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Will it run Windows ..... Oh, wait I have that the wrong way don't I?

LOL

This could be really good, especially if it is easy to develop for and isn't as tied down as current PDA OSes. I want to be able to tweak it like I can a Linux desktop.

Linux is still GPL, isnt it?And how can they use linux with propietary layer?

The value in using Linux is mostly that they can move to new and different hardware quickly. They would effectively become a Palm API and UI vendor, as opposed to an OS vendor.

One of the reasons PalmSource is moving to Linux is to get out from under the licensing terms for the proprietary KADAK kernel they are currently using that prevent PalmSource from allowing application developers to use threads. Developing software for the Palm OS is torture: no threads or real processes, everything must be in a silly database format, lots of size limitations (32k code segments, 64k db record sizes), a goofy UI paradigm, a goofy application event model, inadequate development tools, and the list goes on. As I understand it, most of these limitations exist to support backwards compatability or because of licensing limitations. I expect that what PalmSource is going to do is port their existing Palm OS over to Linux and use it as a kind-of virtual machine (on ARM processors, this is what is happening already) to provide a backwards compatability layer. Then they will undoubtedly encourage new applications to be developed on top of the Linux layer. I hope that they are not too late as the Pocket PC OS isn't hindered by any of these limitations and when Magneto comes out it stands to quickly gather a lot of momentum. In my opinion, Palm/PalmSource has been asleep at the wheel for too long and they may lose everything because of it.

PalmOS is finished, from their lame LifeDrive product, to their inability to revamp PalmOS, to their disasterous split/remerger it's clear this is a company headed the way of the company whose intellectual property they purchased, Be Inc. Call it the curse of Gassee. Their only successful product, Treo, will probably end up being sold by the same fools in management that decided the split was a good idea.

If they're lucky some larger company like apple will see fit to buy them when they're cheap and desperate, otherwise we'll see them in the downward spiral towards chapter 11 for the next few years. Such a sad demise for a company with so much history and promise.

I only use my PDA for playing MP3s and keeping track of my work hours, that's something I could have done with a pen, paper, and a less expensive mp3 player. I thought I could write my own apps for Palm devices using one of the programming languages I already knew, but as it turns out it's definately not that simple.

If Palm wanted to impress me there would have been a free developers ide and compiler ready from the point of installation to compile palm apps for the device, and it would also have included an emulator and full API documentation without requiring any form of registration.

If I can write C++ applications for Windows CE, my next handheld will run that; however, having used a PDA before, the entire novelty of owning one has worn off and I would much rather use a laptop or desktop computer.

PDAs make a good replacement for notepads because they can hold more notes, addresses, etc... in a device far smaller than the reuqired notepad. But at the same time for those to be useful even in that way they would need to have a larger screen, would need to be thinner, and could use something better than the problematic grafitti which I and several others have so much trouble with. Imagine a thin tablet about the size of a mouse pad with a scroll wheel on the left or right side like the kind you have on a mouse, capable of recognizing hand writing like Windows tablets, and with a very easy software development environment for your desktop along the lines of Visual Studio to write programs for the device.

a python wrapper. Pretty please.