Tuxtops

Is it possible that Linux missed a huge opportunity to completely take over an operating system market? OSNews discusses the possibility that this might have happened around 2001 when the first smartphones appeared in the market. Since then, Symbian is thriving, Windows is slowly taking them over and PalmOS is fighting an uphill battle. And Linux has barely 1% of that market even if it's more capable than any of these embedded OSes.

"Yes, the Pepper Pad has some nice specifications (8.4" touchscreen, Intel PXA270 (624MHz) processor, 20GB HDD, QWERTY keyboard, SD/MMC slot, 802.11b and Bluetooth), but I definitely wouldn't call it compact, nor would I be substituting my Pocket PC for this. If anything, I'd use it as a complement, but then that's what my laptop is for, right? Anyone liking this $949, all-in-one device?" Read the discussion here.

"As many of our readers know, I am a major proponent of mobile-friendly web design and browsing. Very few browsers in the mobile world are powerful enough to support modern w3c technologies (IE, NetFront, Opera & OpenWave) however they are good enough to do some basic browsing and even have SSL support. But especially in the case of IE (which is used a lot with PocketPCs & WinCE), Microsoft is still bundling IE 5.0x with these OSes. And we all know how unsecure 5.0.x is." Read more at OSNews.com.

The Opie Project is pleased to announce the availability of version 1.2 with many new features.

A beta version of Magneto leaked out: This version of the OS, which is expected to be called Windows Mobile 2005, will have a number of significant changes from the current one.

The new Treo smartphone is GNU/Linux compatible and comes with Bluetooth connectivity--here's how you can set it up for your network.

This article introduces a network camera based on embedded Linux, an open FPGA, and a free, open codec called Ogg Theora. Author Andrey Filippov, who designed the camera, says it is the first high-resolution, high frame-rate digital camera to offer a low bit rate.

Want a good smartphone on the cheap? Jørgen Sundgot has a quick play with Nokia's 3230, and thinks it might be just the ticket - and a good-looking one at that.

Symbian, a maker of operating systems for cell phones, has licensed software from rival Microsoft, in a sign of growing cooperation between the two companies.

It's only been about two years since Linux started becoming a significant factor in mobile phones, an arena that has been dominated by Symbian, Microsoft, and proprietary operating systems. With the burgeoning complexity of mobile phones, feature phones, and smart phones -- plus increasing time-to-market pressures -- there's a clear movement toward off-the-shelf, third-party operating systems based on industry standards, and Linux figures to be a major beneficiary of that trend.