TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

Claws Mail

The mail client of Ubuntu MID supports multiple accounts, searching, templates, different protocols (POP, IMAP), attachment and also plugins, for example HTML readers or spam filters. Some of them are availible in the Ubuntu software repository.

I could access my two mailboxes (T-Online, simple POP/STMP and Google Mail, IMAP/SMTP with special port and encryption settings).

Pidgin

Pidgin supports many chat protocols, for example ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger, and there are plugins for others (e. g. Skype). You can have multiple accounts. Your contacts are ordered in a “Buddy List”. Beside chatting, there is also an option for sending files to other buddies.

I tried to log into my Google Chat account, but I got no connection. IRC was no problem.

Others

First image: Terminal Server Client, second image: Ekiga Softphone, third one: Liferea (feed reader for RSS, CDF, Atom and OPML).

In the next part, we will have a closer look at the multimedia features.

After listing all the launcher’s applications, we will now see how the browser works. Beside the browser (MidBrowser), Ubuntu MID contains a mail client (Claws Mail), a chatting client (Pidgin), a VoIP application (Ekiga) and an RSS reader (Liferea) - these will be presented in the next article.

Although I made networking active in QEmu, Ubuntu MID did not connect to the network. I had to choose the network button and tap on “Wired Network”. So you can control whether it connects to your (Wireless) LAN or mobile phone network or not, but perhaps there will be an option to start the connection automatically, too.

Web Browser

The browser is called “MidBrowser”, but it works exactly as Firefox 3.0: It has not only the same engine (Gecko), but the same settings dialogues, the same bookmark management, download manager and plugin system. If you are a Firefox user like me, you will find again the same features you use on your desktop machine.

Every site I opened was rendered correctly. It couldn’t display YouTube videos, either. But when you install a Flash plugin, this should be no problem.

When I tried to install a plugin (SwitchProxy), it was downloaded, but the installation failed because of the wrong browser (MidBrowser, but it expected Firefox). But after a small modification, this should work too - SwitchProxy didn’t even work on my desktop’s Firefox 3.0, as it expected version 2.x, so the version number had to be added.

The first two pictures show the homepage of MidBrowser in two different zoom levels. As the new Firefox / MidBrowser also supports image zooming, this may be a useful feature when viewing big sites on the small screen (resolution).

Google Maps also works! When I tried to use Google Street View however, there was a message that no Flash player is installed. The fourth image shows the browser’s RSS reader and on the last image you can see different tabs.

The first image shows what happens when you tap on a link to a file (in this case, a MS Word document) - you may know this dialogue already from Firefox. It recommends opening this file in OpenOffice - but there is no OpenOffice in the launcher?! - more about that later. You also see the download manager in the second image, the settings dialogue in the third one and a plugin installation in the fourth one.

The user agent of this browser is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061813 Firefox/3.0

This browser seems to be the right choice for Ubuntu MID. It has one of the best rendering engines and can be customized very well (many plugins, which are availible for Firefox, can be modified to run also on MidBrowser). In the next article, we will show the other communication programs.

Zefanja, a member of the German Palm forum Nexave.de, has published a blog entry where he posted some screenshots of his Treo 650 running OpenMoko, a mobile Linux GUI.

OpenMoko is a Linux GUI for mobile phones. It is pre-installed on the Neo1973 smartphone, but it also runs on a lot of other smartphones which support Linux, for example Palm or Pocket PC phones.

This has also been tried in July 2007 on another Treo 650, and it also runs on the Palm TX. Among this GUI, there are also some others, including GPE and OPIE. These two also run on almost all Palm OS 5 PDAs and users report that they are much faster than OpenMoko.

You can find information about OpenMoko on their project site.

Currently, the developers of the Linux distribution Kubuntu are asking their users which additional applications could be integrated into the next version of the distribution. People which have created an account on the Wiki page can write new propositions or add checkmarks to existing ones.

As I am looking for a solution which enables me to sync my Palm (and Pocket PC) with my Linux computer, I added “a good and reliable solution to synchronize data with Palm PDAs and Pocket PCs“. There are a few programs (KPilot, for instance, or SynCE for Pocket PCs), but none of them really worked here. One didn’t find my PDA, another one cleared all databases (!). Syncing my Pocket PC was even more difficult, I had to do much on a console (which I hate) and it never worked stable. And after a reboot, I could do the whole procedure again.

What I want is a synchronization solution which needs one little and easy configuration. After that, it should work stable and reliable. The next version of Kubuntu will be released next year. If there will be a better PDA support then, I will probably install it on my computer.

Do you want this, too? Or how do you sync your Palm with Linux? If you are also interested in this feature, you can write that onto the Wiki page, or, if you don’t want to register there, you can write a comment here.

TamsPalm has summarized Linux support on the different machines again.

http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/SupportedHandheldSummary
http://www.hackndev.com

Did you try Linux on your Palm already?

This is what the admin of Hackndev posted in his forum:

I’ve been rethinking H&D again last time. Our gallery is dead and forums are being attacked by spambots every often. Either we do something or we don’t (and this means we don’t care about H&D future anymore).

We have several ways to go from here.
CMH. Seems that it will be on site when it’s done, but I bet we will be playing Duke Nukem Forever earlier..
New Drupal. Same thing as we have now, but somewhat better. Bad point is that hnd would be reinstalled from scratch due to DB incompatibilities (this one would be moved to old.hackndev.com). We start from a clean&shiny drupal.. then it would be not so clean and not so shiny but anyways..
Forum-based solution. We move H&D to some forum engine and base everything around it (I still think that forums are main part of H&D). Personally I know only one forum that is good enough - IPB. Bad point - it’s commercial piece of software.
other?.. Haven’t got any more ideas now. What do you all think?

To see other comments of his post or join the discussion, go here:
http://hackndev.com/node/912

For ages, the color screens of various Palm powered devices have had a 2px white border around them. Until Jeff Kirvin mentioned the frame in an early issue of his podcast, nobody cared… . Then, TCPMP offered to remove the white border for some T3’s. This motivated Dmitry Grinberg to release an app to kill the frame…and so on.

Ryan Rix recently discovered that the HackNDev boys have managed a truly amazing feat by actually making the border usable - the screenshot below is not 480×320, but rather 484×324(image provided by #hackndev user Miska):

The maintainer of the T3 port of Linux, kEdAR, sent us the following:

Hi
I look on hackndev irc, that you ’shocket’ about 324×484 OPie.. and you have T3..
You can try latest T3 release with border disable(and 324×484) feature

http://kedar.palmlinux.cz

btw: on T3 is posible only with Sharp LCD… i not have tested me release on Sony LCD ..

bye, kEdAR

I am currently away from my Palm Tungsten T3 as I am currently preparing to travel to Stockholm, but can investigate the matter later if you wish me to. Meanwhile, what about letting us know how you fare?

Apparently, my experiments with Linux on a hp ipaq h4150 motivated a few 1src posters to try out the free operating system on their Palm TX’s. Tune in for a nice load of funny discussions, quarrels and - last but not least - a few cool screenshots:
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129878&page=1&pp=40

On the Access site, you can download an Garnet OS Emulator. The emulator is called Janeiro, which was announced by PalmSource already two years ago and emulates both ARM and 68k. Finally, it has now been published. But it doesn’t include Garnet and Cobalt ROMs, but a Linux kernel on which runs Garnet OS 5.5 (in the launcher it says Palm OS Garnet 5.50).

You can download a TAR GZ archive (20 MB) which includes a Linux and a Windows version. The emulator is slower than other Palm simulators (the simulator runs Palm OS native on your x86 computer, whereas Janeiro is a true ARM emulator). The interface is similar to Palm OS 5.2 or 5.4, but it has other fonts and uses the untypical display resolution of 240×320. I couldn’t install Palm applications (at least not by Drag & Drop), and it only contained the standard PIM applications, preferences and one test application.

Other tests and information will follow soon.

The status of some famous Linux projects:

Palm Tungsten C
The Tungsten C project made much progress in the near past. A new developer (Bitz) joined the project and made GPE booting of a SD card. Touchscreen and keyboard are also working, and even the Wireless LAN module should be supported soon.

Palm Treo 650
Linux seems to support SD cards, the built-in thumbboard and the touchscreen. Also GPE is working. One week ago, another developer joined the project. So I think there will be some progress in the future.

Palm Tungsten T3
The Tungsten T3 is the most supported handheld. Everything except Bluetooth seems to work, and it is even possible to write a Linux boot loader into the flash (Small ROM) - but be careful with this, flashing the ROM is always dangerous.

Palm TX
According to the project page on Handhelds.org, the hardware isn’t fully supported, but several software things have been done: The GPE and OPIE user environments seem to work, USBnet is supported (surfing the web is possible). Bluetooth and Wireless LAN don’t work yet, and especially the Wreless LAN module makes some problems - there seem to be no drivers or no good documentation.

Palm LifeDrive
On the LifeDrive you can also use GPE and OPIE, touchscreen, sound and the hard disk are supported. The card reader makes some problems. The wireless adapters aren’t supported (same problem like on TX).

Palm Treo 680
There is no project yet - it is the most recent handheld of Palm. So let’s hope that there will be support for the Treo 680 in the future.

You can find Linux news and discussions on the main project site http://www.hackndev.com.

Good news for me

When I reviewed Linux on the Palm Tungsten T3 and reported about the slow speed, my inbox(and my house) filled up with hate mail slowly but surely. Linux is a multitasking OS and thus slower, Linux is opensource(as if that were a reason, woo-hoo), etc.

Anyways, please don’t get me wrong - Linux is damn cool, and I really enjoyed it running on my Palm Tungsten T3. However, speed seems to be an issue al opver the place, according to Ovum telecoms analyst Tony Cripps.

In a recently published article by ZDNET on mobile Linux, he states that:

…the hardware specifications required by Linux are still too high to make it a sensible proposition for lower-end phones, according to Cripps. “The hardware requirements of Linux need to come down to the point where it becomes a simple equation around numbers, where it’s financially more viable to do it with Linux,”….

This is something I can definitely agree to!

After our Linux on Tungsten T3 review, a few readers asked if Linux runs on their devices.

This table contains a list of all supported machines where Linux currently runs, is beeing ported to, etc:
http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/SupportedHandheldSummary

Interestingly, almost every HiRes capable Palm OS handheld has a port for it; however, none of the Sonys is currently showing any real progress.

Analysts all over the net(TamsPalm included) were buzzing about the “Linux for Palm OS PDA” ports at www.hackndev.com and other sites. Now, I decided to do the practical test on a Palm Tungsten T3 - let’s see how the free OS looks currently.

First of all. w00t! to the developers! I would have never managed to create something that would have managed to boot up a machine as complex as a Tungsten T3 - what they accomplished without any help from Palm is incredible! However, for the rest of the review, I’ll compare Linux to Palm OS fairly and ask for your understanding that Linux will not get baby treatment…

Just to put that clear - THIS IS NOT ALP! This is a Linux port by indie developers who managed to “hack” themselves into the Palm OS handheld’s hardware in their spare time, without support from Palm Inc!

Getting Linux to run was simpler than before - now, there is no more need for a web server and other thingies. All you need to do is sync Garux(the Linux bootloader for Palm OS) to your PDA and install two files(about 15 Megabytes) to your SD card. The files needed are available from SourceForge and hackndev; I used the following files:

Put into /Palm/Launcher:
Garux.prc

Put into /linux2ram:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/hackndev/rootfs-t3-gpe-farcaller-042806.squashfs?download
modules.squashfs

A card access tool like Softick Card Export can be very helpful if you don’t have a dedicated card reader. After that, you can start Garux from your memory card. The program will show you a list of options, I fared pretty well with the defaults altough our local Linux Nut Alexander Panek changed the init parameter to /linux2ram once or twice. Clicking Start Linux will wipe the Palm OS from your RAM, the only way to get it back is a hard reset.

After a few seconds, Garux will ask you to choose your boot source. Press the To Do button and afterwards the Calendar button to boot from SD card:

In most cases(95% of the time on my T3 with a 1GB HP SD card), the bootloader will show error messages like the ones below and will die - in that case, hardreset, change the initrd parameter and try again. It will eventually work(a full battery increases your odds):

If the bootup process works(congratz, you are lucky), GPE will ask you for a few configuration settings like default user name. Interestingly, the calibration uses 4 points instead of the two the Palm OS uses:

After completing all the steps, GPE will be ready to “run”. OK, Bluetooth, Sound, the slider, charging LED, battery status indicator and the power off button aren’t supported yet; but the touchscreen and memory subsystems are no problem. This 3gp video shows GPE in ‘action’.

The GPE system is rather similar to the Palm OS-this 3GP video shows the launcher and “task bar” in action. The status bar at the bottom of the screen is miore feature-rich than the Palm OS one, you can add loads of so-called Panels to show different aspects of the system.

However, GPE is mind-boggingly slow when launching applications. My old vintage Palm IIIc beats the Tungsten T3 by far, and launching a few apps at the same time(like 10 or so) totally kills the operating system. This 3gp video shows a little “speed benchmark”.

Overall, kudos to the Hackndev folks for creating a port of Linux that runs on the T3. Indeed, applications start and the touchscreen works - but that is about it. The operating system gets mind bogglingly slow when you launch more than one application at the same time and is generally rather slow. The lack of many features and the difficulties at powerup just add to the picture: a great product with loads of future potential, but it can’t compete with the Palm OS yet!

P.s. If soneone has an email address of the developer, please give it to me(post it here). I really really want to talk to him to explain the review more and give him my “bug list”.