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Psion May Look To Linux For The Next Big Thing

Posted by timothy on from the netbooks-are-sweet dept.

An anonymous reader points out this "interesting interview with Psion founder Dr David Potter. It explores the reasons why Psion sold their share in Symbian to Nokia and why Potter believes that there is good future for Linux on "compact" notebooks and the like. Guy Kewney is a very well respected commentator on technology, he's been doing for a long time and I've always found his insights to be pretty spot on. "

2 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Re:hmm by Ruzty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As long as the framebuffer/console video support worked properly this wouldn't be a bad idea. I mean to the end user, why would they care if their Unix-alike handheld had a Linux kernel or a BSD kernel?

    Functionality is the key, not the license the OS is distributed under.

    -Rusty

    --
    The Master (Angelo Rossitto) in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, "Not shit, energy!"
  2. Re:hmm by robslimo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Functionality is the key, not the license the OS is distributed under.

    I couldn't agree more. I'd like to go a bit further, though, and say that functionality on a wide variety of handheld and embedded devices also means modularity, even down to the level of the kernel.

    I'm not dissing Linux here, but from what I've seen so far, Linux still has a pretty large footprint until you really start hacking (in the machette sense of the word).

    The closest I've seen to what I consider ideal is QNX which has a micro-kernel that is inherently modular. Use only what you need and even swap portions in and out at runtime if necessary. However, QNX licensing, last time I checked, was pretty damned steep and the developer seats were outta sight for a small-time developer.