Inexpensive Handhelds for Linux?

Dr. Manhattan asks: "My PDA was stolen on a business trip, and I'm looking for a replacement. I've enjoyed Palms for their simplicity and long battery life, but I'm not afraid to program and I'm considering something that can run Linux. However, my budget is rather limited; $150 is all I can spend. Relatively obsolete tech is fine, but I'm looking for: good battery life (my old Palm could run for weeks on a charge; I'm hoping for double-digit hours), dual expansion slots, all of the onboard hardware solidly supported by Linux. Does such a beast exist in my price range?"

Comments

here's a suggestion

[Jane_the_Great]

I'll sell you yours back for $100.

Zaurus SL-5500

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get them for about $150 on eBay. They have 1 SD/MMC slot, 1 CF slot, 64mb of ram and an insignificant amount of built in flash. You can get a 1GB SD card and a WiFi card and you will have what you want. The one problem is that the SD/MMC driver is binary only and keeps you stuck on 2.4.18 until (if ever) an MMC only driver gets written and GPL'd.

Re:Zaurus SL-5500

[n1ywb]

As an SL-5500 owner, I can tell you that the battery life sucks. 3 or 4 hours of use, a couple of days on standby, tops. Less with WiFi. It's too bad because other than that, it's a great device. The newer zaurii are much better in this department but out of your price range. Some of the older iPaq's have pretty good Linux support, I'm not sure about specifics. You're probably going to ahve to do some of your own research on this. Try google.

Re:Zaurus SL-5500

[Trelane]

3 or 4 hours of use, a couple of days on standby, tops. Less with WiFi.

Well, that's with the 2.x series Sharp ROMs. If you upgrade to the 3.1x ROM from Sharp (which brings it, from what I understand, to be about in-line with the SL-5600, it does nice things like turning off any cards when they're not being used, and battery life becomes quite nice (I've gone for a week or more with one charge, not using wi-fi). Additionally, the new MP3 player in the 3.10 ROM can turn off the screen; I've gotten a solid 8 hours of continuous MP3 playing time. Unfortunately, last I used it, The Kompany's OGG player does not turn off the screen, and is limited to 4-6 hours.

All that said, I've (in November) bought a PalmOne Tungsten T5, since it has builtin bluetooth (no WiFi, though. :() the DriveMode, and Linux syncs quite well with it and a few common apps. While I could never get my Zaurus to sync with Linux in the sharp 2.x ROM series, the 3.x ROMs out and out don't support Linux, and the protocol used is (yet) unknown. This, coupled with Sharp's withdrawal from the US market, caused my switch back to Palm. By no mistake, I still have my Zaurus as my sidekick, since it is truly a mobile computer (for instance, Calculon comes in quite handy in physics), and the OpenZaurus ROMs are quite impressive (though they definitely have lackings yet, esp. wrt. power management).

linuxdevices.com

[tchuladdiass]

linuxdevices has a fairly comprehensive list of what is available. Unfortunately, you'll be disapointed. Your best bet might be to get an older Compaq iPaq and put Familiar on it. But the Compaq's don't have a built in keyboard, and the SD slot might not be supported under Linux.
To get a device you'll be happy with, it will cost from 300 - 800 dollars -- i.e., one of the Sharp Zaurus lines. They have built in keyboard, good display, sd & cf slots, etc. But support from Sharp is lacking -- they keep on discontinuing models, they totally screwed their community (by pulling the plug on the community development site). Of course support from zaurususergroup.com is good. But again, they are out of your price range.

Or, you could hold out till Palm comes out with their linux-based distribution. You might even be able to upgrade to it on existing arm/xscale based palm devices (which again might be out of your price range by a couple hundred).