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Linux boots on MIPS palm-sized computers
SheldonYoung writes "Brad LaRonde and friends have Linux up and running on NEC MIPS Vr41xx palm-sized machines, such as the Casio E-100 and Vandem Clio. Those interested can grab the source and documentation from his Linux-MIPS Pages.
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Palmtops are the wave of the future. All the analysts say this. Personally, I believe they will be important, but I tend to scoff at phrases like "the wave of the future". Regardless, palmtops provide the bulk of computing needs in a simple, portable form.
Right now, you have two choices in palmtops. The Palm Pilot and WinCE. I like the Palm Pilot, but it's too restricted. WinCE machines offer a little more, but who wants to run WinCE?
Linux on a palmtop offers, IMNSHO, the best option. You get the extra power for a WinCE machine (including keyboards), but you get a decent OS.
Why hasn't this been done before? Because it's HARD! WincE machines don't have a lot of the goodies desktops have. Stuff like MMUs, open specifications, large hard drives, etc. Brad LaRonde, et al, should be given a number of coolness points here.
They did something technically difficult
They did something sexy
They did something new
They did it without a bunch of corporate sponsorship or hope of money and fame
They did it OpenSource
And just because They did it.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
If you poke around the Vadem site, or actually read the body text instead of just looking at the eyecandy on the front page, you'll notice that the Clio runs in both 'tablet' and 'notebook' modes - the screen can be flipped up to reveal a keyboard.
On the other hand, the Clio is larger than many intel sub-notebooks (And i don't mean Librettos - I mean there are Sony Vaio's and Mitsubishi Amity's that are smaller), so it hardly fulfills the "with a keyboard" need uniquely.
But the important thing is that the VR4111 code is stable, which will mean that we can start working on other Mips based wince systems soon.
What i would really love is to get one of the smaller-than-a-vhs-tape keyboarded wince devices for a few years for a couple hundred bucks and run linux on that.
Although, so far the Palm IIIx is as much computer as I've ever wanted in the pocket of my jeans, and may continue to be.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I, like most other readers of Slashdot, love cool shit. I love keeping up with the latest Linux port to ungodly small devices. This kinda stuff takes ingenuity, lotsa smarts, and is a testament to the flexability of Linux. But, please, this Beowulf fixation MUST go. Beowulf clusters are number crunchers for high intensity processing apps, not for retiring a crop of 386's, not for small devices, etc. Now if I had 500 Alphas gathering dust in my closet and was a little backlogged in my atomic research Beowulf would intrest me, but thats not happening. Please, somebody agree with me?
As for those who are wondering, MIPS isn't our only target platform. There are efforts currently in the works to get Linux ported to SH3 Handhelds, as well as StrongArm. (Nobody knows the progress here.)
If you feel you can contribute, by all means, join in on the mailing list at linuxce.org.
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