“Of course it runs NetBSD“. NetBSD is fantastically portable, but that doesn’t make it supremely easy to install on oddball hardware like a Dreamcast or a palmtop computer. Michael Lucas demonstrates cross-installation with the HP Jornada 728.
Palmtop NetBSD
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Could OSNews do a little review of NetBSD some day ? (from a non desktop oriented view ? ) ihmo NetBSD is the nicest and cleanest *nix I’ve tried…
It is just another unix. If you used FreeBSD or even Linux, NetBSD is not much different from the “desktop oriented view”. They all run X with KDE/Gnome, even if their packaging system might be a bit different etc. But overall, it is the same experience you get on the desktop.
A review would only make sense for this OS if we review it for what it really is: a unix.
I don’t run NetBSD, only FreeBSD, so if anyone would like to write a review, we will be happy to publish it. Article guidelines here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=168
A review would only make sense for this OS if we review it for what it really is: a unix.
What a brilliant idea, oh wait, that’s exactly what Mr. Anonymous asked for.
Ah, sorry, I did not see the “non” in front of the word “desktop”. A hyphen would have worked better between the two words.
The real question is whether installing netbsd on the journada will work with wifi and/or x
(Speaking as a Jornada 820 user…) The Jornadas with the keyboards would seem to be perfect computers to convert to NetBSD (or Linux) but HP never managed to outfit them with flash rom, so WinCE never really goes away. If you can’t completely displace WinCE it seems rather pointless to add the overhead of another OS to this limited hardware.
If you want the functionality of Unix on one of these beasts, you should see first if the Unix software ported by (OSNews reader, I think) Rainer Keuchel to WinCE will do the job. It works for me at least – most of the missing Unix functionality is already covered by existing free WinCE-native programs. The only thing I’m really missing is the Mono runtime, as the .NET Compact Framework will never work on my machine.
See http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/ for details.
NetBSD/hpcarm (jornada 700 series) does run X. wifi also works. I use jornada 680 (NetBSD/hpcsh) with a wifi card.
> it seems rather pointless to add the overhead of another OS to this limited hardware.
You miss the point completely. While NetBSD runs on the device it displaces WinCE and completely takes over the control. The only place you can find WinCE is the image in the ROM. When you shutdown NetBSD WinCE boots back as if after hard reset.
While NetBSD runs on the device it displaces WinCE and completely takes over the control.
The overhead that I was referring to is memory overhead. The only way that WinCE can run on machines with as little memory as that of the Jornadas (and still have some room left over for battery-backed storage) is to memory-map many of the executables and libraries from ROM, not loading them into RAM. This is particularly the case with the 820 and its 16mb of RAM, less so with the 720 and 728. AFAIK, Compact Flash is mostly accessed through a disk-like interface that isn’t all that well suited for memory-mapping, so an OS loaded from it would need to have more of itself loaded into RAM than would the same OS running from ROM.
Now the NetBSD kernel may not be that memory-hungry, but the user-land apps and libraries that you use for your actual work can be. Can you run X, graphical applications and significant amounts of data in 16mb of RAM minus OS and library overhead with NetBSD? I can with WinCE (yes, including X) on the same hardware because most of the OS overhead, libraries and apps are run in ROM, not RAM.
I did not miss the point. Actually, the non-upgradability of the Jornada handheld-pc series is one of the reasons it has been discontinued.
True, it cannot use the ROM and has to pay the price. Still (given that jornada hpcs have been discontinued) try to find software for the old wince version that came with them that will do IPv6, ssh v2, wifi network analysis, etc. I won’t boot into netbsd just to do some quick web browsing, but there are situations where having netbsd available for jornada is very useful. So “futility” is quite wrong a word to use here.
I have a Jornada 720, and it’s an awesome machine. Far more useful as a platform for doing administration, programming, web browsing than the Zaurus SL-5×00 is, contrary to what your average Linux cheerleader/slashkiddie will say.
I’ve never gotten around to running NetBSD or Linux on my J720, although it could be a fun trick. Why bother, when I can do everything I’d do on a Unix system under Windows CE, without all the hassle and while retaining all the nicities WinCE provides? Last I checked, you gave up power management when running NetBSD or Linux, although that could be implemented eventually.
On my J720, I browse the web with IE (equivalent to IE 4.5- much better than PocketIE in PPC 2k and 2002), code in Squeak, Dialect, REBOL, Lisp, Python and Perl/Tk, write my papers for class in LaTeX and TextMaker, do my email, SSH and telnet around, listen to my MP3 and OGG collection, read ebooks, chat with IRC, use VNC, and I even run the occasional X11 app remotely using XFree86, which has a port for Windows CE. I do my math homework with JACAL+PocketScheme or Maxima+GCL. All wirelessly, naturally.
Heck, you can even program (and compile, mind you) in Java on the J7xx.
For those thirsting for a portable platform for doing Unixey things, I definately reccomend checking out the Jornada 710, 720 or 728. Even if you decide to run Linux and X11 or even Qtopia, it makes a much more useful machine than the Zaurus SL-5×00 does. It doesn’t have the 640×480 screen like the Zaurus SL-C7x0 models do, but the Jornada 7xx does have a keyboard on which you can actually touchtype. I do most of my web browsing- and forum posting- from my Jornada 720. While I’ve never measured, I can type just about as fast as I can on my desktop and laptop.
Unlike most of the other PDAs made today, the Jornada 720 has a PCMCIA slot and a CompactFlash slot. I love the fact that it has PCMCIA rather than SD- I have a 2 GB PCMCIA Toshiba HD on which I store all of my MP3s and gobs of other data. If I had money to blow, I just might go all the way and get a 30 GB drive. Incidentally, this is the same drive that the iPods use. A piddly $70 for 2 GB of storage on your PDA is something that can’t be beat, that’s for sure!
The only thing that I dislike about my Jornada 720 is the TFT screen. Don’t get me wrong- it’s very bright, and pretty big for a PDA at 640×240, but it’s not reflective. Outside, in direct sun, it’s worthless. One of the reasons I love PDAs is so that I can go code outdoors. Unlike on my Axim, I cannot be with my back to the sun, getting a huge dose of natural light- I have to go sit in the shade of a tree to see what’s on the screen. Which is what I’d do anyway, not being a fan of bright, summer light.
That, and I wish I could get Opera for the J720, although NetFront works as a good IE alternative.
Someday, I’d like to play around with running NetBSD on my J720, just so I know what it’s like. And I’m sure there are things you can do under NetBSD on the J720 that aren’t readily doable under Windows CE, but luckily for me, nothing I need or want to do goes under that category.
I apologize for the length and … enthusiasm of this post, but I think it’s a shame more folks don’t use this machine. It’s a real computer which I can fit in my pocket. 90% of the time, I use it for my daily email and web, forgoing the hassle that most desktops present. I hit the power button and it’s on; I hit the IE shortcut, and fxtBrowser (a tabbed IE for WinCE) is launched much quicker than Safari is on my iBook or IE or Mozilla is on my work PC. Even Squeak runs decently! All in all, I could easily say that the J720 is my most satisfying computer purchase ever.
(Note: the only MS platform I use is WinCE. Other than that, I’m a Unix and Mac guy.)