There are several GUIs for Linux on desktop computers: KDE, GNOME, … On handheld computers, the most famous ones are GPE and OPIE.
Today we’ll have a look at GPE. The Palm-Linux development is very young, so there aren’t many devices which support GPE at the moment. But on the GPE project page (http://gpe.handhelds.org/) there is some information and screenshots where we can look at.
To see the applications of GPE, click on Projects. There you can read about PIM apps, multimedia apps and so on.
Documentation contains useful information about GPE and its apps. There are many screenshots.
Now, let’s look at some screenshots (http://handhelds.org/~gpe/gallery/:
PIM apps
file management
multimedia apps
networking
several themes
well-known apps running on GPE: GPSDrive – Minimo – VideoLAN – GNumeric
To type letters, Rosetta (handwriting recognition) and a virtual keyboard is used.
So, what do you think of GPE?
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It’s nice. Let’s hope Linux over PalmOS will have clear advantages over native PalmOS.
The previous poster raised a valuable point….
This is Linux running ON TOP OF Palm OS, not Linux sitting natively on the Palm Hardware.
While this project is interesting, it will only capture my attention fully when I can flash my device with a new Linux ROM image getting rid of the Palm OS altogether. That is a tougher proposition.
False, Linux is NOT running on top of the Palm OS, but replacing the Palm OS.
Flashing the ROM is dangerous, so It is just not done.
Fair enough, I plead my ignorance…
Can you explain to me how the bootloader works? I thought it was a .prc file which is executed under PalmOS. This presumably then loads the ROM image off an SD card. At what stage is the Palm OS completely unloaded from memory. Maybe I was wrong in saying that Linux is sitting on top of the Palm OS but it is at the very least sitting alongside it.
I agree about flashing the ROM though.
I stand corrected, I read the dev. guide. Rather interesting stuff.