Free is too expensive (Economist)

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Apr 9, 2012 16:25 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by khim
Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)

Sorry, but this is wrong. OPIE and GPE only had platform to run because Sharp created Linux-based PDA.

Sorry, but this is wrong. DEC^WCompaq Western Research Lab had been working on SA1100 StrongArm prototype hand-helds well before the Zaurus, with Linux.The Compaq iPaq was borne out of the Itsy work and, though it shipped with WinCE, Compaq WRL provided Linux friendly bootloader firmware and distributions, which were pretty easy to install. The only daunting step was running the WRL provided WinCE app to reflash the firmware - still easy though. DEC^WCompaq WRL remained a nexus of the Linux StrongArm handhelds community for a long time after (handhelds.org remained hosted there for years after).

The Sharp Zaurus StrongArm Linux devices came after the Compaq iPaq. Also, they were, I think, harder to find. Compaq iPaqs were in a lot of shops at the time.

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