[ubuntu-uk] PDA running linux?

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Wed Mar 11 18:24:09 GMT 2009


2009/3/5 doug livesey <biot023 at gmail.com>:
> Hi -- does anyone have any experience with PDAs running linux?
> I need to write an on-site data-gathering app, and such a machine would be
> perfect.
> I'd also need a clue about the best way to rapid-dev for a linux PDA.
> & I've got about 2 weeks, typically!

Well, I used to have a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, until it got stolen.

Clever, but useless, really. ~200MHz StrongARM, 32MB flash, 64MB RAM.
That's not enough space to do anything much. Overload it, run it out
of RAM, and it has no swap so it crashes. The PIM apps were abysmal,
well below smartphone standards, which is to say vastly inferior to a
Psion. The keyboard was awful and didn't even have a pipe ("|")
character, pretty essential for Unix.

Underpowered, no X.11 so no mainstream GUI apps, and whereas there
were ROMs with X.11 available, it was underpowered and RAM-starved
without it.

But that was several years ago - now the tech has moved on and it's more doable.


-- 
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