUI help wanted

[micahjd]

PicoGUI already runs on several platforms, including the Agenda VR3, the VTech Helio, TuxScreen, uCsimm, and now the Psion.

PicoGUI's still in need of developers, authors, and artists. We need developers to write PicoGUI applications and help debug/extend/port pgserver. We need authors to write more documentation. We could even use some artists (preferably with some programming knowledge) to make some more themes. If you're interested in helping, join the pgui-devel mailing list or stop by the #picogui IRC channel on irc.openprojects.net.