[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux in a wristwatch

[Christopher Browne]

On Fri, 11 Aug 2000 01:57:17 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Steve Baker <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>  said:
> greenglow484 at juno.com wrote:
> > 
> > In case anyone missed this on Linux Today or wherever, it's a cool
> > article.  It's an interview with an IBM scientist, about IBM's putting of
> > an entire Linux OS into a wrist-watch-sized appliance.  The article has 3
> > photos of the device; it's really quite astounding to me.
> 
> Yep - but notice the two hour battery life - that *may* be extended to 3 mont
hs.
> That's not really good enough for a wristwatch.

It wins points on the "geek scale" for being "cool."  Whether it is of
any practical importantce is another question.

> I was actually *more* excited about the announcement of a working Linux *with
*
> X-windows on a Philips Nino PDA.  The Nino is a REALLY nice PDA - but it suff
ers
> from not being a Palm Pilot...no compatibility.  However it has a bright, ful
l
> colour display, lots more RAM and flash memory - and FAR less nasty restricti
ons
> like the 32kb maximum code size that the Palm is stuck with.
> 
> With it running Linux, it's automatically got a *ton* of stuff you could use
> with it - right out of the box.

Actually, I am a bit skeptical of the usefulness.
-> While there's more room for stuff than on the PalmComputing
   platform, there's not _much_ room.  It's a pretty abbreviated
   Linux distribution that you'll have.

-> What do you wind up doing for input?
   I don't recall there being a "Graffiti" interface for the Linux
   console.

The issues are the same for the Compaq iPAD, which once was probably
the Itsy; it's got more RAM than the PalmComputing platform can
support, but at this point, you're left with using some other
system to provide "keyboard support."

The machine that is arguably more interesting is the forthcoming
Samsung "Yopi," which is planned to natively run Linux.  Although
that may be a useless fact from the standpoint of planning to run "your
own programs;" if it runs a custom init as well as everything else in
userland, then introducing your own Linux programs might be virtually
as inconvenient as it is on a Wince machine.

There may be some answers forthcoming to the "user interface" problem,
but it's not obvious that these machines are likely to be generally
useful without having a keyboard hooked up...
--
cbbrowne at ntlug.org - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
God is dead. -Nietszche
Nietszche is dead. -God