Zaurus: A "Complete OS" with "Incomplete Apps

[amrein]

I forgot to say:

 Psion Series 3, the first small palmtop released by Psion PLC in 1991, was using a kind of X11 + FLTK. If you have the Psion SDK documentation, you will read that they take their \"inspiration\" in Unix. The series 3 \"Sibo\"  operating system (SIBO for Sixteen Bits OS) was running on a 3,xx mhz NecV20 processor (e.g 80x86 compatible processor).

I read the FLTK documentation last week (FLTK = Fast Light Tool Kit). Very similar! Not good enough to replace Qt but very similar to Psion libraries (even if Psion libraries wasn\'t c++ but a sort of).

[DrWowe]

I know perfect well how X works.  I even installed X in my iPaq.  Granted, this was a few years ago, but my impression of GPE was that it was slow, ugly, and useless.  I quickly switched back to Qtopia and never looked back.  Qtopia environment \"feels\" like how a small handheld gadget should work.  If I wanted a mini-laptop I\'d buy a Fujitsu P1000, not a Zaurus.

[misterpib]

I don\'t use OpenOffice on my PC, so I wouldn\'t care if it got ported to the Zaurus (and yesh, I bet it takes too much RAM)

Now Abi-Word....that I could use...

And about Gnome.....I wouldn\'t ever want to run that on my PC either....I\'ve gone back and forth between Fluxbox to Kahakai to wm2 through  various other of the  more minimal WMs....I just don\'t like all that extra crap I never use....none of the \"Desktop Environments\" ever suited me very well...though a friend of mine and I were discussing starting our own...(but that\'s a different story)

And as for the Zaurus replacing a real computer...I must agree that it is just too slow for some things (which is why there should be more programs that can offload all the processing to a remote machine, or one on a local network, most likely)

Anyhow...this is a bit much for my first post, I suppose, so I shall end it here.

[amrein]

Did you read my post about Mizi Linux (http://www.mizi.com/en/)? Here is a link:

http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...4298&highlight=

The Samsung SCH-i519 smartphone use it. It runs Linux + X11 + Qt/X11 + a rewrite of Qtopia for X11. It\'s very impressive.

Only problem: apparently they buy Qtopia and completely change the API so Qtopia apps won\'t run on it with a simple recompilation.

If a manufacturer like Samsung use something like this (and for the Asia phone market), then the software should be fast enough, isn\'t it?

Trolltech doesn\'t want to heard about X11 also because it\'s an open gate to their Linux competitor. The X11/QT package won\"t change this fact as long as it doesn\'t provide a solid \"rootless mode\".

[amrein]

I don\'t really care what come with Linux on my palmtops. I care about my freedom.
When using X11, I have the same freedom as on my PC to use and build whatever software I want.
When using Qte/Qtopia, I have the freedom that Trolltech gives me e.g. build GPL software or buy a licence. Even PalmOS or Pocket PC users and programmers have more freedom then me.

Why should I care to have Qtopia source code? It\'s the best way to see that it\'s unfinished.

[TimW]

I have an Agenda VR3 which is a (IIRC) 44MHz MIPS based PDA running X11 and FLTK which is comparable in speed to my Zaurus for general user interactions. Based on that, I\'d say that X11 + FLTK *is* viable for PDAs.

[shodanjr_gr]

Just a though about the codexes (for media file playback). If the desktop version of Linux uses the x86 DLLs, couldnt a Z version of Linux use the codecs from a PocketPC 2003 device? They would already be compiled for an ARM (X-Scale) processor, right?