I now have Linux on my VTech Helio PDA!
Howdy y'all, c'est moi. I got my VTech Helio PDA in today, and I've been playing around with it for a while, and it is sooooo cool to have Linux on a PDA; to be typing away commands at a shell with a stylus, playing minesweeper on your palm, xclock in the background, ... it's a beautiful thing. It's not very hard to put Linux on your Helio. You can get the downloader tool from a lot of places and a couple different "distros". I first tried PicoLinux with PicoGUI, because it seemed more stable than vhl-tool's. It looks good, but it has a few bugs, and is just too darn slow to do anything useful. I thought, "This thing's got a 75 MHz processor, it should be faster than this." So I tried the vhl-tool's "distro", and all I can say is , "WOW". This is so cool!It is so fast compared to PicoLinux. It gives you a 2.3 kernel with the W graphical server, similar to X. You get the ash shell, busybox, and a few games ! The Helio isn't a bad PDA, considering its age and the enormous leap in power of PDAs recently. It's got a 75 MHz MIPS processor WITH an MMU (unlike Motorola's Dragonball processor), 8 MB RAM, 2 MB Flash for the operating system and applications, integrated speaker and microphone, and a backlight. If you wanted to play with Linux on a PDA and didn't want to spend $150, this is definitely the way to go. I suggest staying away from Palms III, IV, and Visors. Yes, you can get Linux on them, but they usually have very limited RAM, and a -s l o w- processor with limitations. I got my Helio on EBay for $20, though someone's selling a bunch of pink ones for $45 (Buy It Now at $55). They may drop the price, due to the fact noones buying them. The only thing I can't seem to find is a copy of the original VT OS as a .bin. All the downloads from VTech are for upgrades on an existing VT OS, and only for Windows. I'm not sure how well Wine supports serial ports, due to the fact that I couldn't get it to work. All in all, though, this is so cool. Everyone should have one of these. And overclock 'em. With a big honkin' fan on the back. Or a peltier device. Yeah, that would be cool (except the peltier device would burn your hand). If you are thinking about it, try it. I can't wait to bring mine to school!
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