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

Excellent!

[nil5]

Now I can fit my geekiness in my pants pocket and take it to parties and pick up girls and . . .

/me wakes up from another ridiculous dream

Is that a...

[cujo_1111]

Is that a penguin in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

new place for distro wars

[contrasutra]

Just when I thought the embedded market was safe, we'll now have distro wars on a PDA!

Lycoris vs Gentoo for my palm.

Actually, no one really knows if Gentoo on your PDA works, as it hasn't finished compiling yet. It always gets about half way there (est. time: 6 weeks) and the pda starts to smoke.

Better than OpenZaurus?

[NoDoZ]

How does this compare to the OSes already available for the Zaurus?

Palm OS's

[Rick and Roll]

Yeah this looks nice. But what I would really like is to have an Open Source Operating System on my cell phone. They already have 640x480 digital cameras on some sleek models. I would like to be able to take a picture with these and have it go into my Photo-Blog. This could be done by sending the image over e-mail (which might be the way I code it anyway) but I don't want to have to enter things in every time.

But putting this on an iPaq would be sweet. I dunno, though, if I shelled out money for a palmtop, I would probably get the Palm model with the expanding screen. That is nice for viewing pictures and stuff.

I'd take a look at it...

[TheMadPenguin]

If I didn't have my beloved Zaurus, I might try Lycoris... but only if you threatened me at gunpoint of course. Or maybe poked me with a sharp stick a few times :)

----
http://www.madpenguin.org

So you want to make a Linux PDA?

[IceFox]

Having worked for Sharp and have stuff in Opie and delt with quite a lot of Linux in the PDA scene. I put together an article in my free time the last few years. Some ideas you may like, some you may disagree with. A few ideas you might not have known about, and many that you probably could list yourself. Without further delay here it is:

http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/articles/linux_pd a.php

-Benjamin Meyer

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:Lycoris vs Lindows?

[Bill Kendrick]

that will be extra confusing for Joe Sixpack buying Linux at WalMart

Perhaps. But then again, they also sell countless brands of toothpaste, lots of different TVs, VCRs and DVD players, etc. Sometimes people are forced to pick/choose. It might end up being random... they might have done research beforehand... they might just ask the pimply-faced clerk "duh, what's gud for me two yoos?" :)

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:What is with Lycoris trying to emulate XP?

[beldraen]

It boils down to, "who do you think they are going for?" You? Nope. You're already copping an attitude of "why would you want it to look like XP?" Reality is that people want familiar and XP is familiar. Business wants to sell to profitable segements and people who cop an attitude and can install it themselves aren't profitable. Take Business 101 and Humility 101. Most people do not want to take the time to learn something new because most people do not have enough time in their lives to do the things that way to do, much less reinvent their way of working with a computer.

So where is this company located again? Redmond?

[LittleBigScript]

linux version 2.4.18 initially, with updates planned soon....

OpenZaurus 3.3.5 is already based on the 2.4.18 kernel but it some major problems with recognizing compact flash cards inserted after boot-time. Now, the 2.6.1 kerenel ported to the Zaurus would impress me, byt Lycoris is more interested in forking and thus gaining market interest than contribution to an excellent, but understaffed (four volunteers!) openzaurus.

According to Cheek, DL-PPC adds customizations to the OpenZaurus, Opie, and other open source project code bases that improve usability....

Meaning that they use everyone else's code, but add a "feauture" to make the background changable. Unfortuanatly they didn't recieve the memo. This can already be done easily.

DL-PPC will include the Samba-based Lycoris "Network Browser,".It's Opie-based PIMs will support synchronization with Lycoris's Desktop operating systems...

So they are adding nothing that isn't already there, but featuring their Logo will give the Zaurus credibility? Samba has been ported, as has Apache.

DL-PPC will support a variety of text-input methods...

It does already! Ever seen a Zaurus?. It possesses a thumbboard and the Qtopia enviroment has a Jot-styled input screen and a virtual keyboard, and even more will be found in the Opie fork.

What is it that Lycroris is contributing back to Linux? I must have missed that. They seemed more keen on hyping the idea or porting linux to a linux platform.

This inspired me to do Opie on iPaq yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

This Lycoris announcement looked cool so I went out and looked around for similar solutions.

I ended up putting Familiar Linux and the Opie environment on my iPaq 3850 ( I backed up the wince ROM just in case I want to go back ) It looks exactly like the screenshots for Lycoris and I got it for free.

Not only that but I can run almost all the Zaurus software out there and there's plenty (see zaurus software index website and others...) I can get a shell on my iPaq, use the Internet over ppp through my desktop via the iPaq cradle (I don't have any fancy networking h/w for my iPaq) ssh in, use my Compaq microkeyboard, rotate the screen, get a better and crisper display of text, have a media player that supports more formats, use my SD cards (3800 series only) scp files over with no stupid Activesync installation and all that crap, install and remove software with ipkg, update the whole system (which is debian-like) with ipkg update; ipkg upgrade, have a konqueror web browser with multiple magnifications that actually work and look good... etc.

I think Linux unleashes a lot more of the power of my 206mhz iPaq than PPC Windows ever did.

Now if only Opie had A DECENT WORDPROCESSOR THAT WORKED!!!!!!! Someone, please! Something that would read/write Openoffice files would be amazing.

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

386 and 486

[macemoneta]

I wish someone would package this environment for old 386 and 486 systems.