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Sharp Officially Producing Linux PDA 100

Posted by CmdrTaco from the aint-that-spiffy dept.
Jar writes "CNET is reporting that Sharp will be out with a Linux based PDA by October. They seem to be bracketing the PDAs into similar categories as those available from Palm/Visor - a no-multimedia PDA, one with mulitmedia capabilities and one with wireless connectivity. The wireless connectivity version is said to have phone features too." On the downside, Maxtor has ditched BSD for W2k in its network hard drive box.
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Sharp Officially Producing Linux PDA More

Sharp Officially Producing Linux PDA

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  • my ex-boyfriend interned for the Sharp last summer in Tokyo (yes, he's Japanese *g*), and they have been doing some very impressive stuff that will probably be rolled back soon into the handhelds.org [handhelds.org] project. The wireless model is what's really amazing. My ex-boyfriend got a prototype unit as a souvenir, and he has been able to stream his mp3s and videos from his webserver whereever he goes, simply using his GSM card. This unit is sure to leech off marketshare from Palm and PocketPC when it comes out.

    ---
  • "For one, outside of the geek community..."

    For second, outside of the geek community people need to get their work done. A lot of people outside of the community still have this believe that GNU/Linux is hard to learn, and unpratical in use. Why would they try GNU/Linux on their PDA then ? Which is meant to be fast and *simple*.

    Let alone the diffuculties they could get with syncronizing their M$ Outlook Email and Agenda stuff ?

    I don't see how they would get a lot of market share on with GNU/Linux on these people...And I don't believe this PDA is purely marketed for "geeks" which is still a relativly small market.

  • Compatibility (Score:4)

    by LaNMaN2000 ( 173615 ) on Monday March 05, 2001 @11:37AM (#383209) Homepage
    I wonder how many applications these embedded Linux devices will be compatible with? I guess, since there is such a volume of open source software available on the platform, people can easily port existing applications over. However, it would probably be difficult to find commercial applications produced specifically for embedded Linux (at least, while it is still in the process of gaining market share), than it will be to find PALM applications.

    At this stage in the game, I really don't see the benefit that Linux offers over PALM OS. PALM OS is remarkably stable and efficient; in addition, there are enormous amounts of software (much of it free) produced specifically for the platform. These Linux handhelds will have the same problem gaining widespread acceptance that Windows CE devices did. There is less application support, and many people are already satisfied with their PALMs.

    Lenny
  • Customization. If I have no interest in using multimedia software, why should I have software which fills that niche taking up space on my PDA? If I don't plan to exchange data with IR, why should I have IR support taking up space? If I want to use the unit in a way that the hardware can support but which is absent from the initial install, I can add it myself.

    You're right that not everything has to be Linux. It doesn't even have to be a BSD. What I demand is freedom -- in part for ideological reasons but mostly because free (open source) software lets me fit the machine to myself and not the other way 'round.

    Also, let's not conflate the OS and the apps that run on it the way some large software companies do. I look at something like the PalmOS and I think about how difficult it was to program sophisticated software for. The OS is perfect for note-taking, expense accounts, address books, etc. I wouldn't want to run a MySQL client on it, though. The machines are getting more powerful by the day -- my iPaq has more horsepower than the PC I bought maybe 7 years ago (486/50, 8MB RAM...c'mon!) and while it's true that the primary use of a handheld today is to be an address book, why should that still be the case tomorrow? These little dudes are _computers_, man! Push 'em!
  • Looks like an example where Microsoft changed their business model to fit the market. That's good, and should be encouraged. There doesn't even seem to be a stink of MS muscle pushing people around, if indeed FreeBSD can't handle the features that Maxtor wanted.

    As users, we should be pleased that MS is moving to meet the market needs. If you are an evangelist for OSS, this should light a fire under your ass. Time to live up to the promise of "open is better" and get those features added.

  • Maxtor must have beat M$ into submission for the volumn pricing since they already are doing the server for "free". This is another stimulus/response from M$ that we are observing and can only help BSD/Linux/WinXX/free market/customers/etc. Competition is certainly at the very heart of the American dream and we are seeing it live! Right now! Another company (IBM/Fujitsu/etc) will be able to come out with a different version of a server using open source software and be able to beat Maxtor, or force Maxtor to revert back to FreeBSD. The bottom line is that Maxtor has the freedom to choose, and it gives the open source movement a message that it still must perform up to the current standards or it will be left behind.
  • If you're gonna quote me keep it in context.

    The dubious wisdom of going to MS's ActiveDirectory aside ...

    Playing holier-then-thou is childish. The point is that MS's product ties into MS network but BSD & Linux don't. In the market Maxtor is selling to that's a key feature.

    Thus Maxtor did a reasonable thing & will presumably make more profit then they would have staying with BSD or Linux.

  • While your comment may have significant value otherwise, you could have offered the same useful information without the sexual overtones. Being gay doesn't give you some inherent right to insert inappropriate material into converstions that the rest of the world doesn't seem to enjoy.

  • Samba sucks (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't get me wrong, Samba [samba.org] is pretty nice, but it can be a royal pain sometimes. It is troublesome to get it to work with Windows machines, and I have been using it for years.

    If Maxtor uses Samba, they have to put up with all the hard-to-useness. If Maxtor uses Win2K, SMB support is already there. Then all they have to do is write in support for NFS (unless win2k already has an NFS solution) and AppleShare (ditto).

    Samba is really coming along nicely, but it's STILL a pain in the ass after all this time. Microsoft's implementation works better with Windows because, well, they just plain old wrote the OS and know how best to interface with various versions of Windows and their SMB features.

    Maybe someday Samba will really be "drop-in", but it isn't today, not for me at least. I can fully understand why Maxtor would make a network appliance-type box run off Win2K... it will work with every Windows box they can throw at it, and work the first time.

  • Unlike with Windows/DOS, the Linux shell is an application program like any other. It can be replaced with a GUI shell with near zero effort.

    Actually, both dos and windows (at least through 98) can pretty easily handle an alternative shell. (dos less so)
    The shell on my laptop is bash. (Thanks cygnus! :-) (cygnus=redhat)) Cygwin has the basic GNU tools, including gcc. Explorer only runs if I want it to. With Perl and Gimp it almost feels like a real operating system.
  • According to some of the comments to a similar article at www.linuxtoday.com, BSD can handle pretty big files. Either Maxtor listened to some lousy consultants, or there was indeed MuScle involved...
  • I agree that there is little chance of Linux PDAs taking away a lot of market share from Palm any time in the near future. But as the hardware advances and demand for new technologies increases (wireless, etc.), I think Palm OS's limits will become a problem, and the need for a "real operating system" will be obvious.

    FWIW, I've been playing around with the Agenda VR3 PDA. Most Linux console apps compile for it without problems. GUI applications compile fine as long as they use FLTK, although you might have to change the window layouts to fit a 160x240 display.

  • NTFS support in FreeBSD is rw, and has been for a while, only linux is ro.

    Using netatalk and freebsd, apple share seems decently fast.

    When was the last time filers/NAS's ran the clients file system..? most filers/NAS usually have their own filesystem, and use the sharing protocol as the interface.
  • seems alive, well, running fast and with more support than I've encountered from linux distrobutions

    so before you put a spike in it's heart you might stop kicking it and let it get up.

    Freebsd is averaging 125 cvs commits a day. I'd say that's pretty alive and running.

    I'm pragmatic, BSD has certain advantages, and the various linux distros have certain advantages. But bsd is most certainly not in the grave, and remains a good alternative to solaris for many organizations critical systems.
  • Ohh, and popularity is not nessisarly the sole basis of surviveability

    for example: NetBSD usage is small, but on many of the bazillion platforms it supports, it's the sole option, as there is no linux or freebsd or alternative ported there. So maybe the user base is small, but the the software is assured to survive as long as the platforms do.
  • From the article:

    The choice of Linux won't be a disadvantage because "there are more than 100,000 active programmers for the Linux, which is more than double the number of those for Microsoft," said Uno.

    You will soon see the benefits Linux offers. Microsoft is dead, long live free software!

  • He did mention it in a passing way. You (I am presuming because you are posting anonymously) got in his face about it. I think you were offended that he mentioned it at all.
  • My ex-boyfriend got a prototype unit as a souvenir, and he has been able to stream his mp3s and videos from his webserver whereever he goes

    I dont care if he is your ex-boyfriend.. do you have any pics? And I mean his handheld .. er umm I mean this prototype PDA of his.

  • "Sharp is now talking to several non-Japanese companies, including a chipmaker, to develop a Linux OS handheld, through which it hopes to attract thousands of application software developers, Uno said. The target is to have 10,000 software programs written in the Java computer language by a year from October, he said." ugh. java. "The choice of Linux won't be a disadvantage because "there are more than 100,000 active programmers for the Linux, which is more than double the number of those for Microsoft," said Uno." But how many of each of those groups of developers will be writing code for this thing?
  • go install a service pack or something

  • On the other hand Maxtor has a bunch of Linux-based projects going on including their Quantum QuickView DVR streaming technology (think TiVo.)

    They're a big company & I don't think you can go judging them by one product line. Sure they put Win on this product but they've other product lines. In a world where many businesses have server bays full of Wintel boxes and legions of MS trained staff it seems reaonable to sell a pruduct tuned to that mentality. Plus Maxtor appartently got the tech from MS for next to nothing.

    Right now it's still a bit of a black art getting BSD & Linux boxes to be peers with NDS & Active Directory. That this is a problem for some businesses isn't a suprise, particularly for what are essentially plug-in/set-up/forget appliances.

  • We've managed to put a recognizable linux on those IPAQs - I'm sure putting it on a machine that was meant to run it from the beginning wouldn't be hard at all. Just hope they open-source their kernel mods.
  • You gotta wonder, just who is buying these servers anyway...

    Probably some hill-billy computer warehouse in kentucky or something...

  • Well, I'm hardly the FreeBSD expert but a) I know it supports >2gb files, and b) I'm pretty sure daemons are either available or easily portable from linux to speak the Appletalk (assuming you use that flaming piece of crap network protocol for your macs instead of tcp/ip, I had to support macs in a heterogenous netowrk in two jobs and trust me, tcp/ip is the way to go) and Novell network filesystem protocols. WRT to the backup software stuff, please, there must be a $MAX_INT backup solutions providers that use or interface with UNIX (if it's good enough for NASA it's good enough for your salescritters).

    I can only think that the decision process was influenced by M$ somehow (we'll take away support for you if you don't cooperate, we'l cut you a deal if you cooperate, we'll make a donation to the Maxtor Employee's Benevolents Fund it you cooperate, etc.), because I really don't think there is any technical validity to their decision...


    --
    News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]

  • I just wanted to point out that handheld doesn't necessarily imply that the device has no keyboard and CERTAINLY doesn't imply that it follows the palm form factor. There's no denying that palm hit it right on the nose with what you need in a handheld computer - I've had one since the Pro was introduced (Mmmm, backlight), and I'm still using my Pro today - and actively programming.

    The current versions of the PalmOS API are limited though in terms of the multimedia features they can handle, but this will be changing in versions 4 and 5 of the OS to reflect improvements in the hardware side of the equation (e.g. 200Mhz chips that can run on AAA's..)

    What they're aiming for, I hope, and I bet, is a handheld along the size of the HP Jornadas that are the traditional clamshell design. The first company that makes an ultra-subnote running linux, as light as possible with a nice screen - they're going to get my money, because I want something that can run for a day, edit and compile C++ code - prefreably GCC, but that's secondary. I'd like a real machine to store email on, and I'd like there to be the option of NO HD to break. Maybe run a browser. I don't need much else, but I need bigger size. I'd like it in the 1-1.5lb range.

    That's the market that I think they're going after; Palm and WinCE are both way to limited (although for completely different reasons) to ever really succeed here. I used to have a Hewlett Packard 100LX that did this role nicely.. I want something smaller than my vaio, damnit, that doesn't suck up a battery in 45 minutes!

    Someone, please port linux to the Jornada.. or I'll wait for one of these.. arrgh.

    If any marketdroids are reading this .. PLEASE make a device with the following, and I and likely hordes of other geeks will run to you:

    • Decent screen. Jornada OK, square better. 10" or maybe 8.4".
    • Run for a LONG time on a battery. 6 hours+. Maybe 12. Ability to run standard cells nice, but not necessary.
    • Flashed based, and support the IBM microdrive.
    • Compactflash support
    • Can run a REAL operating system; Linux is the obvious choice, but make it run GCC and I'm happy.
    • Light - 1-1.5lb MAX, and the thinner, the better.
    • Strong case - Don't care what, but titanium would be nice!
    • Can run a web brower. Doesn't have to be huge. Lots of little embedded solutions are out there. Or maybe optimize Galeon or Konqueror. I don't care.
    • Actively support it. Yes, I know about the liberetto. Try getting it fixed when it (inevitably) gets smooshed. Palm and Handspring have the lead here.
    • And be able to run MAME ;). Ok, maybe I can live without that.

    Please?

  • So Sharp decides to go with Linux instead of something else, and Maxtor decides to go with W2K instead of something else. The comments for this article are probably going to have to be vague, because as I see it, the whole thead is about subsituting one operating system for another.

    That being said, I'll throw in my real comment: I think PC makers should start shipping PCs with Linux instead of Window(s|z)! Uh... yeah, that's the ticket!

  • Actually, running an HTTP daemon would be amazingly useful on a PDA. With wireless networks getting better by the minute, a static IP and a webserver would be an amazing way to transfer files between PDA's without having to be within infa-red range. The more robustly these babies are built now, the better off we will be in the future.
  • First of all you will note that I said "Linux" I spoke not of BSD don't know enough to know if the Linux emulation layer would work for this or not. The link I gave in my first post gives you everything you need to run it as a server and here [calderasystems.com]. is the information for setting up the client. Note if you look at the installation instructions they have Caldera, RH (which I would think Mandrake is close enough for) and other. Have fun.
  • as a user of various server appliances, i can say that back-up was an issue not addressed, and where available, it is rather expensive in a small business setting.
  • RTFA --

    Microsoft adjusted its licensing terms for the Maxtor system, Williams noted. Unlike general-purpose servers, a Maxtor machine doesn't require that customers pay for client access licenses--the fees often required for computers that use the server.

    "That's the first time Microsoft has done this," Williams said.
  • Let alone the diffuculties they could get with syncronizing their M$ Outlook Email and Agenda stuff ?

    It wouldn't be any more difficult than with Palm OS and they seem to be doing pretty well, so what's your point?
  • GNU/Linux is mostly CLI based? That's not really true. Nowadays, if you grab a copy of KDE 2.1 and/or get a really well packaged/user-friendly distribution such as Mandrake, you won't EVER have to see a command line! (Unless you want to, which is the cool thing, you can still fine-tune stuff by the CLI).

    Have you seend rpmdrake, mandrake updater, and DrakConf? I think they do a serious job of kicking the ass of or at least holding their own against comparable features in windows.
  • I goofed. the correct link for the forum is here [linuxtoday.com].
  • The problem here is that the term "Linux" is overloaded, and we often forget that. In this context, "Linux" means "Linux kernel" and not "Linux kernel+UNIX-like utilities." (i.e. GNU/Linux) In the former case, you use Linux because it provides memory management, networking, and maybe low-level graphics (via the framebuffer). You have an operating system you can customize (in the case of Linux, you are probably throwing out stuff you don't need, rather than putting stuff in).

    As for PalmOS, I don't know what the pros and cons are. I'm just pointing out that Linux is not as insane a choice as you paint it.

  • Lot's of people are prejudiced about homosexuals. It was still a very tiny percentage of people who read the post and decided to be offended by the remark.
  • I wonder if moving to Linux in order to gain "mindshare" is becoming an accepted business strategy.

    Well, for the PDA market this might work out very well. I'm actually quite excited about the new interest companies are showing for Linux based PDAs. (Compaq [handhelds.org], Samsung [yopy.com], Sharp to name a few).

    Palm made it easy to develop software for its OS and the number of available Palm applications made it a success. Linux enthusiasts will likely replicate (and maybe even exceed) this number for a Linux PDA.

    The interesting thing about this perspective is that Linux won't come over the server onto John Smith's desktop, but maybe over PDAs. It will be the first time that 'normal' people (the majority of computer users) will see Linux doing the job.

    But then again, they won't really care. :)

  • Well I can agree that NetBSD would be just as useful in this role as the Linux kernel would be. I'm not suggesting that they deploy a full GNU setup on the thing, just a kernel. My point was that with investors, often times, Linux == cool and NetBSD == what is that?

    See my point now?
  • OS of last resort. It's not good for marketing, maybe, but it's netBSD's single biggest selling point.

    /Brian
  • I don't know about you all, but the Oracle Ad in the sharp story must be one of the mega-ads referenced a bit earlier on slashdot ( Banner Ads Could Soon Be Bigger [slashdot.org])


    It did its job, as far as grabbing my eyeballs, it was so big and ugly, an distracting. Kinda of like the new Pontiac Azteks, but I'll save that rant for another day.


    Big banners suck big time. . . I am glad I'm running 1600x1280.


    C|NET has a spot reserved on my shit list, that seems tobe growing longer every day.


    -ms2k

  • as a developer for an environment using network appliances, backup was accomplished with a 52 line perl script and a breece hill q 2.15. The same script was ported to a less expensive setup using a dlt4000 drive in about 5 minutes.

  • Uh, Ryan... I hate to break it to you, but Slashdot is not generally known as a hotbed of homophobic rednecks. You may have made an innocent (dare I say Freudian?) error in grammar, but it looks an awful lot like you are flaunting your sexual preference.

    If you are, fine. I'll bet virtually everyone reading your post could care less if you are gay, straight, or a connisseur of goatse.cx

    What is more likely (from the look of your E-mail address) is that you are a young, college-age gay man, who has recently discovered his "sexual identity." Good for you. You may be tempted to revel in this new-found discovery, to the annoyance of others; I would advise you to resist that temptation.

    I'm quite certain you are a well-educated young man, and have enough insight/foresight to see the potential problems that this type of "advertising" can bring. Much the same way that a rude, sexist, leering, flagrantly heterosexual guy can annoy even his male coworkers, and get his ass in a sling for sexual harassment, a flagrantly gay man is at least as unwelcome.

    Don't make an issue of your sexuality, and then get all huffy when people tell you to keep it to yourself. There are better venues to advertise, and frankly, most people could really care less.

    just .02 - spend it wisely
  • Perhaps he meant that as flamebait.


    Not that there's anything wrong with that!

  • Exactly, it's a wonderful OS for people who have real work to do instead of jacking off to pr0n videos the size of a postage stamp.

    I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

  • If this thing is *so* damn cool, then why is he your ex? ;)

  • I know many Palm devices have an optional keyboard available, but the primary input is a touch-screen.

    I'm thinking some modified version of X (or something similar) to be used in a similar fashion? And if so, can it also be ported to touch screen monitors?

    William

  • Maxtor's various reasons for ditching BSD were that it can't handle large file sizes, and that it has little backup software support.

    In switching to Win2k (a stripped down version) they proceed to lampoon open source as incapable of meeting their needs. As if the entirety of open source is represented by the merits/demerits of a single operating system.

    As far as I know, linux 2.4 could have handled maxtor's needs, but either 2.4.x wasn't tried and true enough for them, or Microsoft gave Maxtor win2k for little to nothing.
  • I lead the charge at a very large ISP I used to work for and helped replace 32 windows PDC's with freebsd boxes running samba. We wiped NT off of them and installed freebsd. I was pleased with the 40 percent increase in performance over NT, and not getting woken up at 3am in the morning anymore to reboot a locked up NT machine. I find it amusing that some outside developers do microsofts protocol with more speed. As far as netapps, I had an instructor during my netapp admin training let me know that the kernel they use is based on sunos. Netapps are wonderful things. They helped us achieve 99.9 percent uptime by writing scripts that automatically changed routes and remounted customer data within seconds if a machine died for any reason. They are damn expensive though.

  • I've been thinking about this issue for a long time. PDA's are becoming more and more of a nuissance to society. They are creating more and more danger, more so than cell phones shall ever be able to account for.

    My ex boyfriend told me that cell phones, once a boon to mankind, shall be our downfall. I fear that this will be surpassed by the dangers of PDA's.

    With the popularity of Linux ever on the upswing, this will surely put these devillish devices into the hands of hundreds of thousands. The price benefits of Linux will allow Sharp to produce an incredibly inexpensive PDA - its sales will clearly exceed those of either Palm, Handspring, HP's Jordana, or the iPaq. I fear such a terrible event as the reprecussions on society will be vast and permanent.

  • D'oh! This thread is probably about the handheld devices, not the Maxtor. Please excuse my previous post as the aimless ramblings of an overworked cubicle dweller....
  • a no-multimedia PDA, one with mulitmedia


    --
  • Especially when you consider that Borland Delphi has sold more than 3 million copies and MS Visual Basic has sold more than 5 million copies. I'd say that 50,000 active Microsoft platform developers is just a *bit* off... :-P

    However, I *am* a Java advocate and would welcome *any true* JDK 1.3 compatible implementation of Java on a PDA... :-)

  • Right now it's still a bit of a black art getting BSD & Linux boxes to be peers with NDS & Active Directory.

    Actually, it can be a black art getting ADS to work at all - even under Windows - and when it is switched on, it tends to throw other DNS services into the bushes and jump in after them. Many Win2000 [note: it's already obselete] saturated sites disable it. So if Maxtor ship their little black boxes with ADS enabled, they may shoot themselves in the foot rather seriously.
  • I believe it's a list of seperate versions of the device. There are three: one with no multimedia capabilities, one with multimedia capabilities, and one specially designed for wireless connectivity. My theory is corroborated by the article...

    Three models
    Sharp is developing three models for the worldwide market. They are a basic model that can share data between PCs and PDAs, a multimedia model to enable users to enjoy moving images and music, and a wireless communication device.

  • You didn't have to say ex-boyfriend twice, Ryan. We get the picture.
  • Does anyone know if the OS is visible/usable on this device? If the device is wrapped in its own UI and applications, it really doesn't matter a bit what is underlying it.. but if its something that we can develop for, thats another story.

  • As a major BSD bigot, I am inclined to agree with you. BSD was (once again) given a bad slant by Good Ol' Ziff-Davis. ZD has not produced a non-MS slanted issue since the mid 90's, when Dvorak was all the rage. Too bad, I still have the first PC Magazine I bought, back in 80 something. Has the first IBM AT on it, I seem to recall.

    BTW, is there a good source for MESA support for FreeBSD? Right now I use Debian for most of my MESA stuff. (Sorry to hop off topic)

    -WS
  • On the downside, Maxtor has ditched BSD for W2k in its network hard drive box.

    Do you need to purchase a client license for each client that accesses this box?? This is rediculous! You'll end up paying more for access to your hard drive box than you paid for the box!

  • It might be hard to make Linux work with Active Directory but not NDS [novell.com] . Novell and Caldera support it very well thank you very much. NDS rocks!
  • Fundamentally, it's all about developer mindshare. Linux is fast becoming the cross-platform "glue" that Unix was supposed to be before the various Unix vendors fragmented the whole thing for the sake of building "mini-microsofts" in various niche markets. The advantage of using Linux on a PDA is that can you can hire a zillion geeks out of college who already know it instead of paying top dollar for the relatively smaller number who know PalmOS or some other specialized OS. You can also leverage tons of mature development tools that you can run on fast Linux desktops and then just move the finished app over to the PDA for a final recompile.

    As for the CLI-GUI argument, that's really a dead horse. No one is going to produce a PDA that boots up into bash for a mass market! Linux doesn't have a "default shell". You can get rid of all the CLI stuff and replace it with a GUI login/shell quite easily. Most of the people that buy these things won't even know they're running Linux.

    --

  • Your support of microsoft as being "pragmatic" is the kind of short-sighted faux-wisdom that's gotten us in the jam we are in now. namely microsoft's monopoly market position.

    I would encourage everyone to try their hardest to embrace open standards on their internal networks. Maxtor may be following a path of least resistance concerning their relationship with microsoft, but thankfully most of us aren't in that position.

    Of course I have the luxury of not making business decisions for billion dollar companies, but i've got a hunch that it's in everyone's long-term benefit to try their hardest to embrace open standards.

  • Oh please, I support that kiddie OS all day long. It's a huge pain in the ass laden with bugs and misfeatures. Go astroturf somewhere else.

    I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

  • In that case I think you mean the IP-Protocol,
    and the FTP protocol would be useful. HTTP is hardly useful for transfering files, I think FTP would be a much more suited way.
  • what seems more important than the os (which probably wont be that visible) is the cpu the pda is running...

    palm devices run on such a crappy little cpu, they cant really have "multimedia" capabilities, which is fine if all you want is a calander program and a calculator (i might as well run my ti-83 with its z80)...

    the ipaq runs on a 200 some odd mghz chip, which is what you need to do things like decode mp3's etc... unfortunately its $500 and you cant find it anywhere... oh well...

    hope this thing is a little more reasonably priced and has some decent oomph behind it...

  • Original Slashdot article [slashdot.org]

    Lost the text of my rejected post, but the gist was that Sharp is endorsing Java and will have a Virtual Machine and SDK for spring release to jumpstart development.

    --

  • thats funny i didnt see a thing. then again i have squid+sleezeball. it's a happy world.

    use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
  • You probably have to enter a 5-word, 25-character Product Key just to get the damned thing running!
  • For one, outside of the geek community who the hell knows what NetBSD is. There is a bit of appeal for companies to be associated with Linux, especially from the viewpoint of their shareholders. They will think, "hey, I've heard of this Linux thing, must be they're on the cutting edge of things." So they go out and buy another 1000 shares of the companies stock.

    Besides that point, recent Linux development have been targetted towards making Linux more friendly on embedded hardware.

    Personally, I rather like the fact that people are using Linux and will be giving(even if it is forced giving) their changes back to the community and increasing the general knowledge of different commputing platforms(source code is often excellent documentation on a new platform)

  • I don't think he has a homophobic complex, I thought it was phrased awkwardly when I read it before I noticed your name. Most people use "he" or "she" when referring to someone after the first time, especially when you are not referring to someone by their name but by a descriptive term (my ex-boyfriend, some guy I just met, the girl in the green jacket, etc.).
  • Perhaps he meant that as flamebait.
  • So, I imagine they will be modifying the kernel in places. I don't see any mention of plans to publish. (Not that the lack of mention here implies they won't) But I was glad to see TiVo's code published, and it would be good to see mention of plans for that from them.
  • 1) FreeBSD has No support for large files:

    Are these guys serious? FreeBSD has excelent large file support.

    2) FreeBSD has no support for hpfs:
    while freebsd cannot mount hpfs filesystems... this is not needed for a filer or NAS. Most if not all NAS units run their own file systerm. IF they want to have appletalk sharing... this is VERY possible. I have a cient with an appletalk file server runnign freebsd and netatalk that has been up for over 350 days...

    3) FreeBSd has no Netware Fs support...
    I guess mount_nwfs must be a fake....


    Either the guys that wrot this article where fed some real good marketing BS and they bought it, or they are idiots ( am incline to believe they are both )

    reasons why maxtor ditched FreeBSD in favor of w2k is more likely due to special licensing deals than anything else...


    (lack of mac os support...heh... somone should tell them about MacOSX being in souce sync with FreeBSD 3.2 ....)

    (lack of large file support, it's been there for ages)

  • "FreeBSD did not support large file sizes, Macintosh and newer Novell file systems..." Is this true? It's sounds kind of hokey, especially considering they just picked M$ which until relatively recently couldn't handle partitions over two gigabytes. Are they refering to the ability to mount these files types, or the ability to connect with shared ones? I'd appreciate a respond from someone who knows more than me about FreeBSD.
  • Of course, if they make changes to the kernel they are going to publish. That's the law. Why should there be any question about them publishing?

    The interesting question is will their jvm will be open source?

  • IMO Micro$oft hasn't moved an inch in order to meet market needs...it saw an opportunity to get some good press by "giving away" a crippled version of W2k to run a device which, by its definition, will only go into a comparative niche market. The big money is still the sheer volume of sales to end users on workstations. If that weren't true, we would have already seen the demise of HP and Sun in the server arena.

    Just my two cents' worth...donate the change to your network tech so he can buy a new crimper.

  • Linux is a rather variable beast. Trying to nail down the limits of Linux is rather like trying to nail down the limits of the mamal class.

    Although Redhat/Debian, etc. are the best known versions of Linux [human], it ranges from PDAs/embeded units [doormouse, bumblebee bat [gorp.com]] to IBMs mainframe systems and beowulf clusters [elephants, whales].

    A minimal Linux kernel does not necessarily need a bourne shell. Unlike with Windows/DOS, the Linux shell is an application program like any other. It can be replaced with a GUI shell with near zero effort.

    So then, what's the advantage of Linux then? You're not limited to any solution, and you have the advantage of a whole base of applications which can be used to back-end your front end programs, a well-built, stable kernel that's extensible to your heart's content, a well documented programming interface, and programming tools out the ying yang.

    Oh yeah -- and you can do meaningful development and testing on your desktop machine.

    (anybody want to add to the list?)
    --

  • Great. I want my BSD or Linux box to operate as a peer on my NDS or ActiveDirectory architecture.

    OK, am I missing something? You want a Linux or BSD box to participate in a NDS or AD tree (rather than just be a client)? For NDS on Linux go get Novell Account Management [novell.com] or Novell eDirectory [novell.com]. For everything else use LDAP.

  • The real reason they dumped BSD in favor of W2K is because their boxes could not play enterprise with the proprietary Kerberos found in W2K. Of course, Maxtor cannot go public with the truth, lest their W2K licensing deal gets caught up in some lengthy "contract review". We've seen this time and again: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
  • Why would we want to run GNU/Linux which is still mostly CLI based on our PDA ? Most of them don't even feature a keypad...

    IMHO we need an OS which is most pratical to us on the PDA device, not what is "cool" in the short-run. That's why Palm/OS is still the most popular, not because it features a fancy GUI (like PocketPC/WinCE) but because it is pratical.

    I don't see how GNU/Linux could be pratical on a PDA. Do we really want to run a HTTP-Daemon on our PDA, I don't think so. A PDA is still mostly used as a Agenda/Calendar, so I don't care which OS it runs aslong as it is *PRATICAL*.

    How come everything always has to be GNU/Linux ?
    Please then go run NetBSD instead which runs on more equipement than GNU/Linux.

    --Sn0w

  • OK, for the hell of it...

    If you want httpd for a PDA, look here [umich.edu].

    Frankly, I don't think the Palm community get enough credit for the *heaps* of quality, free, and often open-source software that is produced. All of the add-on apps for my pdQphone are free-beer and most are open-source. I can use an open-source palm telnet or SSH client to access client routers from a moving vehicle (and I think that is both pretty cool and pretty handy, and no not while I'm driving :^).

  • If they are really serious about this then they should finance implementation of some kind of Palm OS emulator, and have it ready to go from the first day they ship. And even if it means licensing the ROMS from Palm.

    Linux as the underlying OS would be cool but only hard core geeks will buy a PDA for that reason alone..

    If they've got Palm OS (optionally) on top, and Linux underneath they've drastically expanded the potential user base.

  • Who cares? Maxtor makes crappy hard drives anyways. Every Maxtor I've ever owned blew up right before the warranty went out. At first I thought it was particular models and sizes, but after a while I realized, heck, they just make crappy hard drives.
  • Great. I want my BSD or Linux box to operate as a peer on my NDS or ActiveDirectory architecture.

    Show me a way that isn't some crufty hack but that's reliable, robust, and efficient.

    The dubious wisdom of going to MS's ActiveDirectory aside there's a lot of customers looking to buy products to plug into this as well as the amazingly awesome NDS. While BSD & Linux have great strengths this is one area they're not strong in right now and for MS's price (apparently dirt cheap) I can't blame Maxtor for going with 'em.

  • Great.

    I'm runnnig BSD, Redhat & Mandrake. Point me to the packages to make 'em NDS peers.

  • Great. I want my BSD or Linux box to operate as a peer on my NDS or ActiveDirectory architecture.

    Hence the anti-trust suite. When you're a monopoly you have to play by a different set of rules than a normal company.

    Show me a way that isn't some crufty hack but that's reliable, robust, and efficient.

    Easy. You said it yourself. using active directory allowing Microsoft to rape you anally and then steal your wallet. Don't buy into the microsoft monopoly, folks. It ain't in the name of progress..
  • This along with their new giveaway pricing scheme of windows CE is the greatest accomplishment of linux. Linux prevents MS from charging monopoly prices and everybody benefits when that happens. I hope Linux makes more headways into the desktop and staroffice gain a little market share too. It would mean lower prices for windows and office which would greatly benefit the average person or company.

    On the other hand it does undercut the "free things are crappy things" argument MS uses. Next time Ballmer or Allchin makes a comment like that somebody ought to remind them of this.
  • What's the big deal? How many people on this board mention their girlfirends or wives? How come that doesn't bother you?
  • Thans man somebody had to say this.
  • The interesting question is will it be there own jvm or will it be an existing jvm (perhaps IBM, maybe even Sun). I would suspect that they will at worst fork an existing jvm as anything else would require them to do more of the work they are avoiding by choosing linux. Also, if you want to attract Linux coders it is going to be far easier if they can see your jvm.
  • A linux pda would kick butt. And of course I would be the first one to pick up the credit card and get one. But will it still be open source. Imagine being able to update and remake the kernel on a PDA. It would make a hardware up grade a snap and any hardware made for it you just rebuild the kernel and your on the way. And imagine the power consumtion, or lack there of rather... Although there is the problem, typing in a make command would take for ever...
  • The CNET article states:

    At home, Sharp has been selling its own Zaurus devices since 1993. Though it introduced a model in the U.S. in 1997 running Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, the product failed to gain popularity amid stiff competition.

    That is so much bullshit. First of all, Sharp introduced an anemic PDA with the brand name Zaurus before 1997. It was no more than a Sharp Wizard with a few extra features and a different CPU. If you want to read about the american Zaurus you can at my archives at http://www.davenet.net/archives/ [davenet.net]. Now as for their attempt at a PDA in 1997 - that was the Mobilon. And it was easily the biggest piece of junk that SharpUSA has ever done. I wrote an article about it here: http://www.davenet.net/archives/mobilon.htm [davenet.net]. To sum up.. my Mobilon had a battery compartment meltdown and I had to exchange it. The problem with anything from SharpUSA is simple.. They think the american consumer is a retard and needs to have their products made accordingly. Sharp-Japan-made Zaurus products look like PADD's from Star Trek, have great HWR and are very fast and *very* cool. Don't get me wrong.. Sharp does a good job making a Linux-based PDA I'll be the first to buy it - I just have no faith in them.. All I have to say about Sharp's attempt at PDAs can be summed up as this:

    From dull minds come Sharp Products.
  • How about the Psion Netbook or Psion Series 7? They run EPOC so you can run Opera on them for your browser needs. Symbian has a GCC based toolchain for your C++ development needs (tho I think the SDK is Win32 only), there's a decent Java VM for it, no hard drive, PC(MCIA) card support so you should be able, at least in theory, to use the IBM microdrive and (wireless) lan or cellular modem cards..
  • Management of the device is done completely through a Java/browser interface, with no visibility into the OS itself. You can telnet/ftp into the box if you wish, where you will find an extremely stripped-down version of the OS, with little room to add additional utilities or configuration.

    The device is designed so that the actual OS is "non-tweakable", as if it's under a panel labeled "No User Servicable Components Inside". Any user config changes made through the Java interface get stored in a non-standard directory that's part of the shared disk space. This way, when Maxtor rolls out an upgrade, they can completely wipe the OS partitions without affecting any user configs or data.
  • Why is CmdrTaco assuming that the Maxtor thing is bad news? Why does he automatically assume that open-source was a better choice for the task at hand?

    Zealots who claim that only open-source software is worthwhile are just as bad as the ones who claim only closed-source software has a future. Real life is always a mixture of viewpoints. Both open-source and closed-source development efforts have a future in the technology world. Rather than trying to burn bridges, let's build them up and encourage all software makers to follow open standards.

    On the bright side, I'm glad to see Microsoft starting to give up on the idea of Client Access Licenses. Those CALs really MUST go, and quickly. They would be much more competitive against open source if they didn't charge for CALs. I think as Linux gains popularity, they will be forced to notice this and change accordingly, thus striking a balance.
    -------
    -- russ

    "You want people to think logically? ACK! Turn in your UID, you traitor!"

  • Maxtor deal also covered on LinuxToday (Score:3)

    by Wattsman ( 75726 ) on Monday March 05, 2001 @11:34AM (#383301)
    LinuxToday [linuxtoday.com] has a link to a C|Net article which says the same thing (verbatim).
    The discussion in the LinuxToday forum [linuxtoday.com] has probably everything that'll be said here.
    One item that stuck out was that MS would not be charging for client licenses. As Tim Wasson [mailto] pointed out, client licenses are a good revenue source, and MS probably cut a deal with Maxtor so that MS could say "Hey, even with Linux/BSD available, major companies are still choosing our software."
    Looks like MS has realized (on some level) that they can't get away with their current pricing scheme.

  • Maxtor switched from *Linux* to Win2K (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05, 2001 @11:35AM (#383302)
    Maxtor was actually working for several months on a network storage appliance that ran Linux to replace their FreeBSD box (which, by the way, they orginally got from a company they acquired). Suddenly Maxtor decided to shelve the BSD -> Linux porting effort (which was very far along at that point) and switch to Win2k. Rumor has it that they got some sweet deal with MS for the Xbox, which could have prompted the jump from Linux to Win2k on the network storage products. But that part is just a rumor.
  • I doubt very much they will be using anything similar to X - too much overheard. Easy enough to write their own frame buffer based window/windget toolkit.

    -josh
  • I wonder if their decision has rendered their product useless for the Unix market. We looked at one stand along file server box a few months back. It was cheap. It was fast enough. It supported NFS.

    But it only supported Windows style access controls. We couldn't assign ownership to individual files.

    We sent it back.
  • I've had so many Maxtor drives die. I can look to my right and see two of them on a workbench that will be used for target practice. The lure to purchase them was a common one I think 'lowest price on pricewatch.com'. In a way I'm glad that they aren't dragging BSD's good name down with their crappy products. Using Win2k is more in line with their karma.

  • To break into the PDA market now requires something to lure users away from the PalmOS (has a majority of the market), or the Windows CE (Microsoft would like you to believe that it's just like using your PC).

    I wonder if moving to Linux in order to gain "mindshare" is becoming an accepted business strategy.
    After all, those of us in the market for a PDA would probably buy it just for the "way-cool" effect and/or because we want to support the OS we already know and love.
    And that could be enough to get the PDA ball rolling for Sharp, priming for bigger and bigger market shares.


    Plus, once all my friends have one I'll be able to make jokes of the
    "Is that a penguin in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" sort. ;-)

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