If you’ve ever been to a Linux user group meeting, installfest, or trade show, you know that the PalmPilot is an essential accouterment to any well-heeled Linux user. If you’ve ever bought a Palm device, you’ll realize how amazing this is, given the fact that 3Com subsidiary Palm, Inc. doesn’t supply any Linux software with its Palm devices.
Palm devices (commonly known as PalmPilots) are the most common type of Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) on the market today. When you buy one of these little machines, you get an address book, calendar, memo pad and some other useful, PDA-type utilities, but two features have made the Palm the runaway success that it is. First, literally thousands of third-party applications can be downloaded and run on the Palm, everything from e-mail clients to Web browsers to games. Second, you can back up and maintain your Palm applications’ data onto your desktop computer, so the calendar and address book you keep on your desktop can be zapped into your Palm device and taken anywhere you might want to carry it.
Most of the five million Palm devices that are out there were sold by Palm Computing, but you can get them from other companies as well: Symbol Technologies makes a Palm that can scan bar-codes; Qualcomm makes a Palm cell phone; and Finland’s Nokia has begun work on a line of wireless devices that…
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