Wave goodbye PalmSource the PalmOS company, say hello to Palm the Chinese Linux company. That judgment may be a little premature, but there’s no doubting where the company sees the future, says TheRegister. Elsewhere, you can read an interview with PalmSource’s CEO.
PalmSource’s sideways shuffle to Linux
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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As I had said in previous threads, Palm porting the Cobalt APIs to the Linux kernel means that the Cobalt kernel is dead. PalmSource’s protests about keeping both kernels are just a smokescreen to try to keep their licensees from jumping ship or not developing Cobalt products. Why would anyone develop a product based on a dying OS?
Wait…. so Palm Source is moving to a linux kernel and will be porting the Palm and BeOS aplication layers to it?
Does anyone at Blue Eyed OS/Mockup need a job, looks like Palm Source could use your unique talents.
The fact that I see coming out quicker and quicker is that the PDA as platform is slowly but surely slipping into it’s grave.
It is not like I do not like the idea of a smartphone that REALLY does both, but there are some issues that still nag me.
Say battery life, having to use ear pieces and mic to speak, design issues and so
We’ll see….
Being a linux cultist, I suppose I should be haappy to see it climbing it’s way up to the top, but I really would like to see how Palm OS and tux finest son will cooperate together.
Oh well, at least I hope it will mean to get a hotsync manager that is better than kpilot or jpilot
Ghod, The Register is such a rag. Quoted right in the article is:
“Linux will be the underlying kernel,” he said. “We’ll strip the pieces above the kernel and put Cobalt pieces there. It will no longer be the Cobalt kernel”
And in the interview with Nagel:
“The micro-kernel part of a platform is maybe 15 percent of the total code base.”
So take 85% of Cobalt — including all of the parts that run the UI, multimedia, provide all of the application APIs, etc — then stick it on top of Linux, and what do you have? Apparently, according to The Register, the way to interpret this is that PalmOS no longer exists, and is being replaced by software from CMS, and there is no reason for anyone to use today’s Cobalt when they can wait 12 to 18 months for… well, 85% of Cobalt.
(Some additional perspective: the amount of Garnet code that exists in Cobalt is well less than 85%.)
(Some more perspective: by my counting, Linux will be the fourth kernel that PalmOS has used. What about Linux suddenly makes this transition become “not PalmOS”?)
As someone who has worked for a couple companies that The Register (and in particular Andrew Orlowski) has reported on, my suggestion is this: take whatever you read there with a -huge- grain of salt. Their articles tend towards the approach of taking a few facts, sometimes out of context, and spinning long tales of misleading speculation based on those little nuggets of truth.
Hey, the Register gets a lot of hits…isn’t that somehow better than being factually grounded?
JR
So. Who here can name the first, second, or third kernels that Palm used for Palm OS, over the years?
I bet that nobody can (well, maybe one or two of you).
So, what’s the big deal with the fourth kernel (Linux) that PalmSource is now proposing? They’ve switched kernels before and nobody cares, in fact from a user standpoint, there is no difference, and from a developer standpoint, not very much at all.
well BeOS is truly dead now,now maybe Palm should opensource it,that should give the Save BeOS crew the good swift kick they need