Can the IPAQ Run PalmOS or Linux?

Deslock asks: "I drool over the Compaq IPAQ hardware, but don't want to deal with WinCE (ver3.0 is an improvement, but retains much bloat). According to this story, the IPAQ stores the OS in FlashRAM, so I'm wondering what other OSs I can run on this cool device (Both the next PalmOS and the Yopy will supposedly use the StrongARM)."

Re: [not so] Definitely!

[adcm]

iPaq is a name, a group of products, not one single product. There are iPaq desktops and an iPaq handheld. This question refers to the iPaq handheld.

Depends on which IPAQ

[eufaula]

If you are talking about the small IPAQ mentioned in the article, NetBSD would probably be a better bet off the bat. the large ipaq's with Celerons run Linux fine.

Not PalmOS at least

[kdgarris]

I imagine it won't take long for someone to get Linux running on one of those babies, but PalmOS presently only runs on Motorolla Dragonball processors, whereas the IPAQ uses an ARM processor.

Palm has said that they will release ARM-based devices sometime down the road, but it hasn't happened yet.

Probably Not

[brank]

The different hardware manufactures tend to add strange chips around the processor or actually put a "wrapper" around the processor in order to interface it with their hardware. There are few standards for this (CE hardware is somewhat standardized, but not as much as you might think), so it's hard to get things running reliably. You might get NetBSD [netbsd.org] going, but it would be hard to find a version of Linux that worked. PalmOS certainly wouldn't, because even the StrongARM version would still be hardcoded for use with Palm RAM, Palm buses, and Palm screens. Sorry the news couldn't be more positive.

Absolutely.

[Andy Dodd]

If you have a CD-ROM, just stick a RedHat CD in and boot.

If you don't have a CD-ROM, stick the HD in another system with a CD-ROM (it's EASY to get out.), install Linux, and boot. This is what I did on the iPaq I have at work. Linux runs like a champ.

BTW, the i810 sound/video can be a bit annoying. You need to download drivers from Intel to get video to work. Sound is easy if you've dealt with ALSA before. (I love ALSA, but creating a proper set of modules.conf entries is pure hell!)

Oh, and another option - Look into PXE network booting for Linux, the iPaqs have PXE netboot support. (If you're cloning multiple iPaqs, VA SystemImager would most likely work. I don't have a link on hand, but I got it from beowulf-underground.org)

One note:

[Andy Dodd]

I'm referring to the "large" desktop iPaq. I think the guy asking the questions was asking about some portable version I've never heard of or seen before now. I was wondering where he was getting those weird specs...

Re:Not PalmOS at least

[rak3]

Technically, Palm-OS will run in emulation under Windows CE. Check out http://www.conduits.com [conduits.com]

I haven't tried it myself but it shows the hardware discrepency between Palm-based PDAs and Windows CE-based ones.

Re:Absolutely.

[MikeFarrington]

And this is exactly why Compaq should not have named two different products the iPaq. You are referring to their desktop computer, the article is referring to their WinCE PDA. -mike

Re: [not so] Definitely!

[brank]

The iPAQ is not a real PC. For starters, its based on StrongARM, not an i386-type chip. Though Intel makes this chip, you may have, um, limited success running an i386 Linux distro on it, and StrongARM support is currently rare amoung distros. The iPAQ is just another WinCE machine, not a stripped-down PC.

Respectfully, you may wish to consult the iPAQ specs [compaq.com] and the Intel's StrongARM pages [intel.com]. No HD, no i386, no CDROM...

Perhaps you have it confused with one of the consumer PCs Compaq makes (the ones with funky "lump" cases)? Those are PCs.