[nflug] The Ultimate Linux Handheld

[Richard Hubbard]

Sounds interesting.

I was thinking of it as more of a PDA replacement..Basically appointment 
reminders, notepad functions, password remembering, etc. 

The kinds of things I do on a PDA are pretty straightforward, and are 
usually covered by most out of the box PDA's.  However, at the price, 
the 770 and 800 seem to kick butt all over any PDA, and if there is a 
basic program missing (password reminder, shopping list), I wanted the 
capability to develop it myself.  (All of the development I have seen 
for Palm PDA seems to be a real pain in the neck...)


Nokia 800 as a gift, huh?  Wow... you have a really good friend there 
(if the friend has another $400 they want to give away....)

Joe wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 06:23:42AM -0400, Richard Hubbard wrote:
>   
>> Does anyone have any experience with either of these?  Do they come with 
>> a development environment?  Or at least some decent interpreters 
>> (perl/Tcl/Tk/bash/csh/ etc)?  I like the idea of the 770 myself...(less 
>> than $150 at Buy.com)
>>     
>
> I got an n800 as a birthday gift this summer (a pre-emptive
> gift, mind you, as I was fixin' to buy it anyway).
>
> I don't expect one would want to do development *on* the device
> itself.  Rather, one would want to cross compile for it, using
> the SDK at maemo.org.  But I have seen python 2.5 packages
> available for use on the device.  I wouldn't be surprised to
> find Perl there, or available.
>
> The default install has busybox, and so far I haven't braved the
> heart transplant that would entail replacing busybox with all
> the full-sized standalone packages whose role busybox fills,
> though I did get a glimpse at the magnitude of that task when I
> made to install bash, and saw that bash then conflicted with
> busybox.  I suppose I could try to stick a copy of it down in
> /usr/local somewhere for occasional invocation of the full
> thing.
>
> Mind you, to do anything in a console, you have to add an
> aftermarket xterm program of some type--osso-xterm seems to be
> the thing to use.  With that, ssh (openssh or dropbear, take
> your pick), a keyboard, and a nearby usable access point, I've
> been able to log in to my workstation of persistent state
> (WoPS), reconnect to my ongoing Gnu screen session, and continue
> doing work as normal on my normal network-accessible remote
> systems.
>
> Anyway, I've taken two trips--one by air, one by road--on which
> I normally might have taken the laptop, but left the laptop
> behind in favor of just the n800, and it did me just fine.  They
> were both personal trips--if I travelled for work, I think it
> would really depend on what I were doing whether I'd get away
> with leaving the laptop behind.
>
> My current "round tuit" harebrained scheme involves trying to
> trick out an NSLU2 with USB devices to serve as the hub for all
> the functions that the n800 can't do or do easily (connecting
> via RJ-45 to ethernet, to keychain drives and other external
> drives via USB).  Then, the N800 and maybe the keyboard would
> stay in a pocket, or in the onboard carry-on, while in transit,
> and the NSLU2 and other accoutrements would go into the
> planeside check-in or full check-in bag, for use at the
> destination.
>
> I'm not sure how much of that is practical, though--it really
> depends on whether there are real, free drivers for the various
> attachments to the NSLU2 versus just stuff that works on 32-bit
> x86 with binary blobs through ndiswrappers.  Yuck.
>
> In any case, it's sure to be a nightmare of wallwarts and
> cables.
>
>   
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