http://www.osnews.com/story/18193/Palm_s_Linux_OS_Delayed_Until_2008_Mobile_Linux_Fragmentation_City_ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 18 May 2013 09:51:46 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?252683 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252683 Too late Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fretinator) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252687 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252687 ...meet the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project. Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luminair) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252692 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252692 What's wrong with symbian that linux solves? Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Timmmm) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252705 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252705 You mean a competitor is saying their linux offering is gonna fail?

I just can't imagine a competitor saying that, of all people... Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Noremacam) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252706 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252706 Nothing, except that Symbian requires fewer resources and it was created from day-1 as an embedded platform. It also has a better battery life -- at least until recently. On the other hand, Symbian has other problems, that Linux has solved, e.g. a good development support. So, it's always a trade-off, depending on the kind of product you want to build. Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252798 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252798 I was seriously considering holding off on getting a new smartphone until later this year, since the prospect of a Treo running this fabled new Linux based PalmOS X looked interesting. The end of the year was doable, but some vague 2008 time frame puts a Treo out of the running. At least I don't have to wait to decide between the iPhone or a Blackberry. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bsharitt) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252799 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252799 That's exactly why Linux is popping up everywhere, it's the vodka of operating systems, you can put it in anything or anyone. I also suspect that Palm may be looking for a common base for their PDA/phone OS and their new Foleo stuff. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bsharitt) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252816 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252816 "You would have to have a rock-solid business case to do that,"

As opposed to?
It's nice to know that Symbian apparently venture into projects that mostly aren't rock solid.... Wed, 04 Jul 2007 03:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252842 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252842 Symbian simply doesn't scale to the requirements of modern phones. Everyone who is in cellphone telephony is trying to find a way to replace it.

Linux doesn't scale down to the requirements of modern phones. Everyone who is playing with it is trying to make it smaller, lighter, and more power efficient.

Palm never really had a Linux play. They just got tired of waiting for PalmSource (now Access America) to deliver, but needed a Linux story for the analysts.

Maybe they'll do a Linux phone. Maybe they'll see all the other players shaking out of the market and never ship one. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 04:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Cloudy) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252846 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252846 Linux on phones is totally fragmented, but I doubt the enterprise market will care one way or the other. My experience is that IT departments tend to standardize on one particular product, not a platform. So if a company decides to only support the Palm XYZ phone then they probably won't care if Palm Linux is totally incompatible with Motorola Linux. After all, Symbian, Palm OS, WinCE, and BlackBerry are already incompatible, so what's the harm in a few more flavors? Wed, 04 Jul 2007 05:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Wes Felter) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252855 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252855 the only reason why palmos is still holding on today is because of the UI (which I think breaks down with advanced use such as the file system). If they just stick linux without caring about the UI, they won't have much of anything left. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 07:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (arielb) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252896 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252896 So, stick the symbian GUI on Linux? it's not bloody tricky.
(Heck, they could use Maemo. Maemo wouldn't need many changes to behave similarly, and then they'd be sharing a common base with Nokia and others) Wed, 04 Jul 2007 10:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Beta) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252918 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252918 what's the harm in a few more flavors?
For of the shelf market surely if does, and that's why WinCE wins. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dsmogor) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252923 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252923 That's the whole reason I've been holding out hope on PalmOS, the UI, and I'm hoping that it stays around even with the Linux base. While Windows mobile isn't quite my taste, but Blackberry is looking good, and the iPhone looks great too. I know it sounds like an odd complaint about a phone os, but Symbian is just to phonish for my liking. I really just want a nice mobile device that happens to make phone calls. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bsharitt) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?252970 http://www.osnews.com/thread?252970 hanging around -- in Palm's Windows Mobile phones.

The PalmOS UI doesn't scale very well either. It was exactly the right compromise for early PDAs, and largely why Palm was so successful with that market, but some of the clever features -- like the way the find command works -- don't scale well to devices with memory hierarchies and the scrolling icon approach to presenting top-level choices runs out of steam fairly quickly on higher resolution screens. Fortunately for Palm, it scales better than the commonly used WinMob UI on other winmob consumer devices. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Cloudy) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?253039 http://www.osnews.com/thread?253039 The obvious choice is for Palm to throw some manpower at Haiku, and build their new phone OS on top of it.

:P Thu, 05 Jul 2007 01:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmebane) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?253243 http://www.osnews.com/thread?253243 "Mobile Linux" is only "fragmented" if you attempt to treat it as a single product, much as trying to lump all desktop or server distributions together makes about as much sense as talking about "UNIX" or even "operating systems" as a collective.

This is largely blustering on Symbian's part: if they can't talk specifics, it's difficult to see their statement as anything other than lacking substance. Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nevali) Comments