Registered: May 2000
Location: St. Paul, MN
Posts: 1429

Has anyone ever tried putting some varient of linux on a visor? Is it even possible on the moterola porcessor? It would be cool, you might have to replace the ROM chip though, just a thought

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Linux + Visor = perfection

Registered: May 2000
Location: Houston, TX, USA
Posts: 194

Real simple, youd have to replace the ROM. Visor and Visor Deluxe dont have a flash ROM. If you want Linux on a PDA, go get a Vtech helio. I dont see why youd want it though. PalmOS does everything I want perfectly fine and then some.

Registered: May 2000
Location: Sewell, NJ, US
Posts: 13

You may have already gotten your wish....

Check out this site for the forthcoming Linux PDA:

http://www.agendacomputing.com/index.jsp

John

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Plant City, FL
Posts: 385

I may be proving my ignorance ...

As I understand it, the Linux kernel uses a demand paged memory system, and as such needs a CPU with a memory management unit (MMU). The Dragonball processor has no such capability, so I doubt you'll ever see Linux running on it. The Vtech Helio (and the soon to be released Agenda) are both based on MIPS CPUs that are far better suited to run Lynx than the Motorola 68K.

The lack of flash EPROM for the OS is not really an issue. Though it does mean you could never actually get rid of the PalmOS, there's no reason that a replacement OS in RAM couldn't take over the whole system and take PalmOS completely out of the loop.

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<ul><li>Dave Kessler<br>President - Kopsis, Inc.</li></ul>

Registered: May 2000
Location: San Diego CA
Posts: 20

why?

When the link to the agendacomputing site was first posted I checked it out and was utterly SHOCKED by the size of the applications compared to the visor... Tic tac toe was like 100k, expense was like 320k, the sci. calc was 300k. HUGE! Well I just checked the site today and was suprised to see that they no longer displayed the size of their applications.

Apps that big are going to make 8mb seem like 64k.

But why would you want to run Linux when there's PalmOS? So you can brag to your other geeky friends? I don't get it.

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I've got a BVD with a Stowaway keyboard
Visors kick A$$!!!!!!

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Reading, MA
Posts: 28

Yeah, I was going to preorder one until I say the size of
some of those. That is going to make me wait until I see more info. Hopefully those are debugabble versions or some such.

Provided there is some kind of reasonable terminal interface, writing/converting for the agenda should be really trivial. That would be pretty nice.

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: cambridge, MA USA
Posts: 27

Why to do need Linux????

Can you imagine having to write out "cd /apps/net/" when you want to change folders, or having to write out "ls" in graffitti whenever you want to know whats on your Visor. The "find and tap" Palm OS seems to be the simplest and most efficient (desktop or handheld) OS out there, which is why Palm OS handhelds have sold so well so far. Plus, there are already plenty of free apps out there for the Palm OS, so this advantage Linux has over Windows doesn't apply here. Finally, I guess Linux on my Visor could mean true multitasking, but I can't imagine a need for it. I wouldn't look up a phone number while I'm playing a game on my Visor; I just don't have that many hands to multitask on it. (Plus, I've learned that it can't do floating point operations, so I don't think I'd be waiting for my Visor to churn out some discrete fourier transforms anyways.)