From: Gopi D Flaherty (gf2e_at_andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 26 2005 - 13:56:19 PDT
On Mon, 26 Sep 2005, Adam Ladds wrote:
> I was just thinking, the original reason for linux not being able to
> boot on a Newt was that nobody knew what the specification was for the
> chip set or something? Well now that Einstein has been written, surely
> someone could port linux to the newton? Even if it were to run einstein
> as a crazy attempt to run new things on it in a roundabout way?
You could probably do a "reverse-Einstein" and use the Newton OS's own
drivers within Linux. Perhaps. There may be issues related to memory
layout and memory management stuff, I'm not sure. There would definitely
be a lot of things to work out.
However, the real question is, _why_? It was a questionable idea at best
in 1996 or so when I think I first heard it proposed, but it's even less
useful now.
The Newton OS is a great OS, well optimized for its task. Linux has
nothing that comes close. What would you get out of running Linux on it?
More importantly, why would you do that on the Newton? Why not a Nokia
770? Sharp Zaurus? HP iPaq? HP Jornada? There are lots of platforms that
run Linux, and the 770 for one is nearly as good screen-wise, yet is not
very expensive, and it runs Linux out of the box. It has more DRAM,
built-in bluetooth and wifi, and is probaly faster due to internal
architectural differences, SDRAM, etc.
> Even if it can't be booted directly as an OS, would it be possible to
> run something like minix in a program inside NOS?
Of course. That's always been possible, starting from the very first
Newton. That wouldn't related to Einstein or hardware device drivers at
all, of course.
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Sep 26 2005 - 15:30:03 PDT