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Re: Linux for the palm pilot !



On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, Eddie Harari wrote:

> I am sorry for who ever it was that sent the mail about linux 
> being ported to palm pilot , because I thoght this all thing was
> BUL....

Thank you.

> I would like to say , JAST as you think you have seen it all ,
> I thoght nothing on the net can surprise me any more untill I saw
> this site !  
> 
> http://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/uClinux
> 
> (The first good thing I can find in porting linux to the palm pilot 
> is that the work will keep the MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD person who is incharge
> on this all project out of the streets , cause who knows what else this
> person is capble of...).

He (they) are a bunch of very capable embedded engineers among other
things, so they are used to squeeze camels into matchboxes and they still
have 2 humps after that (the camels). The place where I picked up this
one, is an embedded newsgroup. Surprise, surprise.

> the second thing is that this is the first time linux is ported to a 
> MMU-less machine so the MMU is implamented by software which is why I 
> just said it take a very sick person to code this project !

No. The 1st time that linux was ported to a MMU-less machine was when it
was ported to 8086 based machines. That stopped at a certain moment. Why
exactly you think that someone who is patient and qualified enough to do
such a port is sick, just beats me. Not to mention that they put it into
the PD under GPL such that ppl who have such strong opinions can benefit
from it without paying one red cent (or agora) to anyone.

> the last thing - When the palm computers would be a MUST to every single
> person on the planet ,  porting linux to it would be a must , ;-).
> so why not have an early start ...

Well, if you have a quartz watch or a digital address diary then you are
already halfway there, you know. Don't tell me that you have one of those
mechanical horrors you have to keep checking on if they're ticking or not
(unless it's a Rolex, or a Breitling, which would excuse you).

> HUCHI MAMA ... (The kremer).

And a translation would be nice. Lest we get the wrong idea about what
this means ;)

Anyway, expect some sort of Java subset to be a standard in future
'pocket' products, such as digital diaries, palmtops, smart watches and
PELEPHONES. They almost all have flash technology and run either
byte-coded proprietary languages, or straight native compiled code anyway,
and most are DOWNLOADABLE.

As to MMU as in VMM, well, it's the worst use silicon has ever seen, and
its invention dates back to when Silicon was MUCH more expensive than
large disks. Also, remember Xenix, which did quite well without VMM in the
common sense. And if you took a CS degree then you have to know about
Xinu...

Peter