UbuntuCE

Introduction

Handhelds are becoming increasingly important for one to keep organized from their daily appointments, to their contact lists, and keeping notes. Over the past couple of years I have been using various PDAs and I find that their applications are klunky and non-intuitive. I want to bring the Ubuntu and Linux experience to the PDA.

Rationale

Bringing the portability of projects such as gpe ( http://gpe.handhelds.org/ ) or Opie ( http://opie.handhellds.org ) allows the user to have the flexability that other users of other environments do not have.

Use cases

  • User A wants to synchronize their contacts with Evolution and their PDA with GPEsyc.
  • User B wants to beam their contact list to User A.
  • User C wants to upgrade their PIM software to the latest version.

Scope

Design

Implementation

Target Architecture

Initially UbuntuCE will only support a small subset of architecture. As it grows I envision that there will be more users wanting to Ubuntu on their handhelds. The initial target architectures are the following:

  • IPAQ hp3100
  • IPAQ hp3600
  • IPAQ hp3800
  • IPAQ hp3900
  • IPAQ hp5100

Code

The proccess of getting Ubuntu on the handheld would be the following:

1. Decide on target architecture.
2. Bootstrap the device with a minimal filesystem.
3. Port GPE to target architecture and Ubuntu.
4. Port other ackages to target architecture and Ubuntu.
5. Profit!

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

I think that the information included in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmbeddedUbuntu and other places should be gleamed for ideas as well - Chuck

I think that ARM is the most used architecture in PDA devices. For create minimal bootstrap and port GPE with other useful packages, and use as host a PC with Ubuntu (of course!), is necessary a cross compiler (would be beautiful if it is "aligned" with normal gcc already present in Ubuntu therefore take advantage from great work by Matthias Klose). The my concern about Embedded Ubuntu is that not will use the same source of (big brother) Ubuntu and IMHO is a key issue - Alessio

CategorySpec

UbuntuCE (last edited 2008-08-06 16:24:36 by localhost)