[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: Dauphin Linux (?)



In article <D0BKrH.p9n@satyr.sylvan.com> buck@satyr.sylvan.com (Michael Butler) writes:
>So, (sorry if this has been asked before), are there any intrepid souls running
>Linux on Dauphin DTR-1s?  Fry's still has 'em for sale.

It has been mentioned before, but nobody has come forward to say they are doing it.
I am strongly considering it, but I have a few reservations that maybe someone
can answer:

1)  The battery life is short (I think someone said 1-3 hours).  I've seen mention
    of an extra battery pack in the ads.  Is it possible to connect both batteries
    at the same time and get double the time, or at least do a 'hot' battery switch?
    Or does it just mean that when the battery is low, you turn it off, switch
    batteries, and turn it back on?

2)  Is the pen proprietary, or will normal mouse drivers work with it?  I get the
    impression that at first, I would have to use a serial port pointing device
    under linux until a driver for the pen is written, and hope this is not the
    case.  If it is the case, I hope that I would not be the only one working on
    the driver, and I hope that tech info would be available to make the driver
    not a difficult task...  I have never written a device driver in Linux before,
    but I feel up to the challenge if I am not alone and have docs.

3)  Eventually, I would like to be able to do something like an xterm using only
    the pen.  I have heard that some low-level handwriting recognition libraries
    exist for X, but it would be necessary to squeeze them into the source for
    xterm (or one of the leaner xterm-like clients, most likely).  I don't know
    how much work would be involved or how many people might be working on a 
    similar project...  Hopefully such a thing already exists... (finger-crossing :)

4)  I am under the impression that repartitioning the hard drive is impossible
    unless you boot from another device.  If this is the case, I assume the 
    external floppy drive is the only solution (if it is bootable).  Is it actually
    possible, or would we be stuck with the umdos filesystem (not too big of a
    deal, but not too great).

5)  How interesting of a system could you really set up on a 40 meg drive with
    only 4 megs ram?  I imagine doing something like the MCC distribution with
    X-lite (or whatever the minimal X installation is called) would be the way
    to go.  


Anyway, all of that said, I am excited about possibly buying one of these
neat little systems.  I am just afraid that the problems might be so great that
I would end up not using it and essentially wasting the $600.  Maybe we should
chip in and buy one for Linus, and that might get some momentum behind pen-based
stuff for Linux... :)

If anyone has one of these and is currently running Linux or considering it,
please let us know what you think.  Also, it might be a good idea to start a
mailing list if anyone buys it so that we could discuss solving the software
problems.

Greg



Follow-Ups: