[ILUG] simputer...

[John P. Looney]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 12:24:10PM +0100, Justin Mason mentioned:
> Big problem however, will be this:  IMHO, the hardware is too low-cost
> (and the screen real-estate too small) for many Linux apps to run; it'll
> need porting work for most apps.

 Not a massive problem, because...

> Actually, now that I think about it, their situation is not as bad as it
> was, first time I looked.  The handhelds.org projects have already put a
> lot of effort into a free embedded Linux distribution, and ported some
> apps to a small screen and a low-memory, flash-storage environment.

 Indeed. There are three so far -

 LISA - a very pretty and simple PDA OS, backed by Trolltech. I saw some
of these machines in CeBit, and was shocked at how fabulous it was. Really
professional and aimed at 16MB flash people - it uses embedded QT, instead
of X to save on space at the price of making it difficult for not QT/C++
heads to program for it (the main reason I never wrote anything for my
Palm). Lisa.de will sell you this preinstalled on an iPaq.

 Familiar - more "techy" distro, pushed by Handhelds.org, trying to get as
much useful stuff on a 16MB flash as possible. Uses X etc, and it's
developing at a rate of knots, but isn't 100% yet. Loads of "Er, something
went wrong, and now I've a $650 paperweight" stories on the handhelds.org
mailing lists...

 Intimate - an insane PDA distro that requires a 370MB IBM microdrive.
Everything from KDE to apache planned. Based on Familiar.

 These will drive the PDA-app market, which is very different from apps
for the desktop - something that Palm learned, but microsoft have not,
yet. Sync tools are the most important part...second to those is wireless
networking support...which they all have, though it requires a plugin.

Kate

-- 
 When I say 'free', I mean 'free': free from bond, of chain or command: 
to go where you will, even to Mordor, Saruman, if you desire. " 
    -- Gandalf, paraphrasing the choice between Free and Non-free software