Opie GUI/PIM Project Reaches 1.0

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (Opie) project has announced its first 1.0 release. Having been forked from TrollTech's Qtopia environment, Opie has evolved into the most sophisticated free and open graphical user interface for Linux based embedded devices and PDAs. Opie features a sophisticated personal information (PIM) framework as well as several other productivity apps, extended multimedia capabilities and document model, networking and communication tools as well as multi language support for more than a dozen languages. Based on common industry standards like XML, Obex, IrDa et. al. Opie is capable of interacting with lots of devices ranging from cell phones to server backends. Opie is highly optimzed for mobile devices and tries to support the user with shortcuts and ease of use."

Comments

about Qtopia

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool thing about Qtopia was that it could be used with Python. Developing GUIs in python is easy and fun

why the fork?

[sniggly]

Why is this forked? Doesn't that lead to double efforts? Is it political or is there a technical reason?

iSync ?

[mirko]

What about its synchronization features ?
Can I :

• sync it to Outlook (work) ?
  
• sync it to iCal (at home) ?
  
• use my existing Qt/ZAurus apps on it ?
  

Should at least 2 answers be positive (100%), I'd consider installing it.

Is linux too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help wondering if Linux is too much for smaller devices like these. It has a brilliant place in larger systems, and small basic webservers (PII machines of only a few hundred MiHz) but isn't it a bit much for a system the size of embedded machines, devices and PDAs?. I can't help thinking that a more focused coding effort could be spent not on unixifying the entire world, but directing effort more appropriately.

Something the size of the Amiga exec kernel is under 40kb and provides the essentials and runs blindingly fast on single-digit-MiHz machines. How much performance is really being lost in having bigger more complex base kernels?

I know I am going to get a troll or offtopic...

[skogs]

I know I am going to get a troll or an offtopic...but I just don't understand the point of the opie project at all. Perhaps because I am not cool enough to use a palmtop/PDA...I use paper notes or cards in my wallet for the things I really, really...really need. Good thing I don't have a lot of them.

Question I can't get out of my head is this. All of this equipment already ships with an OS that works and that was custom designed for that piece of hardware...so why rebuild it with linux?

I like linux, I run linux...and it helps me avoid the evil empire that would like to tax me. But palm/etc does not charge me extra for the use of their palm os. I can buy niftly little game packs and everything to fit in a palm that holds all the games of my youth on it...

I just don't understand the need. Except maybe to force layoffs in big companies like palm...when they switch over to this newly made free OS. Thats what the /. community needs...more out of work software engineers.

Re:I know I am going to get a troll or offtopic...

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is: Power.

Once you've got Linux running on the thing, you are no longer limited by what someone in Redmond thinks you should be able to do.

Over the 2 years I have it now, I've used my iPAQ for a couple of things that weren't really intended and would have been difficult if not impossible to achive with windos. In fact, the power of commandline alone is worth the hassle of getting Linux installed.

Plus, of course, you don't want to ruin your karma (the real one, not the /. score system), do you? Living 3 lives as a toad isn't fun.

Re:Why don't they ever learn?

[ofels]

Who says we need income from this ?
There is not much choice if you fork a GPL based project regarding licensing issues.

Oliver Fels
Team Opie

yes...but...

[skogs]

its a palmtop/pda. Its not like you have this huge monolithic computer sitting on your desk that you do ALL your work on...and it simply must communicate with the computer at work.

The only real crossplatform need I see is for developers themselves...so that they can easily put mozilla or something on a machine. Whether or not that little doodad needed mozilla doesn't matter...whether or not you even have a keyboard that you can type on(without using a pencil erasor) to type in urls doesn't matter...because at least it migrated well to the new platform right?

gee whiz...

I can tell how badly I am going to get burned by this...even the comments replying to my nasty post are annonymous. :)

Re:Bring on the Gasoline!!!

[JanneM]

Something like Tiny X has a total footprint of 700k or thereabouts. X isn't (or doesn't have to be) that resource intensive. Hopefully everybody realizes by now that the "memory hungry" myth is just that; a result of unavoidably disingenoius reporting by system tools. And you don't _need_ a large dynamic font system with AA, or all the modules you load at run-time either, if you want to shrink resource usage further.

And X-less methods rack up that kind of resource use anyway; _something_ has to handle expose and redraw stuff, for instance, if you are aiming for something able to run more than one thing at a time. Apparently (I have not worked on it myself), qtopia requires the applications to handle WM-stuff by themselves.

I agree that Palm did a pretty good thing with their system, by only allowing one - full-screen - application to run at any one time. Easy model to handle, and resource efficient. But as the huge collection of hacks show, it is also quite limiting.