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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."
One day they will be announcing their second 1.0 release?
Cool thing about Qtopia was that it could be used with Python. Developing GUIs in python is easy and fun
Slashdot didn't link to it, and neither did linuxdevices.com, so I just thought I'd say that the Opie homepage is here.
Will Opie interact with this cell phone?
Why is this forked? Doesn't that lead to double efforts? Is it political or is there a technical reason?
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
Since this is a qt portable related anouncement, I figure people would be interested in it's gtk equivalent.
GPE or the "GPE Palmtop Environment" aims to provide a Free Software GUI environment for palmtop/handheld computers running the GNU/Linux(TM) operating system. GPE uses the X Window System, and the GTK+-2.2 widget toolkit.
They have their own nifty screenshots.
Take Care
A1miras
Can I
Should at least 2 answers be positive (100%), I'd consider installing it.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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?
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.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
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
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. :)
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
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
Anyone tried running QNX on the IPAQ? Available here There used to be some nice screenshots as well but they seem to have disappeared.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
Yes, you're a troll. Trolltech makes their money by licensing the DEVELOPER, not the end user. Sharp paid Trolltech a license fee for every copy of Qtopia that it shipped on the Zaurus. This where they make their money. The GPL solves 2 problems for them. The first is the acceptance of their products in Open Source distributions. KDE wasn't included in many distros because the licensing was "non-commercial", they re-licensed everything into the GPL/QPL for this reason. The other advantage is that the QPL permits them to roll any modifications back into their codebase. This prevents competitors from stealing their code.
...it's difficult to use it in conjunction with mobile phones for dial up without script hacking.
I have an SL5500 and I keep swapping between the Sharp rom image and OpenZaurus. The rom version that came with my PDA was fine but a little out dated. Sharp, in their wisdom, have changed the format for the PIM apps in the new rom which means I can't sync with Qtopia desktop on my Linux box any more. And OpenZaurus/Opie seems to be more suited to those using WiFi/permanently on-line connections rather than dial-up. The e-mail client either supports only IMap or is crap. PPP is a pain to set up. I like the way it works on the earlier sharp rom. Why wasn't that kept? Ideal I would want a combination of all three.
I have to say I haven't tried Opie 1.0 as I'm still running pre0.99. It does seem to be heading in the right direction but it seems unfinished in some areas. I suspect this is because apps are developed by people who want that functionality. I have the source and have looked at updating the bits I need but I don't have the time. I'm afraid I spend all my day at work designing and developing embedded systems and just want to use my PDA without having to develop for it.
Why complain? Go buy a smartphone, and leave those that want an open source PDA environment to develop it for themselves. Honestly, what's the point in saying "What's the point?"? The whole ethos of open source is, if you have an itch, you scratch it, and share your scratch code with the world. Someone obviously wanted this, so they developed it. More fool them if they are heading down a technological dead-end, which I don't think they are, but that's up to them. In any case, I guess a lot of this code can be used on a smartphone, which I guess is what the Tuxphone is.
We forked Qtopia, not Qt. Opie is still using the Qt/Embedded API as backend - albeit slightly patched. A plain Qt/Embedded program will run unmodified on a device running Opie. To get an optimized application you want to substitute QApplication with QPEApplication and do a bunch of easy further tweakings.
Cheers, Mickey. [Team Opie|OpenZaurus|OpenSIMpad|Wellenreiter]
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.
This is way off.
1) Qtopia doesnt have any SD code in it. None. That's all handeled outside of it. Qtopia and OPIE use whatever hardware your kernel can support. Sharp and Lineo put together a binary only driver for the zaurus. Handhelds.org Have an open source driver available.
2) The problem with DVD and SD aren't with patents they were trade secrets. The only way you were able to get the information on how to set up the device was to sign an NDA saying you wont disclose that information. Someone was able to dig up the necessary info with only publically avaialable documention, so now we have an open source driver.