Using Linux on a Handheld Device: an Obstacle Course? Merciadri Luca [email protected] First written: April 29, 2009 Last update: August 19, 2009 Abstract. As more and more (principally free) Linux PC-distributions (commonly called “distro’s”) are appearing on the Internet, a lack is observed for handhelds’ Linux distributions, especially for Pocket PC’s c . This article summarizes the most important (and recent) points about this fact, and tries to cover the whole subject with not-too-technical details, giving a basical overview about the different O.S. which are available for handhelds devices. Keywords: Linux, Pocket PC, Palm, handheld devices. Disclaimer: Apple iPhone c , BlackBerry, Compaq c , GMate YopY c , Google Android c , Hewlett- Packard c (Pocket PC c ), HTC Universal c , M&N Ramses c , Microsoft Windows (Mobile) c , Mozilla Firefox and Mimo c , Motorola (A780, E680, EZX) c , Palm (Foleo, LifeDrive, Treo, Tungsten, TX, Zire) c , Sharp Zaurus c , QUASAR Communication Technology Holdings Limited c , Siemens Simpad c , The Gimp c and Symbian OS c are deposed brands. 1 Introduction and netbooks’ market. Like in PC’s domain, this is a facility for some (essentially amateur) users, and an 1.1 The Context inconvenience for others. Anyway, it is clear that handheld devices are com- More and more (principally free) PC-distributions monly used for various purposes, mainly by users (commonly called “distro’s”) are appearing on the who need such devices for their everyday work. They Internet. For example, just throw a glance to are often businessmen, persons working in marketing, http://www.distrowatch.com/. These distributions physicians, physicists, researchers, . , and they ab- are often Linux-based ones, and are much appreci- solutely need their handheld device for evident work- ated by the public, essentially because of the pro- ing reasons. These persons do count on their hand- hibitive prices of other commercial O.S. Thenceforth, held devices, and thus want powerful and reliable op- free distro’s are now widely spread, and it is not going erating systems and softwares, to make the most of to stop now. their device, thus making the most of their job, if The same phenomenon is noticed when looking possible. at the softwares, as more and more free softwares are used. Unfortunately, the operations which can be car- However, the handheld devices’ community1 is a ried on these handheld devices with pre-installed little bit disappointed, because of the lack of Linux- O.S. are often limited because of operating systems’ based O.S. for these special computers. and softwares-inherent limitations. It is more no- The most of the current handheld devices (Per- ticeable on Pocket PC c ’s than on smartphones, sonal Digital Assistants (PDA), smartphones, . ) because there are lots of O.S. for smartphones are, when bought, pre-installed. By “pre-installing,” (by decreasingly-order importance): Symbian OS we want to say that the manufacturer’s O.S. is al- c (with 67% of marked parts), Windows Mobile ready installed when purchasing the product. It is a c (13%), BlackBerry c (10%), iPhone OS c (7%), scheme which is comparable to the one in laptops’ Palm OS c , Linux (5%: LiMo, Android, OpenMoko) 1 We will precise in the next paragraphs what it consists of. ([3]). That is why we will focus on Pocket PC and http://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/), non-smartphone devices in this paper. which is an alternative to the Pocket PC’s pre- In addition to this limit, O.S. problems is frequent installed Microsoft Internet Explorer c navi- when using handheld devices, and this should not be gator. On other PC’s, Mozilla Firefox c (see the case. http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/) is also Absurd situations do also occur: for example, if widely used amongst computers’ users, concurrenc- you buy a given powerful model one year, and that, ing Microsoft Internet Explorer c . It is the same following(s) year(s), a new O.S. is developed, there with The Gimp c (see http://www.gimp.org), which will be two disappointing kinds of situations you will is free: the old Microsoft Paint c has nothing to do have to cope with: with it. Other Pocket PC’s (sometimes free) soft- wares are often better than the pre-installed pro- 1. If you are lucky, the new O.S. has also been grams, and it is also inadmissible, because, when ported to your device (in the worst cases of this purchasing your product, you need to have useful buy point, it is “only supported”) and you can a pre-installed softwares, albeit marketing publicity. copy of this O.S. for your device. If you are really Unfortunately, in 2004, only 0.9 % of the PDA lucky, it will be in your desired language, but, ha- were Linux-powered ([29]). bitually, it is only ported in English. Anyway, it We here center this document on the case of the is clear that your device’s warranty will be lost; Pocket PC’s c PDA platform. Thus, we shall speak 2. Otherwise, you have –according to the mainly about Pocket PC’s c devices, and Windows manufacturer– to keep your old O.S., and you c CE-powered handheld devices. A brief incursion are thus blocked if you want to enjoy new capa- is done in the next section about Palm c handheld bilities your device supports, but the old O.S. it devices, to give a complete overview of the field. is powered by are not right with. Furthermore, pre-installed O.S. are sometimes some- 2 Palm c Devices what confusing, because of the lack of conscientious- ness teams conceived the O.S. with. For the case of Palm c handheld devices, many at- For these reasons, users do often feel satisfied nei- tempts to run Linux on various models were achieved ther by the O.S. which was already pre-installed on with success (consider, for example, [14]). the device they acquired, nor by the after-sales ser- Furthermore, the Palm c enterprise seems to vice. Anyway, they have bought the company’s prod- be inclined to work with Linux-based O.S., as uct, and the company has nothing to do with them they are building a new smartphone, using an yet. OpenEmbedded-Linux, called WebOS (see [9,12]). There are other projects. For example, consider [8], on http://palmtelinux.sourceforge.net/, even if 1.2 The Reaction last modifications date of 2006/07/29. There are many remedies to such software incompre- Opie has also been ported to Palm c : consider hensions. Looking for better solutions, consumers of- [7], for example. For screenshots, see Figure 1. ten become frustrated, realizing the lack of handheld- available O.S. (except for smartphones). For es- 3 Current Available Distro’s for sentially amateur users, they are then tempted Pocket PC’s to buy other kinds of devices, hoping being bet- ter satisfied. For “others,” it is generally not the When we were looking on the Internet, we encoun- case, as, in reaction to the insatisfaction coming tered many handheld’s users’ posts, containing ques- from the available and user-accessible O.S., or avail- tions about the way Linux could be installed on able softwares, more and more users turn towards their device. When correct2 answers are given to free Unix-based distributions, whatever the plat- these somewhat desparate messages, a traditionally- form. This is marked with PC’s: there is an upsurge given link is http://www.handhelds.org. This link is in terms of Linux users. On Pocket PC’s c , we often given because this website is plentiful (com- can cite the Mozzila Minomo c project ([10]) (see pared to others, at it is not so comprehensive per se) 2 We here consider the answers advocating the uselessness of Linux-powered devices as incorrect, and uncalled-for. of pieces of information about the most prominent provide a GUI environment for Palmtop/handheld handhelds’ O.S. We shall now discover step-by-step computers it is useful on all sorts of mobile devices every currently-known distro. with only limited resources.” As the project of adapting Linux distributions to “In addition, GPE provides an infrastructure for handheld devices such as the one we spoke about both easy and powerful application development and seems very exciting, most projects have often tum- good compatibility to existing desktop solutions. bled. GPE uses the X Window System, and the GTK+ For example, I decided to subscribe to a good- widget toolkit. Besides providing core software such looking newsletter –whose name won’t be revealed–, as shared libraries, and perhaps more importantly, which aim was to warn me about news on Linux de- the GPE environment defines standards for program velopments for my handheld device. Thus, I decided design and interaction. It is based on the C program- to subscribe using my “good-mails” adress, where ming language and other common standards such as others aim to filter spam. Some days after my in- SQL, XML, DBUS” ([19]). scription, I was receiving, every day, lots of spams, After some research on the Internet, about things which had completely no links with the we discovered the GPE’s new website: computer universe. Once again, it corroborates the http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/. There, they say that fact that these projects are often –unfairly– aban- “GPE provides an infrastructure for easy and power- doned. ful application development by building on available technology including GTK+, SQLite, DBUS and 3.1 Familiar GStreamer and several more common standards” 3 ([5]).