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Linux Boots on Treo 650
nilbog writes "A major leap forward has taken place in the development of Linux for the Treo 650. Grack.com has posted screenshots of a Cingular branded 650 displaying the familiar penguin logo. A discussion has sprung up over the the treo central forums where Shadowmite, one of the developers, has confirmed that it shouldn't be too long before they are able to get the phone's hardware working under linux. "
Does it also work for Treo 600?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these. Maybe even a wireless beowulf cluster!
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
But how long until we can slashdot a webserver running on a Treo 650?
Somehow displaying the Linux logo doesn't really add up to a fully installed system to me :).
When are they actually going to run linux?
But it's already crashed.
"I love lamp."
Don't fall for the previous poster's faux link to some spammy site!
I'm sorry, but getting something to display the penguin logo is not a major leap forward for anything. Furthermore the display of the pengin logo is not proof of linux running.
Just a page hit whore, link goes nowhere useful.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
I'm the guy who was doing the porting work. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here and save my poor blog's comment system.
It was a good thing I coralized all my images an hour ago!
æeee!
This wouldn't have anything to do with you being the developer of another free kernel?
Besides, I hardly think Linux "spreads itself". Although that would be cool.
For those wondering if it's real, I've been working closely with Shadowmite (the Treo Hacker extraordinaire) and you can track our progress on his forum or the not-as-up-to-date Handhelds.org Palm Treo 650 Wiki Page.
We've also started documenting a lot of the hacking stuff we've discovered on the Shadowmite wiki.
æeee!
Looks like you got a bug there with the framebuffer being offset like that.
Any word on if you're going to bundle Opie or GPE on it?
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I love my HP h6315, PDA phone, GPRS, WiFi, Bluetooth. Great apps, great screen, great battery life.
Unfortunately HP & Tmobile discontinued it. I finally broke it (ripped out charging port) and can't find a replacement. The blackberry is a joke. Zero use for me, worst interface ever.
The treo feels nice but that OS sucks. With Linux, though, everything changes.
The only thing I need beyond that is 320x240 res, WiFi and Bluetooth. Any Treo users know if it's possible?
It has everything to do with my being a kernel developer, of course. However, my motivation doesn't make my point any less valid.
Linux is a Unix clone that is spreading itself onto every bit of hardware imaginable. When is somebody going to decide they don't want Linux on the XYZ 123 (at which point Glider probably won't be ready to run on that system, but I can hope, pray and dream, can't I?) so that someone with a development team and an idea for a revolution that would finally move the OS world past Unix can come in and say "our system works great on the XYZ 123, won't you try it on your database box?"
That was a bug in the LCD initialization. Actually, we weren't initializing the LCD at all - we let the phone's bootloader do that.
;)).
I managed to get that stuff working last night by setting the GPIOs correctly. The handhelds.org Linux kernel sets a GPIO (L_BIAS) that fubars the LCD. The latest version has the framebuffer working correctly (although I disabled the penguin for more screen real-estate
You can check out my blog at grack.com for updates.
æeee!
I'm sure this will be yet another one of those ports where someone proves it can be done but nobody actually finishes the job to the point where someone could actually use it for something, let alone actually supporting it.
The submission does not provide any stats on the aforementioned boots. I just assume these boots are unique and likely give some bonus to stamina, though I doubt they are for faster run/walk. I also expect can not be frozen bonus. Could anyone elaborate on other bonuses?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
I'm never quite sure whether these stories are a celebration of the fact that Linux actually boots on something or whether they should be treated with, well, so what? The damn thing boots on the boot sector that boots my toaster.
Dude, you've got a mostly-empty Sourceforge page with an alpha version of a kernel that you're writing in fucking Pascal, and you can't understand why it's so hard for you to compete with Linux?
Well, you can keep on wondering, because if you don't get it already, there's no way anyone can explain it to you.
How much communication is happening amongst the various Palm PXA developers, for example I just noticed the hackndev.com link has arrived on your handhelds.org wiki page. Garux seems to have spawned a lot of interest and it seems the machines are generally quite similar, so could we prehaps see a "distro" released for PXA Palms?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Heh-heh...flush the cache...heh-heh...
In the future, the proof of a person's technical skill will be based on their ability to boot linux on random objects. Those who are able to get a bash prompt on a toaster oven will be gods that walk among us, constantly harping on our choice of distribution.
seems like semi-recently that there were grumblings of the palm os moving over to a linux kernel in a future os release.
something like speculation about them partnering with montavista?
We've opened the communicatation channels to share information. There are two other Palm PXA ports already - the LifeDrive and PalmTE ports. We can share a *lot* between those projects, but there's still a fair bit of information to gather for each individual device (ie: the LifeDrive has Wifi/USB off-chip, etc.).
I hope that we can all help develop a single distribution that would work on all three devices. It would certainly help lower the porting load. Also, those guys seem to have gotten pretty far - The LifeDrive guy already booted GPE!
This is where open source really shines...
æeee!
Isn't it a little early for you to be getting bitter about competition with Linux?
You only just made your first code release 9 days ago and the only information I can find about it is it's coded in Pascal and it finally boots and recognizes IRQ. I think there's a few years of development and some communication about what you can do well (when you have somethinig that you can do) before you need to get upset about Linux beating you to new hardware.
You realize you're welcome to do that at any time. It's not as if the Treo folk came in and said "Make Linux run on this."
Have you ever visited OSnews.com? Most of the kernels there are written in C/C++, and they can't seem to compete with Linux either.
I don't expect anyone to be using my kernel at alpha, before it's usable for much other than telling time. However, I've seen AmigaOS 4.0 and SkyOS and Syllable and nobody uses them, even though they're into real usable versions and written in C-derivatives.
And you can't say that now because Linux is also capable of running on a piece of hardware? Does your OS work better on said device than Linux or not... because if the answer is "yes" then it shouldn't matter if linux can be ported to said device. The only reason it should matter is if your OS is inferior to Linux and you're hoping to get defacto acceptance.
Life has many choices. Eternity has two. What's yours?
This is cool and all, but for those who want to use unix on a treo now, check out pssh, which allows you to ssh into a functioning unix box from palmOS. It works quite well and, while it's not the same as having linux on the local file system, it allows you to use unix remotely without sacrificing the apps available on palmOS (e.g. the phone, the organizer, and everything else you probably bought the treo for in the first place). Not to put down this project -- I'm all for putting linux on anything and everything -- but this has a long way to go before you have a usable system.
Not only that, but the archive seems to be corrupted...
The best thing is that now you can update your bathrooms to a full "paperless" system. The whole thing works off the USB drive. It not only cleans, but re-formats as well.
{...at this point, men in white suits appear and start dragging StressGuy away..}
Wait! I've got a couple more!...Imagine a Beowulf cluster.....
{...men in white suits now give StressGuy a "sedative"...}
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It's very early to be talking about OSs like Syllable competing with Linux. None of the core Syllable developers even use Syllable full time, so we wouldn't expect anyone else to do so at the moment either. I suspect your definition of "real usable" and the vast majority of users is very different. Yes, Syllable is usable, and early in 2006 some of us will hopefully start to use Syllable much more heavily.
Placing yourself in competition with an OS the size of Linux takes a lot of time and effort. It takes even more effort to succeed.
Current OS's arn't competiting with Linux right now because we're not in a position to compete, not because of the size of Linux. If you want to gain market share in the Open Source world you need to produce a better product, that's all.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
...device running linux. Why oh why does linux have to run on everything including the kitchen sink? i was actually much more interested in what he had to say about .NET
wake me when you have minix running on the blackberry or the 700W.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, in the OSS world one of the stepping stones to gaining market share is gaining developers, which is where both of us are forced to compete with Linux right now.
Perhaps, that then, is the change that needs to be made: less fanaticism for *nix and more general coding for alternative OS's. If either you or I made the claim we didn't want a nice community helping us hack our code we'd be lying, but most of those hackers that exist do so for Linux.
Wow that thing is filthy when seen in macro mode. I think you need to dust your Treo, man.
A port of Familiar for the Asus Mypal716 is almost ready for prime time, just come and see!
A port of Familiar for the Asus Mypal716 is almost ready for prime time, just come and see!
Everyone seems to be missing the obvious killer app here...
p ose.htmltest
POSE
http://www.calliopeinc.com/palmprog2/tutorial/s1-
Emulate a palm, on your palm.
I have a Treo 600. Is there any chance your work will be able to be ported to the 600, or will it be exclusively Treo 650?
---
Would it be possible to boot Linux from the SD card, or must the phone be flashed?
if someone would just write a palmOS app that displays the penguin on your screen.
Can you GNU/Hear me now? Good!
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
Even if you get the phone part working (which it sounds like you're well on the way to doing), how will you make it work with each distinct service provider (Sprint, T-Mobile, or whoever else), and with the correct user account?
---
You're right - your motivation doesn't make your point less valid. The fact that it's complete garbage is what does that.
It's not our responsibility in the linux community that you want a bit of fame for yourself for starting yet another kernel project. Writing a kernel from scratch is a hobbyist activity, or at best in order to fulfill some odd purpose on strange hardware. The fact that the linux kernel boots on something doesn't preclude you porting your kernel to it. Don't for a moment kid yourself that the only reason that nobody cares what your kernel runs on is that linux already does. The real reason is you haven't created anything of note. Make something better than linux, with more hardware support, and then you can complain about the "linux virus".
Despite my nasty "how-dare-you-attack-the-precious" tone, I agree with you in a way. Moving on from unix is a lofty goal, well worth working on. Don't be yet another radical loud-mouthed conspiracy theorist dumbass troll programmer. We have more than enough of those.
I've got a novel idea, how about using it as a phone...? I know I'm kinda out there, but hey - We have the technology, and a talented bunch of developers out there in the OSS community. So what the hell, let's give it a shot...
Get your Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Here for FREE! - http://fedora.redhat.com
I don't really know (but guess you do) how many "ports" there are, but it seems to me the LifeDrive, TE(2), Treo650, TT(2|3) and Z72 are all potential targets for the one code-base/distro, it seems the core Palm PXA hardware is all quite similar. Between them it's also quite a range of machines, it will be interesting to see what will/won't work (bluetooth, Z72 camera, LD wifi, Treo Phone) and what uses people will put them to ... to ask a question again, do you have a personal itch you are scratching with this (a way to use your treo) or are you simply doing this "because you can"?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I've currently got a 650 from our good friends at Cingular, who love tormenting me with their commercials about what great coverage they provide, despite the 0 bars I get at home. I'm curious to know:
- Will a 650 running Linux still be locked to the provider's network?
- For us lightweights, will it be possible to revert back to PalmOS after installing this?
- Might there be a possibility of dual booting between Palm & Linux?
Personally I'd love to finally get some use out of the 1GB card I bought for the thing, especially if I could basically use the presence of a card to select the OS it boots with.
Not fair when I have spent all week trying to install Debian on my completely normal PC... Maybe I should by a Treo.....
This is quite a milestone, I can't wait to run Linux on my 650. Keep up the good work, and many thanks for the work you have done so far.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Most of that stuff gets handled by the radios. Both the GSM (Broadcom, I think) and CDMA (Qualcom) radios are full-fledged devices of their own with CPUs and firmware. The CDMA radio uses GSM AT commands, making a phone app just a thin wrapper over a serial port. It's like dialing a modem.
æeee!
As a Treo600 user, with T-Mobile service, I greet this news warmly.
Except that T-Mobile's website doesn't offer the 600 anymore, much less the 650.
The thought of running Linux on a cel-phone and connecting reliably with my Gentoo laptop is quite nice.
Yet none of the providers seem to share my excitment.
Why? Is the infrastructure simply not there to support lots of people moving packets on cel phone networks?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Here's the Proof!
The same way that geeks got Linux booting on the Mac G3s designed for MacOS 8. Also, you may be interested to know that Palm switched from those horrible 16MHz Motorollas quite a while ago and now most (all?) PalmOS handhelds just have ARM (or ARM compatible) CPUs like everyone else.
^I'm with stupid.^
Someone made a Linux distro for handhelds...in particular one that would run on an Palm OS capable device. Or even just devices that run Palm OS 5. I would totally run it on my Clie. A suite of handheld apps with it would be nice too.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
The plan is to boot from the SD card eventually. Right now we just load the kernel into RAM and boot from there. There's no risk to your data with this method.
æeee!
We don't want people to know that porting Linux is just that easy!
Whatever the hardware, the Palm OS is still a sad, unstable, pathetic joke.
Hell, my experiences with Palm were so bad, I went back to a pen and paper day planner, and haven't looked back!
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
FreeBSD doesn't seem to be doing too badly, and it's competing right in Linux's own backyard: x86. The problem isn't some kind of Linux conspiracy, it's that people want a usable system without having to write half the userland themselves while hacking on the kernel. This also explains the obsession with Unix-workalikes: They already have lots of usable programs. If you're going to start from scratch you have to accept that there will be a huge time investment before anyone else cares. Maybe Linux seems like it got popular overnight (only took 14 years right?), but keep in mind that RMS had been hacking on the GNU tools since 10 years before Linux's inception. So, yes I'm all for new ideas and I like trying out new OSes, but don't try and blame the amorphous cloud that is Linux for somehow keeping people from trying new OSes.
-Mr. Lizard
^I'm with stupid.^
Lovely, you ported Linux onto a PDAphone. Why? Why not try to load Windows on there. At least then you could have it do something more useful than stroke the ego.
Yes, it takes effort to make a port. And good job to the author. BUT
1) The Treo on PlamOS is dead. The new treos will be Windows whatever for phones.
2) Manufactors like Motorla have announced JUIX (Java and Linux) on new phones and claims this is going to be a supported platform beyond the E895 and A910 models.
So if ya wanna be excited, contact Motorola and ask them what the status of support for the E895/A910 at www.motocoder.com. Because Motorola seems to want to offer a 'Linux' phone and claims they will offer more phones like it.
So why get excited over a dead-end offering VS what appears to be a living, breathing and hopefully long lived line of phones?
Well, thats why Palm decided to release the next Treo with Windows Mobile.
yea yea, I know this is Slashdot and anything Windows is a hideous computing platform, but honestly, PalmOS is worse.
Linux would boot on a toaster if someone put their mind to it. This is probably the one saving grace of Linux is its ease of being embedded in just about anything with a micro-controller in it.
The problem is that while there is usually a huge drive to get something to boot linux, once it finally does there is less enthusiasm and patience into turning into a viable comercial product.
Its the hobby like nature of Linux which is also its Achillies Heel. A lot of enthusiasm can be generated pretty quickly, but also be deflated just as easily. Making something boot with Linux is far easier then making it stable and supporting it fully. For instance, take the idea of booting the iPod with Linux. It's a great idea, especially considering you can then support ANY file format on the cool iPod, but after about 2 years they still are not any closer to making it a usuable product. As each new generation of iPod comes out with new features, the idea of a linux distro for the iPod platform drifts further and further away as less people focus on trying to support new features with the iPod linux build.
So, in the end, getting Linux to boot a Treo isn't ground breaking or earth shattering. I doubt any real product will arise from this and offer an alternative to the retail OS that ships with it. Eventually they will find it difficult to support all the features of the Treo and more and more people will drift away from the project in favour of booting linux on the next gimmick or fad product that hits the market.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
i have familiar with opie running on my ipaq 6500, and i'm too used to it to change to GPE. my question is, as soon as this is mature enough for "production" use, can i run opie instead ?
What ? Me, worry ?
I may be a Linux fan, but I kinda like WinCE.
And it IS better than Palm. Hell, Palm is so messed up, they never managed to port Nethack to it.
Nethack doesn't run on it. That's like hardware that can't run BSD.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
And look forward to one day getting PalmOS off my Treo and putting a more capable and supported operating system in its place. Please be sure you get the bluetooth stuff working :)
Would really love to see NetBSD, Linux with GPE/Opie on my Tungsten T3 :)
instruct.
What can it offer? All the features Verizon or whoever locked out of it. Bluetooth DUN, OBEX, etc.
Um. Is it feasible that one could use all the features of their current Palm OS on their Treo with the new stuff (in time) under linux without going through any hoops with your carrier? I would imagine there must be some sort of "tag" in the Palm software that is required for service from your provider and seamless functionality.
Oh . . . . and with such a small device, usability and interface is very important. Somehow I don't expect much in that department with our (OSS/Linux) history.
i have in my hand a device with a large, bright color screen, usb, a QWERTY keyboard and a processor fast enough to run all kinds of java apps. why is there no linux or bsd for this device?
seriously, where is the *nix for blackberry devices? they've been out in various incarnations for a long time, and there's plenty of old ones lying around, just waiting for an open source OS to make them useful again.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Although Shadowmite has since moved to the Windows-based PPC-6700.
How small is the liveCD?
Oh, wait...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
[I'm an unsatistifed Treo 180 owner - mine cracked in half twice.] PalmOS is a dead platform as far as phones are concerned. The treo 700 uses Windows. At least Linux has a lifetime longer than what the manufacturer will support with their native OS.
I really like the UI of Palm, it's a very elegant way to interact with a handheld. WinCE is just annoying as hell to me. I've used PalmOS since version 2 and I really like it. I tried WinCE (or whatever they're calling it now) a couple of times for a month or so at a stretch, and I just wanted to run the device over with my car. I'm not an anti-MS zealot or anything, I just think that they don't know how to build a handheld UI that can match the simplicity of Palm.
Can GNU/hear me now?
All of us third-party apps developers who sell Palm OS software got a little annoyed when that happened. But, they did send out a special message to all registered developers saying they aren't abandoning Palm OS (although that could be a total lie), and more importantly, there are rumors floating around that there will be a cheap Palm OS based phone coming out next. Cheap, meaning that it's not $599 like the Treo 650 is (unless you sign up for new service). Which would be nice.
Breakfast served all day!
Attention Slashdot administrators, please delete all previous comments on this topic.
... are Linux guys trying to beat NetBSD and run on the kitchen sink?
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken
The Treo 650 is fairly expensive for a Linux PDA because you pay a premium for the phone functionality, software, etc.
I think something like the Zire 22 or Tungsten E would be a more interesting model to run Linux on.
In any case, Palm will be releasing Linux-based Palms soon (or die trying).
Linux boots on another device but is useless but hey perhaps one day it will work fully, oh damn the we just got it working and the hardware is obsolete. Why do people bother making it boot on every device under the sun?
...a cluster with Troi and Dr. Crusher :)
When it's booted into Linux, can I actually use the phone? Say I want to dial someone, or a call comes in. Possible?
If that's 17 driver versions away, I'm thinking it may sorta defeat the purpose of running Linux on a phone.
What makes you so sure PalmOS is dead on the Treo line from here on out?
The fact that there's a new 700 running Windows doesn't necessarily mean they'll never do another PalmOS based phone. In fact, I heard a few comments from their marketing people that made it sound like they wanted to be VERY cautious about people assuming this was definitely the case. At least one article I read emphasized that the 700 was simply an experiment... an attempt to offer something different. They very well might opt to go back to PalmOS for a "Treo 800" or whatever it might be called, especially if sales of the new 700 aren't stellar.
I've got a Treo 650 on Verizon Wireless, and I implemented shadowmite's Bluetooth DUN hack on it. I don't do much gaming, and it kinda sucks for bittorrent, but I'll pull down between 300-400 MB of data some nights, and I usually connect at around 112kb. Plus, I can still get text messages and make phone calls. Not really fast, but it's certainly usable, and I pay for the unlimited data plan. Bundled with a voice plan on the Treo 650 it's 80 bucks a month.
My entire world funnels through my Treo. I'm not sure if I would be so brave as to try to install Linux on it, but it does appeal to me nonetheless. Hmm. I did pay for the extra insurance. I wonder if it covers death by Linux?
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
I won't argue UI with you. My issue with the Palm is it's lack of stability. I've seen the bastards fail on a hotsync when the thing has had a hard reset and is syncing with a clean install of Windows with a clean install of the Palm desktop.
I had so many failed syncs that I took to keeping a few 3x5 index cards in the case with my Palm so I could jot down the changes I needed to make. I'd lost all faith in the Palm Pilot's ability to sync without losing data.
Whatever you think of the UI, the OS is unreliable and unstable. It's one of the few pieces of technology that I'm willing to fight tooth and nail to avoid. Working with that data scrambling OS is not worth the hike my blood pressure would get.
It's a crying same they never DID anything with the IP they got from buying BE.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Apparently, I'm no good at using Coral. How do you view the screenshots site in Coral's cache?
The two SSH clients I know of are pssh http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh/ and tussh http://www.tussh.com/. I use pssh, and it has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions.
The only way I know to do application tunneling is to use one of the commercial VPN products for PalmOS, MergicVPN http://www.mergic.com/ and AnthaVPN http://www.anthavpn.com/ (which used to be MovianVPN).
IANA developer, but from what I've read, the problems are with the fact that PalmOS was never really meant to be networked or multi-tasking. The old-new version of PalmOS, Cobalt, (which I don't think will ever be used on a treo) was supposed to have this solved with a ground up rebuild rumored to be based partially on BeOS. The new-new version of PalmOS will be some sort of PalmOS-on-Linux hybrid from PalmSource/Access.
I have been using a Palm/Handspring since the PalmIII. I have had each version of the Treo on Sprint (300,600,650) and I think the hardware has gotten better with each revision. The hardware can still be vastly improved, but the OS needs an overhaul and Windows on a Treo is 'the shot heard round the Palm world'. If that does not kick the PalmOS developers in the pants, then I don't know what will. Competition is a good thing and Palm has been resting on its laurels a bit too long.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
You must be new here.
You seem a pretty darned sensible AC, but you miss a point. Producing a kernel/OS with a better design than *nix is easy, researchers have been making efforts at it and decently succeeding for decades. Giving it a developer community and hardware support (the two are correlated) is incredibly difficult because:
1.Not a single major operating system such as Windoze, Linux or a BSD has adopted UDI or any other standard that would make drivers portable between operating systems.
2.Nobody wants to port to an OS with no users, nobody wants to use an OS with no drivers and nobody wants to write drivers for an OS with no software.
3.Few people want the work of porting software and drivers to a kernel that works in a radically different way from previous operating systems. Thus, operating systems will tend towards evolution rather than revolution. Hence, Linux.
These are very real problems for anyone choosing to create a new operating system, and in the Open Source spirit I'm giving the ideas that I have on the matter here:
1.Implement UDI or another standard that you and some other group of kernel developers (mainstream or hobbyist) can agree on. Being able to share drivers between operating systems is essential, because it allows a new and revolutionary operating system access to any hardware with a standard-compliant driver. We shouldn't let its "hurting the Free Software movement" hold us back from implementing something with plenty of technical merit.
2 & 3.Lots of high-level interpreted or byte-code languages are coming into heavy mainstream use nowadays. Integrate them into the OS! Having a Java/.NET VM or a Perl, Python or even Lisp interpreter at the shell level (or one step above) would give a new OS immmediate access to all software that runs under these languages without binding to an operating system specific feature. This may be a subset of those language's software, but it is significant.
Does NetBSD run on a dead badger?
I think that was why Sony included a MSBackup utility - the Clie's are actually very nice PDAs as long as you use the backup utility often.
Palm definitely had some stability issues for me - but only with stuff loaded in X-hack, never saw a crash at such an early stage.
I still use a T415 for reading ebooks - battery life of a champion, and much nicer on the eyes in the dark than a white backlight
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
There is this guy hacking his ADSL modem. He played a game of backgammon on it and could watch the console output as Linux booted up: http://www.linux.net.nz/pipermail/aucklug/2005-Nov ember/000567.html
(came across this when I was trying to set up my D-Link 302g ADSL modem with a usb connection)
Cheers
Relax. Linux' large developer base is the reason for its mess and increasing bureaucracy. It's getting to the stage where code being too clean for the rest of the kernel is a reason to not include it in mainline (this was an argument against Reiser4).
m l1 2/06/#20051206-libusb
Working on more minor projects with less random hacker interest and less pressure to keep up is the only way to result in a clean product. Rushing to compete rarely achieves anything. Not many people care about the quality of the code until it affects the quality of the product. And every Linux 'oops, my last commit broke everything, sorry' changelog entry speaks for itself.
This is why the BSDs survive despite having several orders of magnitude less developer resources. Less to manage, low pressure, good work done. FreeBSD is falling to Linux' disease of over-coding under-thinking, in particular the new complexity in 5/6 which is making it much harder to develop. They have recovered from the brutal side effects of the new SMP stack but how DragonFly's competes has yet to be seen, and the latter was done with much less mucking about, less segfaults, and much less in the way of resources.
However, Linux' incredibly large developer base means it can do just about anything (except, strangely, proper jails), and also run on just about anything too. However, not everything is done cleanly. In *one*day* (as per my reading of KernelPlanet, NOT by post time), these two posts on KernelPlanet made me break into a cold sweat:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/zaitcev/43337.ht
http://ganesha.gnumonks.org/~laforge/weblog/2005/
The first outlines how failure to plan ahead lead to a hacky solution to what should have been a simple problem. The latter is an example of how some kernel developers just go and do something really stupid and people don't notice until it's too late.
Sure, these things happen in other systems, but they're easier to notice when there's only 20 developers, compared to 20,000. When you can afford to track every commit, you can easily notice if something stupid is happening. Add to this that Linux committers are fine with accepting small *anonymous* commits, and you have a clear path to utter failure.
So don't worry about your project. Sure few people will even know it exists, but at least you can sleep at night knowing it's as clean as you can make it.
Or use your talent to empower DragonFly BSD, which still has the potential to usurp Linux with its SMP stack, one of the most popular reasons to use Linux instead of (say) NetBSD.
Sam ty sig.
I could say something about versions of MacOS before X, and their complete lack of a little concept I like to call *protected memory* or that cool new *preemptive multitasking.* In cases where the OS doesn't take steps to protect itself, the system is only as stable as the most buggy application that one runs on it. This is true for DOS, MacOS and PalmOS.
Anyways, regardless of the "sad, unstable, pathetic joke" of an OS that came on it many pieces of hardware can be made to run Linux, including i386s and up, PowerPCs, and ARMs (including XScales).
^I'm with stupid.^
Maybe the nokia 770 from http://nokia.com/770 be good for you, huge screen (800x480), wifi etc. No phone features but you can use VoIP for that.
Maybe it might be better to wait for the next generation as Intel are about to release a new version of their XScale clocked at 1Ghz that still only uses less than 1 walt. With that type of power you could do almost anything. I wonder if they will use them to make some type of wireless mesh network...
I've lots of old hardware supported by Linux which have "officially" reached end-of-life. They are currently performing better than ever.
It is obvious that getting linux to run on consumer devices is the new fad among developers. So i find that the first thing I ask is "Does it run linux?" to this I hear cries of "of course it does ... linux runs on everything" or "no it doesn't ... it must be rubbish" or dark mutterings of "I'll make it run linux if it is the last thing I do".
However, my second question is left field "Does it make toast?" to which all and sundry look at me funny as if i've sprouted a second head or speaking a foreign language - they tend to ignore me or find something really important to do for which they must leave my presence. So I propose to make this the standard question when a new device is coming out since everyone has an answer ready for the linux question
is the Motorola A780. Avaliable in Europe (while most of the other Linux phones are available only in Asia). There's a community evolving, that's trying to port a completly open source kernel to the A780. Check it out under open-ezx. Another good site to get infos and hacks for the Moto Linux phones (E680(i), A780, etc.) is Motorolafans.com. Especially the forums are worth a visit. Despite these phones being based on Linux, Motorola doesn't support application development for Linux; their documentation (and support) focusses on Java only. So close, but yet so far ... But hey, telnetting into your phone has some geek appeal ...
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
I'm merely poking fun at the article for saying that they've drawn a penguin, using hype words like "a major leap forward", but leaving the reader to guess at what the real work that has been done might be.