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Palm OS To Run On Linux
mwk88 writes "PalmSource today announced it is acquiring China Mobile Soft, a leading Chinese mobile phone software company, and will offer future versions of Palm OS Cobalt running on Linux. Full disclosure: I am a PalmSource employee -- but also a Slashdot reader, and would like to get some feedback. You can find more detail in this letter to the Linux community." NewsForge (also part of OSTG) has a textified (non-PDF), linked version of the letter.
Previously there had been some rumors of PalmOne, the maker of the Palm PDAs and the Treo smartphone, doing Windows Mobile-powered Treo.
c hinamobilesoft/
All this pretty much feels like PalmOS is having its days counted.
Vincent
http://www.oberle.org/blog/2004/12/08/palmsource-
Just yesterday one of our lead support people internally at my institution (Carleton College) commented that people are having sync problems with SP2, and noted that interest in support issues like this seems to be waning, and that less and less really interesting news seems to be coming out about Palm OS. Her impression is that there's serious trouble.
Another outfit in serious trouble was Novell. The situations aren't entirely comparable, of course, but affiliating themselves with the open-source movement seems to have turned Novell (which looked a bit moribund just a few years ago) into an interesting outfit. This move also appears to have opened up new possibilities that nobody could
have foreseen.
So who knows. If Palm OS were able to run under Linux, perhaps some new possibilities would open up there as well, especially given that Linux isn't just a platform on which Palm OS could run, but also a kind of nascent competitor in the mobile device arena.
I don't think halfway measures will help much, though. And the statement cited in the original posting (the PDF file) shows some ambivalence to the whole notion of open-source software.
We'll just have to see where this leads.
---- Richard L. Goerwitz III
I have been a Palm fan since I got my 3Com Palm III back in the '90s. I recently bought a Tungsten. It is simple to use and has a brilliant interface. (If only they'd bring back Grafitti I.) .prc apps run without much of an issue, and if they keep the interface similar, I don't really care what OS is being used - Palm OS or Embedded Linux. My main concern will simply be integration with my (now six year old) data files.
If the old Palm
On the flip side, I'd love to see a Palm-created synch tool for my home machine which runs almost exclusively on SuSE. Right now I have to use the sometimes flaky KPilot and I get issues with AvantGo.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Does anybody even buy palmtop computers anymore? For about ten minutes, every executive wanted one to replace their paper-based Franklin Daytimer, but now it seems that everybody uses their cell phones to do 90% of what they actually used their Palm computers for (address book & schedule reminders), and everybody just brings yellow legal pads to meetings when they want to pretend that they are taking notes and paying attention.
It's been about three years since I've seen anybody take notes on a palmtop in a meeting, and if somebody did they would probably be laughed at.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
What we need is not new software; it's new hardware. We need a Palm that has a real serial port, real USB expansion when it's sitting on a desktop, takes real compact flash (CF) cards (not those tiny palm things,) and has the option to read off of a real screen (that takes up the whole side of the palm; not 1/2 of it.) Also, most importantly, it must take real (AA) batteries. Internal rechargables don't work for those of us who use our plams 16 hours a day. Give me that in a Palm, and I'll arrange an order of 500. Andy Out!
Granted, Palm and IPAQ have products at this pricepoint too, but they also have a significant line of products at much lower pricepoints to attract larger volumes of more mainstream users. This volume helps insure that these have a large consumer base and market presence.
Hmm, a PalmSource employee... what would I want to say to a PalmSource employee.
Oh, right.
Apologise for Grafitti 2. Right now.
(unless PalmSource had nothing to do with Grafitti 2 - I just feel that someone should apologise for the fact that I can type as fast in my Motorola T720's phonepad by mashing numbers as I can write in plain english on my friggin' Zire 21)
While the OS is probably fine for the current generation of PDA's, several underlying reasons for this change might exist...first, by using the "free as in beer" linux kernel instead of a non-open source competitor, they might be saving money on licensing costs. Secondly, since the original kernel is already written, the "owners" might not be willing to invest much into new features, whereas funding the development of new features might prove cost effective. Whatever the reason, money certainly comes into play.
In
that Microsoft have any interest at all in fixing it? ;-)
It will be a Linux application, that runs on Linux, that runs PalmOS applications.
Why are they doing this? to allow Linux to be an abstraction layer between the hardware and PalmOS.
So, you can take all the zillions of wierd pieces of hardware that run Linux (Toasters, smartphones, IBM mainframes) and after a relatively small piece of work, run PalmOS on them.
It's a way to drive PalmOS sales. Manufacturer makes some hardware, e.g. a smartphone, that runs linux. They buy a PalmOS for Linux license, and bing! their hardware runs PalmOS, with all the palmos goodies that entails. Including (after a recompile) all the third party PalmOS apps. Oh, and it can run native Linux apps too.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Even with all the existing GPL-software for Palm devices on Linux, Palm doesn't include it on the CD-ROM they ship with the devices, they don't list Linux as supported operating system and needless to say, they will tell you to go away when you have a problem synching with Linux.
It's the actions that count, not the words.
It will comprise:
Palm PIMs and GUI, closed source, running on:
PalmOS for Linux, which might be open or closed or (most likely) a mixture of the two) running on:
Linux, which is open of course.
The reason for thinking Linux is that there seems to be plenty of PDA/smartphone hardware out there that already runs Linux, so it gives them a good installe dbase to start from.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Can I just be pedantic and point out that both your problems are with PalmOne , not with PalmSource?
So you should welcome this announcement, because is should mean PalmOs becomes available on a wider range of hardware.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
They might well agree for a "nominal" price. People could then justify the purchase of the Nintendo as a business expense...but now that they have it, they might as well look at the games that are available...
(That's one of the ways the PC overtook the Mac. Apple was determined to shed it's image as a gamer's computer, so they intentionally made it difficult to develop good games. It worked. The gamer's bought PC's. Apple's market share sunk like a rock to 10%. [I know it's less now, it slowed at around 10% and declined gradually from there.])
People talk about price, but price wasn't usually the determining factor. A good excuse, but not the deciding factor. The business name of IBM was an important part, but so was the availability of games. And the DOS games could be played under MSWind3.1, so even Apple's first-mover advantage didn't help them enough. People lie about why they decide things. They give you plausible reasons that make them look good, but one can almost always come up with a plausible reason to justify a choice made on emotional grounds.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yeah, if a product is too good, no-one will upgrade. Novell did such a good job with NW3.x that it almost bankrupted them.
No good deed goes unpunished.