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Netwinder is Back
Vic writes "The Ottawa Business Journal is reporting that a new company, Netwinder Inc., is being started to resurrect the Netwinder project. In case you don't remember, this was a small linux-based server appliance started by Corel Computer, which died when Rebel.com went under. See also the National Post article."
The web-based interface was nice, frankly, but the modified Redhat distro it comes loaded with is ridiculously sparse, and the omission of certain little things like, say, GCC makes adding any functionality a real pain in the ass. Unless, of course, you can find all the binaries you need for its StrongARM architecture.
Actually, they sold these with two software configurations, a dev box and an office server box. The office system had only enough to run all the Netwinder services plus the web administration app. The dev system had all that, plus all the development packages you'd get with Redhat -- it was basically a StrongARM port of Redhat 6.2 plus web based administration.
You could download the dev rpms from netwinder.org and upgrade the office server into a dev box. Additionally, they provided complete install images for reinstalling from scratch, and you could change the office server into a dev box by downloading the dev image and reinstalling.
The new NetWinder Inc. will likely be selling off their stock of StrongARM first, before they start to ship the Transmeta Crusoe versions.
The Crusoe version is x86 compatible, much faster, has floating point, comes with USB, has PCMCIA as an option, all in a box the same size as the StrongARM (same box actually). And it is quieter. Not bad for 14 Watts peak.
Yes, price is going to be the monkey on their backs. It's hard when using laptop components which are premium priced to begin with.
I wish them success though.
-- an ex Corel Computer Corp (CCC)/Corel/Hardware Canada Computing (HCC)/Rebel.com employee