Penguin Gadgets and Gizmos
You have a fridge and a microwave, why not a Linux appliance?
Thursday, September 15th, 2005
Mobile Monster Makes Maemo
Mobile monster Nokia has released an interesting new product certain to catch the eye of Linux geeks. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, which should be available by the time you read this, is a PDA-sized device designed for surfing the web.
Now, what’s really interesting is that Nokia has released almost all of the 770 software as open source. The Nokia operating system, called
Internet Tablet 2005, is based on
Debian Linux, uses kernel
2.6.11, and runs
GNOME. As if the 770 wasn’t already begging to be hacked, Nokia has launched a community development site,
Maemo (
http://www.maemo.org/).
The 770 (pictured at right) uses a 220 MHz Texas Instruments processor, includes both Bluetooth and 802.11g, 64 MB of flash memory, and an MMC slot for adding storage. It weighs in at just over a half-pound with a battery life of a few hours. Several Internet and media applications are bundled with the device.
Look Out, Citrix! Here Comes FreeNX!
Remote desktop clients such as VNC, Citrix, and even Terminal Services are useful, but they’re often slow and unresponsive. Now, an amazing open source project, FreeNX, aims to change all that.
