PDA Running on Linux?

**gr8rcake** · 01-16-2006, 09:43 PM

Most PDAs in the market run on the Palm OS or Win CE. Are there any PDA (or PDA phone) that runs on a Linux-based OS? I'm looking around at PDAs at the moment, and would very much be interested in a PDA running on Linux.

Thanks in advance.

**salparadise** · 01-22-2006, 06:37 AM

Have a look at the Sharp Zaurus range, they all run Linux. There's also the OpenZaurus project which iis a Linux on the Zaurus project with both KDE and Gnome flavours.
There's reports of Linux succesfully being ported to some of the iPaq range too.

**gr8rcake** · 01-23-2006, 08:05 AM

Thanks,

Do you have any personal experience with it? For example, the popular applications that are supported on it?

I want to buy a Linux PDA because I feel I could get add on features for free without having to go through my phone service provider.

I'm just at the early research stages though.

Any help appreciated.

**Stuart** · 02-05-2006, 11:37 PM

Originally Posted by gr8rcake

Thanks,

Do you have any personal experience with it? For example, the popular applications that are supported on it?

I want to buy a Linux PDA because I feel I could get add on features for free without having to go through my phone service provider.

I'm just at the early research stages though.

Any help appreciated.

I have some experience with the Zaurus, both the older models and the new clamshell models. I own an SL-C1000, it is great. I use it for listening to music, browsing the web, chatting, games, and sometimes I use it for conventional PDA uses. The Zaurus is really a mini-laptop (Why would a PDA need to play Quake2?), but it does have some very nice PIM apps. There are a number of distrobutions (or roms) for it, Sharp's rom is based on Qtopia and is the best for PDA functions, but it's quite outdated. OpenZaurus and Hentges are based on the OpenEmbedded Linux distrobution, and use a Qtopia fork called OPIE (or GPE), and pdaXrom uses X11 and Matchbox, and can run Qtopia-based apps. A few good links for Zaurus research are:

http://oesf.org - Open Embedded Software Foundation
http://oesf.org/forums - if you search here, you can find anything you need
http://pdaxrom.org
http://openzaurus.org

**Compunuts** · 02-07-2006, 05:06 AM

The Nokia 770?

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8671

**Schotty** · 02-05-2006, 06:03 PM

Honestly after using all three, PalmOS is much more robust and polished IMO.

Personally I prefer PalmOS.

**Schotty** · 02-05-2006, 06:06 PM

Oh and almost forgot, there are a ton of projects out there that aim to replace whatever it was that came on the PDA with Linux. You could try looking for one of them.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8728350077.html
http://www.ipaqlinux.com/
http://www.linuxda.com/