Slashdot Mirror
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."
OK, I RTFA'd and the article mentions the necessity of a 3rd party app in order to "benefit" from the Outlook connectivity. It also says OPIE can natively run Zaurus binary packages but strill no mention of "iSyncability". :(
Trolling using another account since 2005.
> How much performance is really being lost in having
> bigger more complex base kernels?
None. Performance is dragged down by a bigger kernel in return for more functionality
Functionality is what people want from a computer, PDA, phone, whatever. To a person who wants a PDA, they don't give a hoot if the thing isn't doing job X at the most blindingly fast possible speed, if it can do jobs Y, Z, alpha and omega for them as well. The same reason applies for why nobody writes 100% of everything in assembler anymore; performance is one thing, but if you get a high performing product to market 10 years too late because it's coded in assembler, and find it's unable to change architecture without a long tedious process of redevelopment, then you don't have a product at all and will lose out against those product that change quickly according to demand. Sounds scarily also like the Amiga.
Likewise, computers will always seem about the same speed. I've oft heard the phrase "My 2GHz computer doesn't feel any quicker than my 200MHz one from 5 years ago". Cool. That's because it's actually WORKING. it's doing 10 times as much, but at the same speed. my 200MHz computer from the 1990s couldn't play movies, dvds, mp3s, recompile most of the OS at a whim, nor multitask to anywhere near the ability of my latest one.
It does more, at a human paced speed. Next year's machines will be just the same.
So this means we have Linux on the Zaurus, PalmOS, WindowsCE, PocketPC, Smartphone, Symbian and now yet another to be added to the list of interesting ideas that will not challenge the market.
Sorry to be cynical, and it does look nice BUT, are PDAs really going to survive more than another year or so ? Already PDA sales are outstripped by about 10 to 1 by Smartphones, and that ratio will only increase in favour of the Smartphone.
So if there was a real desire to create a new OS, why not pick a new platform and aim to create the smallest, most portable and most function rich environment for smartphone development, now that would actually be aiming at a future market that could exist. Of course this is more complex as you'd need to understand the GSM/GPRS/3G stacks and lots of other nasty telecoms elements. BUT at least there is a chance of a large company taking it on.... because in a Hardware driven market the only way to get acceptance is if it is installed on a device upfront.
Its nice to play with this stuff, but wouldn't it be better to go for the future than install it on kit that is obsolete ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I really like the fact that I can do this. I can't do any of this on some propietary system.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Anyone tried running QNX on the IPAQ? Available here There used to be some nice screenshots as well but they seem to have disappeared.
>X? On a palmtop?
The PalmPilot Pro had more CPU and memory than the NCD X terminal the local University threw out.
If a 12 Mhz 68000 can run X, then anything (even those $50 cheapies) manufactured today can run X.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Thats the popular meme, but developing a usable gui in VB is a complete nightmare.
Many Windows people think that GUI Builder == VB, and there are no other GUI builders. Qt Designer beats the pants off VB, as does Interface Builder on MacOSX, and Glade for GTK2 isn't bad.
The only advantage VB has is third party controls. In any decent recent widget set, the number of times you need these is dwindling, and deriving your own is easy. Especially compared to making a activeX control which actually has functionality. TBH, most activeX controls can be categorised into these three classes: fancy grid, fancy graph area, pointless waste of time.
In short: developing guis in VB is neither quick or easy. It sucks, and VB makes anyone with half a brain want to kill themselves.
I use OPIE on an old P200 laptop with 64 Meg of ram. It makes a real nice desktop PDA/rolodex. It's pretty decent running from a shell using the frame buffer, and makes good use of an otherwise obsolete laptop. It may not be exactly the most portable solution, but at least I have a workable text editor, mail client, and PDA I can take with me on trips. Id thought about offering that to the others in the office, but since its not exactly a Palmtop solution and they wouldn't know what to do with Linux outside the PDA environment, I thought better of it. But for me its nice to have the PDA, and be able to drop to a shell to use basic tools like VI when needed, or play Doom or Quake on the plane.
To me, Opie just seems pointless. Being based on Qt/Embedded, the Opie environment only runs Qt applications, so most UNIX GUI apps don't work on it. And being a GPL'ed fork of Qt/Embedded, people may not even be able to ever develop commercial software for it even if they were willing to pay Troll Tech's licensing fees.
Now, if Opie were a great self-contained PIM suite, maybe it could survive on that alone. Unfortunately, it isn't: even the cheapest Palm is a much more effective and convenient PIM than the Opie environment.
As far as I'm concerned, GPE is a more interesting project. It may not be as mature as Opie yet, but in the end, it will be more useful. If Linux has a future on handhelds at all, I think it will be based on Gtk+ and X11, not Qt/Embedded.