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Handhelds Hardware

Next Devel Yopy Version To Run X and GTK+ 87

Posted by Hemos from the still-can't-get-my-ipaq-working-with-linux dept.
chrisd writes "From the yopy developers list, Young Hoon Kim notes that :"G-Mate will introduce the next generation of Yopy which targets the end user in the 3rd or last quarter of this year. This time, it will have 64MB of RAM and 16MB Flash, and it will use ramfs. Of course it will have X windows installed and all the application will be run on X too. Therefore, if you are planning to develop any application for Yopy, you have to port your application to be used with X windows. Since we will include GTK+ toolkit, it's a good idea to start making application using GTK". I've got the yopy, and I have to say I really like it, the screen is very nice and it's -very- fast. The development version shipped with something called w-windows which was weird, but I quickly installed X from the Yopy X Server Project."
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Next Devel Yopy Version To Run X and GTK+ More

Next Devel Yopy Version To Run X and GTK+

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  • The next generation? What happened to the original? Did they decide to not release it and to try again? I would like to purchase a PDA, perferrably one w/ linux. Unfortunately, they are either vaporware, very high priced developer/prototype modes, and/or not very good at what PDAs are supposed to do. A company can only make promises for so long. Sooner or later they are going to have to start delivering on those promises.

  • Aren't these the same clowns who keep spamming me about buying their developers' kit every time I post to one or two mailing lists? Hmmm, yopydeveloper.com [yopydevelper.com]...yep, that's them. Annoying little buggers, and won't stop spamming you despite requests to desist.

  • Troll or no, since you've been modded up so high, I feel compelled to respond.
    Madness does not exist in any objective sense.

    Actually, you are completely wrong. True, some people who are called "mad" are not "mad" by any known objective metric, but diseases which induce "madness" via neurochemical imbalance are well documented. If your body has issues with how certain neurotransmitters are either generated or used, causing an imbalance, it can make the brain run seriously out-of-spec. E.g. it's been found that manic depressives have very high levels of seratonin during the manic ("happy") phase, but very low levels during a depressive phase. There's tons of info on the web about this: search for schizophrenia, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and related info on neurotransmitters, etc.

    You've got a political-correctness-of-conformity issue, which you are wrongly using to ignore valuable medical science. This is especially bad when the medical viewpoint is far more compassionate and humanitarian than, for example, the historical view of the medically "mad" as "posessed by satan," with the horrible treatments that endengered.

  • This is nice and all, but.. (Score:4)

    by Xunker ( 6905 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @06:53AM (#293882) Homepage Journal
    But all the promises about new designs don't mean dick unless you're shipping the product NOW.

    I've been floowing Yopy since it was released, and I'm becomming steadily disapointed. The Spec sheet, when it was first announced in '99, was very impressive -- TFT colour, fast CPU, built in Mpeg decoder and FM/TV tuner... but the features dwindled and eve those it retained started looking less stellar every time they pushed back the relase date.

    I want to like the Yopy, I really do, but G-Mate is going to hve to impove it's track record before I'mm but my weight behind it again. Sorry.
  • does anyone see something weird too ? X-Windows is huge, big, feature rich and probably more bloated than any other piece of open-source software available on earth.

    You have got to be joking. XFree86 is about 30 megabytes for a full, compiled version. XEmacs is over 40. gcc+glibc is probably over 50. So, yes, there are open-source projects that are a lot bigger.

    Backward compatibility is the root of all (computer) evil !

    This is even more stupid. Abandoning backwards-compatibility just for the sake of being "new and different" is a sure way to make a lousy, incompatible product that no one will use. The X11 protocol has its flaws, but addressing those flaws while keeping our existing clients intact will take a helluva lot less effort than reinventing the wheel just to make it "newer", "fancier" or "more like MS Windows".

  • tip for your next rant: what you say is true for users, but not for programmers. please make this distinction clear.

    thi

  • Maybe it's just me, but everytime I see metion of the Yopy, I think of the Amazing Yappy from the X-Files, and I wonder why in the world anyone would think that kind of association would be a good thing...

    Remember: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux!"

  • Jupiter is so.... Roman! Why don't you quote a great Russian poet in French while you're at it.

    The quote is from Euripides, not Sophocles. I don't think it come from any of his works - only that he is creditied with the quote. (May have been the Medea? That was madness)

    Antigone would never have said that. She went to her death defending her brother's death before the Gods and Creon!! She knew it was folly, but not madness.

    Somewhere in Antigone (the play), Ismene say that a hopeless quest is not maddness at all.

    Pan
  • Actually, I have read in a Forbes magazine article about a year ago, that Samsung (for one) really is aiming to be 'low end crap' (although they obviously didn't word it like that)


    Actually, if I remember correctly, the very first email was about how Toyota was aiming to be low end crap, so just give them that market. The big strong US auto makers would always dominate the mainstream market anyway... :-)

    --

  • i already have a yopy with exported displays from x as well as a home brew pcmcia adapter in which i have a generic 802.11 network card.
  • I love vaporware. Why don't we put together a website devoted to the vaporous handhelds touted so much on /.

    Include Zaurus, Yopy, VR3, what else? Sure, the claim is that the VR is shipping, but from the reviews it sounds like it should be recalled in about 20 minutes. Yopy was first to vapor, still no production model in sight. Zaurus, well... Sharp has some issues. :-)
  • The *next* Yopy? Is the first one even out? I was thinking about buying one back when they said it'd be available June 2000, but it seemed to be in indefinite developer testing status.

    -Mike
  • I first ran X on a 32MB 40MHz 386, and I squeezed TinyX with a small Linux into 17MB disk on a 24MB 486.

    These handhelds will do fine. I sure hope so, as I've got a Casio EM-500 PocketPC that will have Linux on it as soon as I can persuade an IR link to let me transfer files to it...

  • One thing I find interesting about the Yopy is that it's Korean. Samsung seems to have made some steady inroads into American electronics shops with low- and mid-grade VCRs (I had one for a few years, liked the design, but it was not long-lived) and DVD players. (And Samsung, KDS, and LG Electronics have become very visible when shopping for monitors, too.)

    We've come to think of Japanese companies like Sony and Sharp as being the high-end makers for certain types of consumer goods, and I wonder if people can point to interesting / overlooked brands from other countries as well.

    The large Korean combines / Chaebol (Hyundai, Daewoo, Samsung, etc) make products in so many lines it's hard to keep track, but I don't see many of them in this country. (though my recent RAM shopping expedition through Pricewatch led me to a lot of Samsung memory.)

    Any thoughts on whether "the next Sony" could be one of these? Right now it seems to me like the qualitative differences (texture, ergonomics, colors) are really the biggest thing separating (for instance, and ignoring other countries for now :)) Japanese and Korean products.

    If not, why so?

    Random thought ...

    timothy

    p.s. I really want a free yopy, anyone who has an extra can please send it along.

  • Korean products, in terms of market share and quality, are about where Japanese products were in the early-70's. Hyundai has the best car warranty around. I have a KDS monitor at home and am quite satisfied with it. True, it's not as good as a NEC MultiSynch or Sony Trinitron, but a 19" only cost $250. I suspect that Hyundai and Samsung are perfectly positioned to be the "next Sony". Or perhaps the next Honda and next Sony.
  • Well, yes 64mb is plenty to run X - but keep in mind that your OS is stored in the ROM and your programs and data are all stored in the RAM, so that 64 megs will be smacked down to 60 - 56 with basic functionality applications, and will be gone when you throw a few mp3's / gameboy emulator and roms / video's / etc. on there - so if pda's use their ram for ramdisks - where do they get their ram from? :P
  • Windows API is also much faster than X-Windows because the model used is closer to how hardware-graphic accelerator works. X-Windows is too abstract and was designed when most hardware had a simple framebuffer...
  • Heh. It's about time we all admitted that the Palm Pilot is a game boy in business attire. :)

    - - - - -

  • A handheld can be what you make it (Score:3)

    by Illserve ( 56215 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @07:18AM (#293897)
    Hmm, if this is a troll, apparently it's slipped past the slashdot troll detectors by being modded up so quickly, so I'll respond.

    You're basically saying that people will become uncreative if you give them convenient calendars? I've rarely heard such alarmist nonsense.

    Certainly for some people they can serve to help regiment their life. But in my experience, a disorganized person (such as myself) will stay disorganized what utilities you provide them with. Start back in grade school with the trapper keeper, I found that no amount of effort or organizational products could keep tendencies in check.

    For people like myself, a handheld's organizational capabilities will likely go completely unutilized (as I can attest with my palm pilot). Instead, they serve the role of a mnemonic enhancer, an extension of my brain that can store information far more carefully than my own frazzled bundle of neurons.

    As a result, I can remember more, and potentially be more creative by cross indexing ideas I have now, with ideas I had a year ago. These ideas I would have surely lost had I not written them down somewhere. Physical notebooks don't allow one to dynamically rearrange one's notes, so a handheld helps in this enormously.

  • http://www.epopteia.net/notebook/writersword_plato _knowrite.htm#On%20writing

    And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

  • Recently I was out walking down town with my kids - we passed a young woman who appeared to be talking to herself .... my kids asked about this .... she was fairly well dressed and I realized I couldn't tell whether whe really was talking to herself - or had one of those new hands-free phones .... since we have a lot of street people downtown who are truelly talking to themselves (or others I can't see) I realized that she fit right in, perhaps not in the way she intended .... eventually I suspect we'll see all the really crazy people move to the business districts of cities so that they'll fit in :-)
  • Wow this is quite an accomplishment, considering the project activity statistics are at 0%, with 0 downloads for the month. Also, they have no released files and no CVS access. Where, exactly, did you get this code from? vaporware.com?

    Read to the bloody site, dolt. Including http://yopyxserver.sourceforge.net/download/downlo ad.html [sourceforge.net] . Then read some of the documents, which detail how to accomplish the tasks at hand.

    Troll.

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)

  • Re:X-Windows on a handheld... (Score:3)

    by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @07:54AM (#293901)
    X was originally designed and run on computers with less than a meg of RAM. While it didn't have all the features a modern X implementation has, it had all the biggies.

    The idea that "X is bloated" is most definetly a vast misconception. What do you base this observation on? It definetly isn't quantitative analysis, elsewise you wouldn't say it's bloated.

    So, you must be basing your opinion on subjective analysis. Now, KDE2 is pretty beefy. I bet at least 75% of people who use it, and this it's slow, will blame that on X. But if that were the case, how can I run, oh, say, Blackbox which is very fast? Since the X implementation is the same between the two, obviously that's not it. The same applies to GNOME; X isn't the bottleneck.

    Now, running remote X apps is a bit of a bandwidth hog. On a slow modem. :) Over a LAN, it's nice and snappy. Over cable or DSL, it's also rather fast, despite sometimes obvious latency(which is a factor of the network, not so much the X protocol).

    Anyways, there are projects around which have entire X implentations that take up a few megs in storage, and less than a meg in RAM. XFree86-based implementations, to boot. Considerng this Yopy will have 64M of RAM, and 16M of flash, I don't think it's an issue ;) Suuure, you *could* use something lighter. But then why not run Linux with a single shell in the console text-mode? 'cause we don't have to :)

    Just a misconception :)

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)

  • Re:What about the social implications? (Score:5)

    by AugstWest ( 79042 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @06:53AM (#293902)
    Well, I have had a Palm (first a III, then a Vx) for a little over two years now, and I use it mainly for playing backgammon while I'm on the can.

    In other words, I think you're taking this a little too seriously.
  • Samsung cellphones are of excellent quality. I used to be a Nokia customer, but got sick of poor TDMA coverage, so now I have the CDMA Samsung Uproar. The upcoming PalmOS wireless handheld Samsung SPH-I300 also looks intriguing.
  • I have not seen a yopy. I have not played with a Yopy. I cannot fully stand by what I say until I see a real, live yopy and play with it. But from what I can tell from all the people in the linux community buzzing about it, the yopy will not be designed for the true end user. It will be designed for geeks for whom technology is the ends and not the means. A goal and not a tool. We've seen the same exact thing with CE, where the whole point of the technology was "look, you can put a desktop in the palm of your hand! Isn't that cool? Looks, feel, and acts just like the desktop!" Unfortunately, the end-user who does not share the early-adopter blind optimism of us geeks and is not going to buy into the idea of the Yopy if it's simply "Now we can port all those X applications in their exact desktop form to a handheld". Hand held usage is going to have different issues than that of the desktop. Efficient UI design is going to be twice as important because the user will often have to input and extract information in a time critical fashion. If the user can't interact with the UI in such a way that they can boot up and jot down that phone number or directions to the concert in 8 seconds, the handheld will be nothing more than a expensive piece of junk in your pocket. A piece of junk that can play solitaire and run gimp, mind you, but a piece of junk nonetheless. A handheld is also going to have certain constraints a desktop won't. The amount of screen real-estate the UI design has to use drops severly, and the difficulty in accessing an interface element in a fast manner greatly increases. Finally, the only tasks that most end-users have had for handhelds has been stuff like taking down addresses, phone numbers, etc. Stuff that can already be adequately handled by the Palm. New and unique tasks for such a beast as the Yopy will have to be thought up in order to be a justifiable purchase for your non-geek.

    When you design a piece of technology that will interact intimately with the user (like GUI's or handhelds), you have to design from the end user backwards. You don't think about what GUI toolkit you use, or how you code it, or what chip you'll use. You look at the user's real tasks at hand. You look at their tolerance for dealing with technological details. You look at what shapes would fit comfortably in a user's pocket. When the guy who designed the palm first set about his task, he didn't think "what gui toolkit am I going to use?" or "how am I going to implement the OS?". The first thing he did was put a block of wood in his pocket and carry it around with him the entire day. The block of wood served as a reference point for how the palm would be implemented. As ideas about how the user would interact with the device formed in this guy's head, the palm slowly turned from a block of wood to the most successful portable technology ever created. It is this kind of "organic" thinking that we need when designing the next generation of handhelds. If yopy wasn't thought of as a block of wood, it will only turn into an expensive brick. Wood floats, bricks sink.
  • It can be, or it can be quite small and sleek. Remember X was originally designed to run on DEC MicroVax & Sun 68020/68030 workstations with 4 MB of RAM - an environment much less powerful than a modern handheld.
  • I want to export applications from my PDA. Using my system keyboard rather than the PDA input when I'm at my desk makes a lot more sense. I just want to plug it in and automagically have all its apps exported to my main display. Hopefully that functionality would be available.

  • True. (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @07:11AM (#293907) Homepage Journal
    We were working on an embedded device and had an X server in about 700K. The view of X as bloated is largely a misconception.
  • but I'm a long time PalmOS fan. Now if only they'd GPL their OS... *hope*

    Parts of the Palm OS is *NOT* thiers to "GPL".

    In fact you can go look at the source for 90% or so of the code.

    Other than the blind zealtory that is the GPL, what benefit would Palm get by using the GPL as opposed to what they have done?

    Oh and Hermos, if you can't get Linux to work, have you thought of using NetBSD on the iPaq? Oh, wait....Open Source only matters if it is Linux. (and if its GNU/Linux, then it is Free Software)
  • Oooo that's cool. :-)
    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • Windows appears so much faster because it's had nearly 10 years of driver development/tweaking behind it. When was the first official NVidia driver released for Linux? Oh wait! It hasn't! The drivers are still beta! And even beta quality drivers come pretty damn close to Windows' performance.

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • IKIHBT, but sorry, better luck next time.

    Little tip from an ex-troll.

    Trolls like it more when you say things like that, and then proceed to respond to their points. It's similar to saying, "I know that you know that 2+2 does not equal 5, but here's a proof as to why it doesn't".

    Either way, you lose.

    HTH

  • I never really got into the whole 'multiple personality' thing. Except when I had signal 11's account. But after that I got kind of bored and stopped. I haven't really trolled since then.
  • this is true, and I even have an 4 digit account that I stopped using when I started trolling. KTB is a 6 digit (high 6) new schooler, but he has adapted very well. Most accounts above 180K or so get so annoyed with trying to play the game here that they end up trolling out of pure disgust. That's what happened to me about 90K ;)
  • Still, why use X [...]
    Er.. perhaps because of API compatibility? If you use Qt/Embedded then I guess only Qt apps will work.
  • samsung electronics (as with every other consumer electronics company in the world) is trying to position itself as the next sony, but i doubt it will ever be able to beat out sony's brand recognition and customer satisfaction. in korea, most koreans want to buy certain consumer electronics (dvds, video cameras, digital cameras...) from japan because they know that japanese electronics firms manufacture higher quality goods than what is manufactured in korea.

    i think the most visible korean products in america are the samsung pcs phones, tvs, computer monitors and microwaves. i believe some ibm think pads are manufactured in korea by the LG / IBM joint venture. i think LG electronics is concentrating on lcds (as far as computers goes). as the original poster noted, the korean conglomerates are very diversified in the products that they manufacture (samsung got into the car business for a very short period of time). samsung electronics seems to have their hands in all types of electronics.

    i'm pretty sure samsung electronics employs more than 30,000 workers. i had the pleasure of working at their number one facility in 1997 for a short period of time as a english conversation teacher. unfortunately, since i was only an english conversation teacher, i am unable to really comment on samsung electronics other than from what i read in the korean newspapers...

    andrew park

  • I have had a yopy since just a bit after the development kit came out (serial number 80 or something!), and it rules.
    One of the big disadvantages was the W Window system - the built-in applications were quite useful, but extendability was low. After the X patches came out I installed X and icewm on it, and it's working great now.
    In my opinion there are a couple of disadvantages of the yopy:

    no PCMCIA - compactflash is 'nice', but not great. PCMCIA is way cheaper, and allows for more (supported) hardware.

    not enough flash - my filesystem is _constantly_ full.

    no ethernet - i mount some of my development harddisk space over a serial ppp link on the yopy - slowwwww.

    The rest of the thing is great - i hope they'll have the thing on the market soon, and cheaper than the development version...

    By the way - for more information about the yopy/development for the yopy check my site [slashmeat.net], i'm hosting the unofficial yopy faq there as well.

  • ...for lusers, and developers who release code under GPL.

    but if you want to do "commercial development" or "closed source" it's something like $1550 per developer seat...more than Win2K and Visual C++ pro combined!!

  • you've been taking too much sociology lately, dude. relax. drink some beer. it might help. (do make sure the brand you pick up isn't imposed on you by some corporate power structures. some local brew is the best bet)

  • True radicals and free thinkers should have nothing to do with them, as they force one to limit one's ambitions and thoughts.

    That's fair enough.

    We should be constraining the use of these devices, not promoting them.

    OK, here's where you lose me. If these devices are bad because the power elite force them on us, wouldn't the power elite preventing us from using them be equally bad?

    That said, I know where you're coming from. Devices like this have the potential to become the brain-strangling neck ties of the 21st century.

  • ...it's just getting the code developed that hasn't completely happened.
  • Don't forget about LBX - low bandwith X, a timmed down version of X. So you can run yer yopy wirelessly. Coicidence that ybos and yopi are somewhat similar. (At least to my glazed eyes.) I think not.
  • I honestly hope this one is basically a final product, not the prototype that was introduced a couple weeks ago.

    If so, I'll be on my way to the store about a day after it comes out.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • How about selling me the first one before improving it?

    It's like going to a sandwich shop and they say "Oh sorry, can you just wait a week or so, we'll have some new emu and yak meat here for your sandwich" and you say "I didn't want that though, I just wanted my first sandwich". And they say "Too bad!"..

    ...maybe it isnt like that

    Klowner
  • the wrist watch! Throw off your shackles, and refuse to be a slave to others notions of 'time'!

    been there, done that, love it...:-)

  • Re:X-Windows on a handheld... (Score:3)

    by Drone-X ( 148724 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @06:52AM (#293925)
    does anyone see something weird too ? X-Windows is huge, big, feature rich and probably more bloated than any other piece of open-source software available on earth.
    The thing will have 64M RAM, that's more than enough memory to run X. X isn't really bloated anyway, it just looks bloated in top but a lot of that memory is either shared or on the framebuffer (IIRC).
  • For heavens sake. Unrealistic expectations have nothing to do with technolgy. It has to do with how people view themselves. The development of things like PDAs, Cell Phones, etc. is driven by the big social power games, not a cause of them.

    And I get a little irritated when I hear phrases like "technocratic elite" and "corporate power structure". Not that I consider big power centers in our society to be totally benign entities. But they are a simple fact of life. Even if we could get rid of them, to do so would destroy the very social infrastructure we depend on.

    If you're concerned about the impact of technology and corporate power, work on ways to mitigate their evils. If you just stand on a soapbox and yell, "Repent! Repent!", you're not contributing anything. Worse, you're making yourself into a convenient strawman for the very power groups you're afraid of.

    Also consider your audience. Slashdotters are primarily people for whom technology is very important. It's an outlet for their creative energy. It's a way for them to make a living. Most of all, it's an endless source of fun. You're not going to change that with any amount of moralizing.

    Are we sufficiently offtopic yet?

    __

  • I already replied to this one, but I missed the punchline:
    We should be constraining the use of these devices, not promoting them.
    That's fascism, pure and simple.

    __

  • OK, here's where you lose me. If these devices are bad because the power elite force them on us, wouldn't the power elite preventing us from using them be equally bad?

    You're assuming that Sociology Major thinks that power elites are bad. He never said that. He just want the power elite to have the same priorities he does.

    If I were going to go around banning any kind of intellectual inquiry (and I'm opposed to the idea in any form) I would probably start with disciplines like Sociology, that seem to think that fixing a broken society is something like fixing a toaster.

    __

  • Am I the only one completely turned off by the high ($400-$600) price target if and when it's released? I'd rather pay half the price for the Agenda [agendacomputing.com] even at a sacrifice of those features. Besides, the specs look a whole lot like the Compaq Ipaq, which runs the Evil Handheld OS (and Linux nicely enough). The thing is, the Compaq is available now, and is in the same price category.

    More important to pretty full-color screens and digital camera add-ons are long battery life, quick and easy PIM applications, and excellent handwriting recognition. The Palm and Visor have this, and until WinCE devices and Linux devices do, they'll fail.

  • There is more than one place to get X for the yopy. You can also find X and an associated kernel for it at http://www.yopydeveloper.org/download.html [yopydeveloper.org].
  • think, I need these, one of. Thoughts my not organized are perhaps, unit of this help could do you think?

    :)
    -fohat
  • Check the w-windows project link... download there... ;p

    ----

  • I have been extremely resistant to organization... I love organization when it exists, but the process of organization often does get in the way.

    I'm sure a lot of /. readers are in the same boat, but what is wrong with organization? We all agree that if our tools are in the toolbox things are better... we know that for people to consume our communication, it too must be organized. Is organization so wrong?

    I do agree with you. I *feel* my life when I'm not organized... its a great sense to feel how I'm doing financially by keeping it in my head, and its good to get into hyper-focus mode and acheive something intricate and involved by being able to *feel* what needs to be done.

    Not by lists, procedures, timetables, order of operations, etc, but by being in tune...

    OR

    Perhaps I should have more organization. Often I'm inhibited when I loose information, or my means of not looking things up is missing. I think that perhaps my mind works more like a relational database or XML, and when it gets to heart of the matter, perhaps us geek-types should just learn RDBMS or XML and implement that uniformly across all of our data keeping.

    I agree with your statement that conformity and insane non-intuitive organization can be a hinderence, but the problem still lies in "how do we make sense of the madness?" For organized people, organization works (even if it is a crutch) and the rest of us will just have to *feel* it.

    ----

  • this is nice... (Score:4)

    by b0r1s ( 170449 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @06:41AM (#293935) Homepage
    but on a more realistic note, why are we being told now? I could understand if this was to encourage application development before it shipped, but it seems more like a way to hype up possible vaporware than to encourage development. Does anyone know how far along this project really is? If so, how's it look?

  • So does this mean I can hook one of these things up to my network and export it's X display? It would kick ass to be able to use the power of my main box on a little handheld.

    -antipop
  • Umm, that and there are no real alternatives for a good display server with all the features you would expect. DirectFB is step backward, and Berlin developement is more than a little slow. X can run in small devices no problem, it's just that XFree is not the ideal embeded X server.
  • I'm with you. That's what I've been waiting for for years. Check this one out:

    http://content.honeywell.com/yourhome/webpad/webpa d.htm [honeywell.com]

    --tim

  • One thing I've noticed is that the Samsung/Panasonic stuff we get over here (in the US) is basically low end crap. Wallmart and Sears electronics type of stuff. The Samsung/Panasonic products in the far east (I've only been to Korea and Japan) are of a much higher quality. We tend to get the best lines of Mitsubishi, Sony, etc.

    Anyone from Panasonic or Samsung marketing care to elaborate??

  • PCMCIA for networking
  • That's not X. I never said "w-windows" isn't available for download. I'm just talking about this port of X that this thread is promoting.
  • Ok Mr. Flame. There isn't actually any link to this site in the article BTW. Not owning one of these things, I wouldn't really know that now would I. Or was I supposed to do an hours worth of research before posting? Asshole.
  • I quickly installed X from the Yopy X Server Project
    Wow this is quite an accomplishment, considering the project activity statistics are at 0%, with 0 downloads for the month. Also, they have no released files and no CVS access. Where, exactly, did you get this code from? vaporware.com?
  • I want nothing more than a handheld that is actually a full computer with a small display. I am left in the cold by all of these tiny I-do-nothing-useful devices that are really just electronic replacements for a minimalist secretary.

    Closest I've ever come to this dream is a Newton MP2100, but if possible, I'd like something even more functional. I'd love to be able to run X apps on a handheld and to install the biggest, baddest flash card (of whichever type) I can so that I can carry all of my important data with me all the time.

    Now if only somebody would make a handheld that didn't try so damn hard to fit into a shirt pocket. Here's my ideal handheld:

    • 6-8 hour battery life.
    • 480x320 or 640x480 screen that measures 5.5x4 or so (half sheet of letter-size paper).
    • Thickness of 0.5 inches.
    • 500MB or more of storage.
    • Linux+X plus any applications I can compile/develop for it.
    • Pen-based.
    • Weighs less than 2 lbs.
    • Reasonably fast (the speed of the most recent PocketPC machines or maybe a little faster).


    Kind of like a Casio Fiva MPC-501 [casiosolutions.com] but at a sub-$1000 price point, rather than an over-$2000 price point.


    Anybody got any ideas?

  • La la la.

    I was sitting around yesterday when someone mentioned that an email to someone bounced. I told him that the person they were trying to email does not check her email, to which the emailer explaimed "How the hell is that possible? Not use email?!?"

    While I agree with you that advancements in technology will not make non-users of said technology less efficient, at the same point one must realize we are becoming increasingly electronically dependent to the extent of the popular assumption that because someone goes to college, she must use her email because it's so easy to check.

    You use an organizer the way it's best used. As a tool, not as the way you keep track of your daily life. I personally don't write anything down. I do sometimes put things in outlook, only to never check it.

    some people have a real use for them, but I feel it should not become the norm.

    also, since when did a linux based PDA suddenly become the corporate, evil life-theatening killer on slashdot? jeez...you want freedom, then you want linux...

  • One thing I find interesting about the Yopy is that it's vaporware. Vaporware seems to have made some steady inroads into American electronics shops with low- and mid-grade linux-pdas....We've come to think of Vaporware companies like Yopy, Microsfot, and Samsung as being the high-end makers for certain types of fictitious consumer goods...The large Korean combines / Chaebol (Hyundai, Daewoo, Samsung, etc) make products in so many lines it's hard to keep track, but I don't see many of them in this country. p.s. I really want a free yopy, anyone who has an extra can please send it along.
    Sadly, I can only send you some of the free vapor I picked up at CompUSA today in a ziplock bag. Would you like Plug 'N Play (very easy to inhale), USB 2.0 (this vapor goes really fast), or Serial ATA (now with only four wires!)?

    Second generation vaporware is the funniest thing I've heard all week.

  • and all the application will be run on X too.

    It's spreading! Make your time!

    --

  • Still, why use X when there's probably a zero possibility of these PDA's ever using it remotely?

    We already know that for the average user, X is overkill. There is a small minority that use its remote capability (myself included), and that's really the only reason to keep it around on the desktop.

    But a Linux PDA? Qt/Embedded is clearly the way to go. Lovely screenshots can be found here [trolltech.com].
  • I think having X on a PDA could be very useful. Think about using it as a terminal: a PDA with wireless networking running X apps from your server at home or at work.
    seems very cool to me.
  • No IT IS a bottleneck! Look at Windows. Many of you guys don't like windows, but when it comes to "local" graphics, Windows wins hands down. Why? Because it doesn't have "client-server" overhead! Why should drawing of the one fucking line involve IPC? Why should it involve sockets or shared memory? WHY? That's why XWindow is so slow and so are graphics libraries.
  • Why didn't slashdot link directly to the yopy developer site. [yopydeveloper.org] Many more link and more information.

    --Shoeboy
  • Say, this must be one of those plain-text-encrypted messages, where meaningful information is hidden in readable, but meaningless language.

    Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
  • Reccomending *WinCE*? Have you ever even used a WinCE device? They're horrific. It's a remarkably poor attempt to shoehorn the Win32 API into a different form factor. And considering that said API was designed for desktop personal computers and NOT PDAs, even your original complaint isn't addressed by WinCE.

    I very seriously doubt that Linux-based PDAs will do much better. The only things I see going for them are the geek populatity factor ("Dude! It runs Linux!" "DUDE!") and the free software base. Because of those too advantages, I could see these things managing to survive due to folks creating some Real killer software for the thing so that it could accomidate the user base that uses PalmOS devices for the applications but would love it to have as much hack value as their workstation.

    (Disclaimer: I don't work for any PDA company, but I'm a long time PalmOS fan. Now if only they'd GPL their OS... *hope* :) )

    --Jo Hunter

  • Boss, I beg to differ. You could as well argue that guns kill people or alcohol causes sin. Blame not hardware for flaws in peopleware.

    I will go so far with you as to agree that PDAs, guns, and alcohol require responsibility on the part of the operator.

  • This article diserves an award for most undecipherable topic ever. My first though when reading the title was "WTF?!?!, Surely this be some sort of typo"

    Ratguy

  • Hell, lets do something about that great inhibitor of personal free and individual thinking--the wrist watch! Throw off your shackles, and refuse to be a slave to others notions of 'time'!
  • I've got a watch that store's phone numbers, alarms, and has multiple timer settings. I have a cell phone that stores phone numbers, voicemail, and retrieves incoming phone call phone numbers. And yet I still am sometimes at a loss for information! What a great thing a Palm would do to give me all my addresses, phone numbers, alarms, meeting notes, etc. in one place so that I don't have to waste hours looking for that stuff. Alas, I don't have enough money to purchase one right now.

    You're right, uncreativity does not happen from being more organized! Rather, it is the other way around. What's more alarming is the fact that the original poster got modded up, instead of down just because he threw some philisophical BS that does not have any thing to do with this argument into his comments! Ridiculous.

  • Any thoughts on whether "the next Sony" could be one of these? Right now it seems to me like the qualitative differences (texture, ergonomics, colors) are really the biggest thing separating (for instance, and ignoring other countries for now :)) Japanese and Korean products.

    Actually, I have read in a Forbes magazine article about a year ago, that Samsung (for one) really is aiming to be 'low end crap' (although they obviously didn't word it like that) as the above slashdotter mentions in reply to your comment. So I doubt they will try to change their overall business plan to accomodate being known for their high quality products. Not to say that they wouldn't venture into the high-end market, but for now their business plan is aimed at the cheap sector of the market, and for good reason: There is lots of money to be made in the cheap market.

  • Let's also not forget that Linux is good for multiple user, networked systems. That's what it was designed for. MS Windows was designed for individual personal computer use, not multiple user, networking use. The two sides keep trying to beat each other, when really they're not even competing in the same space. I would say that PDA's should be running Windows CE instead of Linux. And Linux should be running the Internet servers of the world, not Win2k.

    Disclaimer: I realize Windows and Linux can do the same jobs like running a server, but each OS has it's own specialties that it's better at.

  • That *would* be great. Especially if you could use wireless networking with it. Hmm...

    The closest hardware I could find mentioned was wireless modems on this faq [yopydeveloper.org]. It would suck if wireless 56K modem connectivity would be the best you could get.

    --

  • That's because there's a good chance that this thing is a scam. Anounce a product that will run Linux(WOW) and sell some free software, called a dev kit for 1000$, then eventualy say that the product will never be released becuase of money problems or something. Then do it all over again.
  • IKIHBT, but sorry, better luck next time. I am a free spirit, and I also embrace technology. The palm pilot that is currently in my pocket is used for an address book, and date planner, but also as a little notebook that I can write down the fleeting poetic thoughts as they come in, instead of rushing to a computer/notebook/whatever to jot them down, and hope that the brilliance of the moment is not lost. Computers are simply tools, and can inspire true brilliance.
  • Hey, I know, but I love argueing. Give me any topic, and if I'm in the right mood, I'll throw up a convincing argument that runs counter to society's accepted belief.

    Besides, 2+2 does equal 5, if the values of two are sufficiently large enough.

  • What about the social implications? (Score:3)

    by sociology major ( 325436 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @06:48AM (#293964)
    Whom Jupiter would destroy he first makes mad
    Sophocles: Antigone, C. 450 BC

    Sophocles had a great insight. Madness is a social phenomenon; people are said to be mad when they deviate from the norm. Madness does not exist in any objective sense. In the eyes of God, we are all sane.

    The problem with handheld computers and indeed computers generally is that they raise the bar of sanity. Everyone is expected to be super organised, utterly confirmist and organise the details of their life such that they can be described in Microsoft Outlook's diary functions.

    The onset of portable computers continues this trend, and it is most worrysome. Where will the creative free spirits of our society come from when they are expected to obey the whims of the technocratic elite? Portable computers such as the yopy are always imposed on us by the corporate power structures above.

    True radicals and free thinkers should have nothing to do with them, as they force one to limit one's ambitions and thoughts.

    We should be constraining the use of these devices, not promoting them.

  • Some people never learn...

    Let's see... Let's get a good yet questionnable idea (PDA w/ Linux), launch a wave of PR talking how great this device will be. Let's incur all kinds of delays possible promising the device soon. At some stage let's do 'goto start' and do it all over again with the new version of the device without releasing the original one.

    Finally, let's make a great step towards establishing the device on the market - let's charge developers for the dev. kit (much more than what other companies charge) for the device that is based on a free system and is supposed to use free development tools (gcc et al.)

    There are way too many sleazy companies trying to ride the Linux popularity wave as well as to save on the O/S royalties.

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