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Royal Linux PDA Finally Coming To Market
An anonymous reader writes "According to LinuxDevices.com: 'After a false start and a delay, Royal appears ready at last to ship its Linux-based PDA, the Linea LX. The Linux LX is now expected to arrive this quarter, priced at $399. The device will be based on a 200MHz Motorola i.MX1 MDragonBall processor equipped with 64MB of SDRAM and 32MB of Flash memory, and will include Trolltech's Qtopia graphical framework and PIM suite.'"
Bah, this has the exact specifications of a Zaurus SL-5500. And it looks cheaper and clunkier and the keyboard is some snapon crap. And it's $400! You can pick up SL-5500's these days for cheap.
For the record, I do love my Zaurus. The battery life isn't super, but it lasts about a week or so worth of actual use before I need to charge it (unless I'm in a meeting and need to "take notes"...read: play a game). I don't code on it though, but it's highly beneficial to be able to get in and tweak various scripts to do nifty things (like when cards are inserted).
Anyway, if you're going to spend $400, you can probably get a newer model or an iPAQ and load OpenZaurus/OpenEmbedded (yes, it works on non-Zaurus hardware). You'll probably end up wanting that anyway.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
What benefits does this PDA runs Linux under the hood provide? The only mention of synchronization is Outlook. Did they choose Linux for the "it's Linux, therefore it's cool" factor or did they choose Linux because it's a good kernel to develop this kind of hardware on?
I dunno about this thing but having Linux on my Zaurus was great. I could sit there with a fold-out keyboard and fire up Xwindows, running programs like Octave (a Matlab clone). I could do VNC, SSH, AIM, email, and browse the web. I could do any of this just about anywhere on campus.
Running Linux means that it can run Linux software.
Life is too short to proofread.
There have been three Linux PDAs yet, which have become available in the market actually: the Agenda VR3, the SHARP Zaurus series and the Yopy made by Samsung. Some other Linux PDAs were created for developement purposes only (e.g. COMPAQ Itsy), others were announced but have never made it into the market.