Lycoris Shipping Linux OS For Handhelds

Bill Kendrick writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, it appears Lycoris has put together an OS for handhelds like the iPAQ and Zaurus. It's based on the Open Source OpenZaurus and OPIE projects, so it should look pretty familiar to Linux-on-PDA fans."

Comments

Lycoris vs Lindows?

[kevin_conaway]

On the lycoris website, it says

Buy Desktop/LX pre-loaded on PCs at WalMart.com! Check out the entire line of MicroTel Desktop/LX- Certified PCs ranging from $199 to $558.

I thought that was Lindows market. Has WalMart dumped Lindows or are they coexisting? If the latter, that will be extra confusing for Joe Sixpack buying Linux at WalMart

Re:But still not ready for the desktop eh

[mypalmike]

There is a bootloader which can load either CE or Linux. The bootloader takes up a relatively small amount of flash, so once that's in place, you can reinstall CE or Linux as much as you want. It's not exactly a point-and click procedure, but it's not too hard.

Re:Linux

[JabberWokky]

As for the kernel, you do the same thing as if WinCE crashes - hit the reset. Hit the hard reset and your system goes back to default. Windows is not some sort of magic system; Linux on these systems works pretty much the same way.

I doubt anyone would like to use linux on their PDA.. at least from the quality of the PIM apps i see on the desktop.

I installed Linux to upgrade the PIM apps from the very limited ones on my iPaq. Opie provides a much nicer environment for standard ToDo, Calendar, Contacts and Notes. WinCE provides nicer voice recording and some interesting input methods. I'd rather have the better apps that I'll use regularly. DateBk5 on my Palm III still blows them out of the water... but I can emulate Palm on Linux.

The nicest thing is that I can use PyQt on it. I can create a form with QtDesigner, do the typical GUI dev cycle of clicking on the widgets and writing Python code for what it should do when it is clicked, scrolled, loaded, etc. The whole thing is converted into two .py files (one for the UI, one for the main code), and I can copy it over to my iPaq... really fast and easy custom app creation. Custom databases, little useful apps... the kind of uses that make PDAs really shine.

if you cant take down a meeting time or a note and sync it with your PC.

Between DrawPad and Kate, I can take notes much easier than on any PDA. I use Palm Grafitti for input when doing lots of text, or DrawPad to made quick scribbles. As for meeting times, you hit the Calendar button, pick the date and go... the same as every other PDA. Syncing is quick, easy and works fine.

I use unison to sync, but that's because my entire home LAN uses unison to backup all systems to a file server. Everything that appears on the network (and is configured as one of "my" systems) gets automatically synced if it hasn't in the past 24 hours. With my iPaq, that's right after it hits the cradle and is automatically assigned an IP address.

That's a bit more difficult to set up than the default sync (which has a nice GUI interface on the PDA), but I mention it because that's the kind of thing that admins in large office networks would give their eyeteeth to be able to do. As soon as an employee's PDA goes in a cradle, it is backed up to the server... the entire thing. If they run over it with their car, they simply go to the Help Desk, fill out a loss form, and get a new PDA... configured precisely as their old one was, every app, every note, every setting, identical.

--
Evan