From: Jim Pick <jim@pocketlinux.com>
To: linuxce-devel@linuxce.org, handhelds@handhelds.org
Date: 17 Aug 2000 10:41:00 -0700
Subject: [Handhelds] PocketLinux introduction

Hiya,

I just thought I'd drop a note to the LinuxCE and Handhelds groups to
check out the stuff I've been working on (with Transvirtual) for the
last 8 months.  We finally launched it at LWCE, and it's all available
now.  We've been working on it for a while, but we've been keeping
things low-key until this week.  So there's a lot of information in
here, so I apologize if it sounds like I'm trying to sell something,
because I'm not.  I just want this to be an introduction.

Our project is called "PocketLinux", and it's a complete GPL'd PDA
operating system which can run on just about any machine that can run
Linux.  Our primary development targets have been the VTech Helio and,
more recently, the Compaq iPaq.

  http://www.pocketlinux.com/

It's still pretty young, but in the spirit of "release early, release
often", all the source is available now at PocketLinux.com (plus .debs
and RPMs).  There isn't much documentation yet though - but it will
come.

I'm extremely impressed with the amount of core functionality the guys
here at Transvirtual have been able to shovel into such a small
footprint.  It's got the Linux kernel (of course), the Kaffe virtual
machine + libraries, an application framework built around an XML
parser, and a few embryonic applications.  It seems like a good mix so
far.

We don't use X11, or any other windowing system - instead, the AWT
talks directly to the Linux framebuffer.  In the multimedia
department, we've already got a MP3 player and even a MPEG video
player.  We've got our own homebrew handwriting recognition system.
It can even be used to run applets from off the Internet (reformatted
to fit the screen size, of course).  We've got some basic
synchronization working (based on rsync at the moment).  And we've got
themes!  I'm really excited by the application possibilities.

Here are some screenshots:

  http://www.transvirtual.com/pocketlinux.htm
  http://www.transvirtual.com/pocketlinux-screens.htm

What I find really interesting about how it works is that most of the
applications we've written basically consist of a few XML pages, and
possibly a bit of Java logic.  That means they are _small_.  Most of
the code resides in the core libraries, where it gets reused between
applications.

Our latest demo stuff has been built for the iPaq, and we'll be
squeezing it to fit onto the Helio over the next few weeks.  We did
the latest demo for the iPaq first, because it's a bit more luxurious
of an environment, and it's good eye-candy for the demos.  But the
Helio is extremely interesting too, because it's very low cost ($149).
Plus the Helio has been a shipping product for nearly a year.  We've
got 250 of them to sell and/or give away - drop me a note if you're
interested.

It should be possible to get PocketLinux up an running on just about
any machine supported by Linux.  I'm looking forward to getting it
going on the Agenda VR3, and the Yopy when they become available.
We're also willing to put some effort into supporting it on obsolete
PDAs, such as the Philips Nino, or any of the other ones supported by
the LinuxCE project (or others).  We've currently got MIPS and ARM
support at the moment.

We're probably a bit too heavy for something like uCLinux running on
the Palm, but I think that it's not worth going that low because there
are ugly functionality vs. CPU horsepower tradeoffs that aren't worth
making.  Slow 20MHz machines without an MMU just aren't going to cut
it in a networked environment.  And they're irrelevent when you can
get better machines (such as the Helio) for the same price.  It sounds
like the next generation Palms are going to be StrongARM based
anyways, so I'm sure they'll run Linux.

A bit of history...

Transvirtual was formed when two of the superstars in the free Java
world (Tim Wilkinson and Peter Mehlitz) got together a few years ago.
Tim is the original author of kaffe, and Peter was known for Biss-AWT,
which Sun ripped off to create Swing.  They moved from Europe to
Berkeley, and set to work writing a complete clean room
re-implementation of Sun's JDK.  It's pretty mature now.

Because Kaffe has been implemented so much more efficiently than Sun's
stuff, we're actually able to run on lower end hardware than Sun is
able to.  Transvirtual's bread and butter over the last few years has
been built on providing working solutions to a veritable who's who of
silicon valley companies in areas where Sun's stuff has failed
miserably.

Transvirtual first experience with PDAs was with Digital's Itsy
project, about a year and half ago.  Getting kaffe on the device was a
smash success, and it got the company seriously thinking about how it
could contribute to the space.  The outcome of all that thinking is
PocketLinux.

Tim discovered the Helio last year, and became quite excited by it's
potential as a Linux platform.  I became involved with the kernel port
for it, first as a contractor, then as an employee.  Tim is still the
guy that holds everything together, and he's the god of the virtual
machine.  Peter does all the low-level graphics stuff, and a lot of
the class libraries.  These guys are some of the best programmers on
this planet.

The other people on the team are Joerg Mehlitz (Peter's brother), who
has done a lot of work on applications, and the framework.  Colin
Klingman is the key guy for the XML framework, which rocks.  There's
the new guys: Rob Levin (a.k.a. lilo, who's holding the development
kit packages together), Paul Fisher (the classpath guy, who just came
in from Red Hat), and Philippe Laporte (our big Quebecois compiler
guru).  Mark Gary (muggles) holds the network together.  Gary Freeman,
Tony Fader, Danny and Izzy help to hold the front office together and
keep us fed.  I hope I didn't miss anyone.  We're a stereotypical
silicon valley startup at the moment, and our investors have been
instrumental, and they actually personally come in and help us out a
lot.

Also part of the team are the folks over at Brainfood.com (Ean and
Erik Scheussler, and their Debian-developer heavy staff), who have
been instrumental in putting together the server side of things.
They're good guys that I've known from their Debian work going way
back.  They've written a kick-ass open source XML/XSLT website system
called "Webslinger".  You're going to see a lot more from them.

We're going to be staffing up going forward, so if you're looking for
a cool job...  you know the routine.

And of course, we wouldn't be anywhere without the help of the free
software community, and awesome projects like Linux, gcc, kaffe, Linux
CE, Linux VR, vhl-tools (Jay Carlson, yeah), busybox, and
handhelds.org, to name a few.

So stay tuned, and feel free to ask me any questions.  I might be a
bit slow answering though, as I'm on vacation until next Tuesday.

Cheers,

 - Jim

-- 
Really, I'm getting paid to play with all these toys.  :-)
http://www.pocketlinux.com/
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