Develop Bugs

Linux on Pocket PC

Hi all,
I ask this question cuz I counldn't find enough information about How to install Linux on my PPC.
My ppc is: I-teq X-bond like as Gigabyte gsmart i. with 64MB ROM.
Is there any linux ROM distribution for my ppc? or general linux ROM distribution for PPCs?
Thanks in advance.
Pedram

The reason you could not find information is because there isn't much of it to be found.
Unfortunately, Linux for PPC is in its infancy. The main problem is the drivers - they all need to be reverse engineered and there is no help from the OEMs as they designed this things to only work with MS crap and seem to have no interest in releasing drivers or specifications.
Official reason: Because you can not mess with the OS the device is more stable and secure.
Real reason: If you need to by new phone to get new OS we make more $$$ and so does MS.
As far as I heard there is a half decent version for some iPaq model, and there is version for some HTC devices (check WiKi) but all it does is boot up: no drivers even for touch screen, no graphical interface, no apps.

Thnx levelnum.
I think if linux developers I mean open source world focus on handheld devices they can publish good distribution as desktop or laptop PCs. Today they are very powerful in reverse engineering, .NET Framework in Linux named MONO is one of these reverse engineering issues.
I believe that Linux is much more customizable that WM, especially for XDA-developers that make interesting works on WM. And also it doesn't have copyright restriction as WM has. So may be it makes many progress in world of handheld devices.

Oddly enough I was looking for Linux on Smartphone info yesterday as I've got an Alpine I'd like to be able to do something interesting with.
Demand for something like this is going to be a bit odd - by definition anyone who finds this site, let alone opens an account and posts, is going to be interested in pushing the boundaries of their device but the vast majority of WM device users are going to be in the "don't care how it works as long as it does" group.
Also, I reckon a lot of Linux dev types aren't even going to look at the device, it will never occur to them to buy one because it's sold as a Windows Mobile device, and hence isn't going to be near their installation of the hacker mentality. Without a critical mass of people who can develop in/with Linux it's always going to be a struggle.

problem is the program base
all current wm programs unless they are .net
would not run under linux on our pda's
new ones would be required to be written
or ported or....

The Nokia Internet Tablet runs on a version of Linux with a pretty robust set of applications, and this device uses an ARM processor which should be pretty friendly with regard to 'porting'.
But you'd still be stuck without a telephone application.

You can find some information here:
http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/HaRET
http://www.handhelds.org/

Oddly enough I was looking for Linux on Smartphone info yesterday as I've got an Alpine I'd like to be able to do something interesting with.
Demand for something like this is going to be a bit odd - by definition anyone who finds this site, let alone opens an account and posts, is going to be interested in pushing the boundaries of their device but the vast majority of WM device users are going to be in the "don't care how it works as long as it does" group.
Also, I reckon a lot of Linux dev types aren't even going to look at the device, it will never occur to them to buy one because it's sold as a Windows Mobile device, and hence isn't going to be near their installation of the hacker mentality. Without a critical mass of people who can develop in/with Linux it's always going to be a struggle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May be! as you said it is Windows mobile device and linux lovers aren't going around of it. but I think they are so curious than it.
problem is the program base
all current wm programs unless they are .net
would not run under linux on our pda's
new ones would be required to be written
or ported or....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do think so. since I in previous post I mentioned that .NET framework available in linux. so many of windows program can run on it.
You can find some information here:
http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/HaRET
http://www.handhelds.org/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hart (Reverse engineering tool for wm hardware) was interesting tool.

yeah but due to limitations and slowness only the minority of applications on windows mobile are made in .net :S

i want this one
http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html
Regards,
Jason

Rudegar said:
problem is the program base
all current wm programs unless they are .net
would not run under linux on our pda's
new ones would be required to be written
or ported or....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not a real problem. If you want to use a particular program from WM that is a problem but why you would do that? There is very large program base for desktop Linux (many of them also exist for desktop Windows) which could be very easily ported to a handheld platform with ARM processor. If you ever looked up how many qualitative programs do exist for Japanese Linux handhelds...

Wexx said:
This is not a real problem. If you want to use a particular program from WM that is a problem but why you would do that? There is very large program base for desktop Linux (many of them also exist for desktop Windows) which could be very easily ported to a handheld platform with ARM processor. If you ever looked up how many qualitative programs do exist for Japanese Linux handhelds...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats one of the things that is grate about open source software - you don't even have to depend on the original developer to find the time / will to port it. Anyone with the programing knowledge can.

Running Windows Mobile In Nokia N770

Hi to everytody,
This is the firs time I write in this forum, but there is a long time ago that i read all your interesting and wise posts
I have recently changed my pda for a nokia n770, and I would like to know if is possible to make this device work under windows mobile, 'cos linux does not like me too much.
Is there any available rom for this device?
If so, how can I install it?
Many thanks in advance, and my congratulations for you all.
Regards.
CArlos

Absolutlely impossible
No drivers, no software - nothing.

Really?
But if I have seen in You Tube a video where this machine is running under windows xp....
And is there no way to load in any other rom from another pda?
many thanks and I apologize if I have said any nonsense... (my aknowledgements are very limited in this matter)
regards.

dunno about xp - but anyway it is much more possible than n770 running Windows Mobile

it was prob a nokia running remote desktop software

Don't believe everything you see on uTube.
As Redugar suggested it could have been remote terminal software, or a skin that made the device resemble XP or a fake video all together.
According to PC Magazine this device has an OMAP processor (official Nokia site does not provide that detail) so in theory it is similar to our phones.
But if you have truly read this site before you would know that this was asked and discussed many times: Window Mobile can not be installed on a device that was not designed for it.
There must be at least one original version of WM specifically made by the manufacturer for that device.
Only from that it might be possible to make upgrades but not create a version from scratch.

ok,
I read some time ago something regarding the prebootloader system..., that this kind of devices that runs under linux does not have (or it's different)... is this certain?
Anyway, I thought that somebody in this forum might be developed a tool to load this room, but in any case, I repeat that I'm just learning about this devices... in fact is my first one mobile pc running linux...
Many thanks.

i dont belive that any nokia phone run linux at all their use their own os called symbian

Rudegar said:
i dont belive that any nokia phone run linux at all their use their own os called symbian
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Believe it That's their new safety line off Symbian without stepping into WM.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5409534614.html
While they may have the most say in Symbian, but I won't say it is 'their own OS'
Anyway, it is a pity that all these phone companies with Linux OS doesn't seems to be doing much to join forces in any other way. Motorola has some good histroy with their Linux OS.. and yet this Nokia is doing things all their own way.. which well, I'm not sure how that will divide the public developers. Anyway, I had a look at this N770.. it is not that impressive.

"but I won't say it is 'their own OS' "
yeah it started up as a group of mobil companys but dident
everybody else leave the group ?

Rudegar said:
"but I won't say it is 'their own OS' "
yeah it started up as a group of mobil companys but dident
everybody else leave the group ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm.. now you mentioned.. it seems quite true.. now, as far I can think of, for non Nokia phones, only SonyE's P9xx series is using it, huh?

İt says;
Software:
Operating system -- Internet Tablet 2005 software edition
İt s not talkin about linux, symbian possible by the way Rom upgrade impossible on this device because it cant be connect on active syn, and I dont think so that it has bootloader menu to flash WM6..

Nokia n770 (and n800) runs Maemo. For more info check out: http://maemo.org/.
The nokia n770/800 isnt a pda but an internet tablet.

[Q] Why Microsoft decided not to build NT-based OS?

Hello,
one question bothers me since the first time I have heard about WP7. Why Microsoft have decided to create a whole new OS without thinking of OS that would ne NT-based so any program made for normal PC would run on our phones. Just imagine, how many developers could easily port their programs to new OS, just changin the screen size, leaving all core components just the same... All classic PC games, like Blood, Duke Nukem workin flawlesly on a phone without the need of any port. I believe, that it is the only real way to compete with Android and Iphone OS. What do you think?

Wolfas said:
Hello,
one question bothers me since the first time I have heard about WP7. Why Microsoft have decided to create a whole new OS without thinking of OS that would ne NT-based so any program made for normal PC would run on our phones. Just imagine, how many developers could easily port their programs to new OS, just changin the screen size, leaving all core components just the same... All classic PC games, like Blood, Duke Nukem workin flawlesly on a phone without the need of any port. I believe, that it is the only real way to compete with Android and Iphone OS. What do you think?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if the app was created in siverlight/c# which alot of newer apps are then it can be ported to wp7.. For sometime now microsoft has been pushing their silverlight for devolpers to use so if the games you mentioned is bult in silverlight there should be no problem...

NT on a mobile phone would be a usability nightmare...look how far windows mobile got with the masses. Microsoft is not catering towards the hackers, but the masses.
And to be honest, I would not touch any mobile device running NT...LOL.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

emuneee said:
NT on a mobile phone would be a usability nightmare...look how far windows mobile got with the masses. Microsoft is not catering towards the hackers, but the masses.
And to be honest, I would not touch any mobile device running NT...LOL.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
me eather!!! i am so done with wm 6.0, 6.1, 6.5 and its many problems having to flashing rom after rom, restarting the device cause it has no memory left, this list goes on... wp7 is like a breth of fresh air...

Why so negative? WM always had problems, but the level of freedom and customization made me love this platform more and more. And I wouldn't be so sure about unpopularity of this kind of new OS, as NT-based Windows OS platform is the most popular in PC world, stable and nice-looking enough, so why it couldn't be that popular in mobile phones, especially with wide variety of programs already designed for this platform, only waiting for small fixes of resolution? Those games are from dos era, with no good port on any mobile platform...

wolfas said:
why so negative? Wm always had problems, but the level of freedom and customization made me love this platform more and more. And i wouldn't be so sure about unpopularity of this kind of new os, as nt-based windows os platform is the most popular in pc world, stable and nice-looking enough, so why it couldn't be that popular in mobile phones, especially with wide variety of programs already designed for this platform, only waiting for small fixes of resolution? Those games are from dos era, with no good port on any mobile platform...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dont get me wrong i not trying to say 6.5 is not for some people just not for me... I think the fact that smartphones moved to a more touch enviroment it seems that the old wm is not as finger friendly and made more for the use of an stylist, to me this type of os seems to not work well on mobile devices for long peorids without a reboot maybe its the way its design or maybe it just have too many things of the desktop enviroment not sure but it gets to be a problem for me, others my not mind. As far as customizing goes well guess you cant have everything.. i personaly would prefer a more stable os than customization, and i am sure additional pc like options will come as well as more customization in the future..

I think the main reason why NT would not make a good mobile OS is simply because it was never designed or meant to run on a mobile device. Your phone is not a computer, so your phone needs an operating environment to suit it's purpose.
The "phone as a computer" approach has been tried by Microsoft, it's called Windows Mobile. While I love Windows Mobile, I have to say, having "Windows NT" on a phone just doesn't make sense.
While it would be cool to play Duke Nukem on your Windows NT mobile device, at the end of the day, you are going to put down your Windows NT phone and just sit at your computer and play Duke Nukem on that. It's just a better overall experience, and Windows NT was designed for that sit-down, productive, huge screen experience. So it wouldn't make sense to invest in a platform that no one would use at the end of the day because their desktop computer does it better.
What you have to do is create an entirely unique and different experience designed for the phone and "on-the-go" life, to complement the Windows NT desktop experience. That is after all, what your phone is for. That's what Windows Phone 7 is.
Can't wait to get my hands on a Windows Phone 7.... phone.... XD

Well, I guess you are right, but I will try once more to support my idea, if you don't mind. I still see some reasons why NT- based mobile OS would be a good idea:
1. There are plenty of popular netbooks, tablet PC's and other relative small devices with full XP, Vista or Win7 OS. All of them are made for on the go experience and still having NT OS. Not even talking about miniature UMPC's. We also often leave these devices unused when we turn on our normal PC's at home, but doesn't prevent them from having huge popularity.
2. Of cource, I do not want to suggest porting normal WinXP to mobile phones (but win98 on my touch pro didn't look half that bad ), but rather something with an UI suited for small screens, but still capable to run any application made for normal Windows.
3. I also think about the interest of developers to this kind of OS. Theorically, there would be no need to learn OS-specific programming, just the things used on any NT OS. Most of the developers who makes programs for PC would be able to make a version for this OS just by changing the resolution, leaving engine just the same.
Please, say your opinion about these things I've pointed out

1. Netbooks and tablets still operate outside of the smartphone arena of capabilities and requirements for most users. There is a reason why there isn't a successful phone running Windows XP. You can write the drivers and software for phone functionality, but at the end of the day NT was not produced with phones in mind.
2. Applications written for desktops are written for desktop processors and memory capacities. Its not a simple change of just resolutions. What if an app request memory that doesn't exist on the mobile device? Chances are the mobile device can't even address that amount of memory. So you design a mobile focused NT kernel...well now all apps can't run on both platforms..so what's the point.
3. Yes you do, because all the capabilities available on a desktop aren't available on a smartphone. Developers still have to keep that in mind when their app is in development.
I sit here looking at my Windows XP work workstation and I would kill myself if I had to use this on a phone. Windows Mobile was hard enough.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

I forget the name but there was a secret (ish) project inside Microsoft to make the NT kernel more portable and sorta combine it with the CE kernel. They were basically building off the MinWin work.
But remember, native code still wouldn't be cross platform. x86 and ARM are not binary compatible. Just look at "OSX" on Mac desktops and "OSX" as the base of "iOS". Nothing crosses back and forth.

The NT kernel doesn't scale down that well yet. The kernel land is still full of bidirectional vertical dependencies. The current lowest profile incarnation called MinWin needs like 40MB RAM to boot to a text console and offer next to no APIs and is still shock full of missing dependencies (apparently boot loader magic makes it not break on boot).
Once they're really done despaghettifying, you might see it on mobile devices. But that'll still take a while, because right now, slimming down involves tons of aliasing dependencies to nothing.

Absolutely no reason why they could not run NT on a smart phone but why would they? They already have Windows CE (aka pocket PC) and if MS had been serious about Pocket PC IMHO they would be in a much better market position now.
One of the biggest messups with Pocket PC is the inconsistancy of the user interface and MS failed to revamp the 6.5 completely for touch.... They have a lot of good things going with WM 6.5 but it was an incomplete effort and it shows.

well, I see you are right... That NT is much more complex monster than I thought, thanks for clearing that out Yesterday, I found information about device called xpPhone, I wonder what would you say about it ? http://www.xpphone.com/en/product/specification.html

WM 6.5 emulator for WP7 ? Possable ?

Just a discussion came up and made me wonder if this is even possable. This is the place to ask, so here we go.
All WP7 models seem to run at 1ghz or higher, thinking the concept that WM 6.5 runs pretty well on hardware that runs at 400-528mhz range. Would it be possable to have a emulator that runs on the platform so you can run 6.1/6.5 on a WP7 phone ? This would allow you to be able to run some older apps with still having WP7.
I would not expect intense games (maybe a card game ok) to run at full speed or anything but, things like Remote desktop and other base apps might be ok with this.
This type of thing would run on any phone (with 1ghz+ hardware) just depending on if all the hardware is supported.
Or I guess there might be a way to "shut down" 7 and open 6.5 kind of how Android runs on the TP2.
The emulator idea came up because it might be able to run on any model with minor updates vs. a boot up just for one phone.
Just some ideas...even if it is possable.
Thanks for reading and dreaming (well I am still waiting for a Verizon WP7 phone)

No sorry, the emulator runs on the x86 architecture, not on ARM.
Dave

DaveShaw said:
No sorry, the emulator runs on the x86 architecture, not on ARM.
Dave
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Maybe I'm misreading the original question, but it sounds like he is asking if it were possible to have an app that would run old Windows Mobile apps, kind of like Classic on WebOS.

well at present we (3rd party) developers wouldn't be able to make something like this as all the APIs don't actually exist. someone with knowledge of the whole code base of windows phone 7 could probably do it but i doubt we'll see it happen. if there are programs you need on windows phone 7, it is definitely faster to just have it redone. it's really only the UI that needs redoing, if it was written in VB or C#, a lot of the code will still work.

Leaner RT for Unsupported Devices - Port to Phone

Is it Possible to Run a very Lean RT build for use with Phones without massive amounts of storage?
what is the absolute smallest RT Install?
and can it be istalled on ARM phones?
anyone have info on the actual minimum requirements for RT?
and can RT be stripped down, so its main function is to Run Windows Programs off of SD cards?

Wow... you're new here (at least to this part of the forum), right?
First of all, we don't actually really have an installer for RT. There are restore images and update images, but those all either have device-specific drivers already embedded in them, or can only apply to things that have such drivers.
As for slimming down an RT build, I suppose it's possible simply by removing OS components, but the OS isn't really made to be highly modular and there's no (public) deployment kit tool for customizing installations. You can save some megs here and there by stripping out stuff like Powershell, any part of the .NET framework not needed for apps, parts of Office you won't use, and so on... but it's not likely to get down to phone-OS-like levels without taking a rather brutal approach. At that point, you're still stuck with the need to install it.
Again, there's no installer. Putting it on an ARM phone would be done by flashing the OS image, and it would already need to have the relevant drivers for that phone embedded in the image. You'd need a phone with an unlocked, EFI-based bootloader, NT drivers available, and flashing tools. I know of no such device, although some sufficiently enterprising people have supposedly achieved at least partial success.
Genuine minimum requirements depend on what you class as "RT". You can run the NT kernel on a machine with surprisingly little RAM, although the ARM port of NT does require certain CPU features that an old or extremely basic CPU won't have. You need DirectX10-capable graphics, and probably at least half a gig of RAM, for full desktop functionality; you need a certain resolution (I forget what it is for 8.1, for 8.0 it was 1024x768) for Metro apps, and so on. While technically capable of running on single-core, the performance would be pretty bad at typical ARM core performance; even the 4x1.3GHz Tegra 3-powered Surface RT is considered to be slow by some. Again, nobody has published minimum specs, because there's no need for them when you can't actually install the OS yourself. Tablet manufacturers obviously have spec guidelines to adhere to - the Metro resolution requirement, for example, means you won't see an RT tablet with resolution any lower than that - but those can't properly be considered a true minimum and will vastly exceed the specs of nearly all smartphones.
Finally, your last question is particularly silly when you consider that, by default, RT can't run (third-party) Windows programs at all! After jailbreaking (which would be easy to do permanently on a non-SecureBoot bootloader) you can run Win32 programs that have been recompiled for ARM (and don't require any of the libraries which are missing from RT, such as OpenGL; stripping out stuff puts you at risk of making this worse) but there's only a few dozen such programs at this time (see the link in my signature). It will *not* run Windows Mobile / CE software. Getting Windows Store apps to install to, and run from, an SD card is difficult, but possible.

WinRT has one major requirement: UEFI. Android phones don't have it, Windows phone <8.0 don't have it too. 8.0 phones have UEFI (I'don't own such a phone - information is taken from MS docs), but it is locked - you can't boot anything except for the phone OS signed by microsoft certificates. And, obviously, these certificates are not same on WP and RT.
Cotulla has wrote his own UEFI implementation for HTC HD2, so theoretically it is possible to boot RT on any ARM device that allows running your bootcode, but this would require lots of time and brains and kernel hacks.
And the second problem is drivers. There are no hardware standards like on desktop PCs - so there is no driver database, like on a desktop Windows, for your device.
UEFI provides some subset of functions that can be used in drivers to boot into OS and even to see a picture - but they are too slow and too limited to be useful in a real work. And you'll still need to write a driver that uses those functions.