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. "

Comments

Treo 600

[bhadreshl]

Does it also work for Treo 600?

Re:Treo 600

[bhtooefr]

The 90, 180(?), and 300 are all Dragonball-based Palm OS 3.x (IIRC) and 4.x devices.

The 600 and 650 are both ARM-based (same CPU architecture - less OCing options doesn't necessarily mean a different architecture) Palm OS 5.x devices. IIRC, the main differences are the screen, and the 650's Bluetooth, and Flash memory instead of SDRAM for program storage.

Slashdot that Treo!

[matthiasryan]

But how long until we can slashdot a webserver running on a Treo 650?

Re:Got some Kharma to burn here

[TheRealMindChild]

A Beowulf cluster? Bah. I trump thee with an OpenSSI cluster of Trios! Imagine the roaming charges....

Major leap forward?

[hackwrench]

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.

Re:Major leap forward?

[Rayban]

Both of those are understandable points, but I'll address them here:

For the former, it's just showing that it's possible to run Linux at all on the phone. We've got all the pieces available (Linux Kernel, GPE environment, GSM/CDMA AT command set etc.), it's just a matter of connecting all the those pieces together to create a full open-source GSM/CDMA phone on highly-available hardware.

For the latter, you'll need to just trust that it's actually working (note that a lot of the hardware is supported by the handhelds.org kernel already). It's also using the PXA27x processor - a very well-documented and well-understood processor with open specifications.

Re:Major leap forward?

[dfghjk]

"highly-available" doesn't mean what you think it means. What you mean to say is that it's something you can easily buy. Availability is the "A" in RAS (reliablity, availability, servicability). Saying a piece of computer hardware is highly available doesn't mean it's easily bought!

For those willing to buy a Treo 650 and the phone service with it, what can a Linux port offer that's more desirable than what they get out of the box? Are you going to get the same SMS/MMS/email capability, the same productivity apps, the same phone integration, the same data capabilities that you get already? The same sync capability with your desktop? Are open source apps better than the ones available for the 650 now at doing the things that a Treo owner wants to do? Pretty much no on all counts. Linux may be cool on a Treo like it is on other things but it isn't useful.

Re:Major leap forward?

[jericho4.0]

In fact, it's the difference between 'We don't know what's wrong, it's a black screen and we're not sure if we're reading these logic traces correctly' and 'We have a working toolchain, and the kernel is sending error messages to the display', it's the watershed moment in any port. Now it's comparativly straightforward to work with.

Mod parent down

[xchino]

Just a page hit whore, link goes nowhere useful.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask here

[Rayban]

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!

Re:Got some Kharma to burn here

[MarkGriz]

"Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"

Yeah, but you skipped right over the obvious "But does it run.... oh nevermind" joke.

BTW, you misspelled "karma". I've got some to burn as well. Can I get a -1 Spelling Nazi?

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[Rayban]

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.

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[strredwolf]

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?

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[Rayban]

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.

Pity there are few completer-finishers

[Darius Jedburgh]

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.

Re:Thank You Linux Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[bfree]

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?

Re:Treo vs PPC

[elleomea]

The 650 has a 320x320 resolution and integrated Bluetooth support. Currently as far as I'm aware there's only an odd WiFi sled type device (hooks over the whole of the back of the Treo making it a fair bit thicker, but also supplying an extra battery).

The future is now!

[deathbyzen]

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.

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[Rayban]

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...

Re:Thank You Linux Virus

[IANAAC]

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?"

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."

pssh

[commodoresloat]

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.

Yes, actually it will..

[StressGuy]

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"...}

Re:Treo vs PPC

[Rayban]

That's the Enfora WiFi sled. It's a nifty little device that works pretty well. The cool thing is that it uses PPP over the Treo's USB port, so it'll be supported under Linux with minimal work.

Re:Treo vs PPC

[WhiteDragon]

As you said, the treo 650 has built in bluetooth, and 320x320 resolution. I think I heard about somebody (probably shadowmite again) hacking in some sdio wifi drivers... *checks google* yes, here it is.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Killer App

[tinytim]

Everyone seems to be missing the obvious killer app here...

POSE

http://www.calliopeinc.com/palmprog2/tutorial/s1-p ose.htmltest

Emulate a palm, on your palm.

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[AugstWest]

Would it be possible to boot Linux from the SD card, or must the phone be flashed?

New slogan

[giantsfan89]

Can you GNU/Hear me now? Good!

Re:Got some Kharma to burn here

[gg3po]

Yes, but does it run GNOME?

Not if Linus has anything to say about it! :-)

I've got a novel idea....

[Chris Bradshaw]

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...

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[bfree]

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"?

Re:Got some Kharma to burn here

[Cyberax]

Well, here is an article (sorry, in Russian) about a cluster of iPAQs (connected using IRDA): http://hard.compulenta.ru/2003/10/9/42473/

Locking?

[Del Vach]

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.

Re:Locking?

[Rayban]

I'll answer these one-by-one:

    - Will a 650 running Linux still be locked to the provider's network?

Yes. The lock is enforced by the GSM radio, not PalmOS itself. If you have an unlock code, however, we can use it to unlock the radio for any sim card.

    - For us lightweights, will it be possible to revert back to PalmOS after installing this?

Yes. It doesn't replace PalmOS right now at all - it runs entirely in RAM. See answer below too.

    - Might there be a possibility of dual booting between Palm & Linux?

Yes. The plan is to replace System.bprc with one capable of booting Linux off the SD card when you hold down a certain key. This way you can just soft-reset into the other OS as you need.

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[Rayban]

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.

Look! I got Linux to run on my Motorola V60 too!

[squison]

Here's the Proof!

Re:If you have any questions, feel free to ask her

[Rayban]

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.

Highly available, as in, go buy one at the store

[Anonymous Coward]

What can it offer? All the features Verizon or whoever locked out of it. Bluetooth DUN, OBEX, etc.

so, where's the *nix for blackberry?

[option8]

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.

With PalmOS on Phones an orphan, Linux is needed

[rhyre417]

[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.

SSH clients and tunneling

[jpostel]

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.