Too many crashes with my GPE installation (and accompanying "oh, hold on a sec, just need to reboot here before entering your contact info" -- ugh!) got me wondering if perhaps there might be a way to use Linux on my iPAQ without so much pain. Thankfully, the answer seems to be "yes"... thanks to Opie! This article will provided a quick look at the setup process and my favorite aspects of an Opie PDA.

Though I really like the fact that GPE is closer to "regular" linux (lots of standard libs, runs X, etc.), I had numerous issues with crashes (mainly on suspend: i.e. suspend the device and it doesn't want to come back up without a forced reboot) and found the system a bit unresponsive. This meant that, far from using the handheld for development, I was hardly using it at all... Enter Opie. Two days ago, I backed up all my data and installed the Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (Opie)--an open source graphical user environment and suite of apps for Linux PDAs.

Installing Opie is the pretty much the same as for GPE or naked Familiar Linux. You can get either image through the Familiar releases page and installation instructions are provided therein. Though I've already suffered the occasional system lockup, I must say that on the whole the iPAQ is already a lot more stable. I'm also quite impressed by the diversity and quality of the applications available for the platform.

The Opie Launcher is the main graphical shell with which you interact, clicking icons to launch applications and so forth. It is organized using tabs (Pim, Applications, Settings and Documents are setup by default) and icons. There's also a standard "start menu" type affair, which reflects the contents of the tabs, as shown in the screenshot.

There may be a simpler way to do this, but I used an ssh connection (horray! yes, you can login through the USB network or just use the bundled "console" app) to create new tabs and organize the icons. The process is simply to go to /opt/QtPalmtop/apps/, create directories for extra tabs and mv the *.desktop files around. Note that each tab directory has a .directory file to describe the tab. Here's an example of the Utils/.directory tab I created:

[Desktop Entry]
File=/opt/QtPalmtop/apps/Utils/.directory
Icon=UtilsIcon
Type=application/octet-stream
Name=Utils

The only thing you need to change are the File path and Name. Optionally, set the icon to some file name (omitting the .png) from /opt/QtPalmtop/pics. Changes to the tab layout require an Opie restart (easy to do, through the "Shutdown" app in Settings) and are reflected in the menu automatically. As a sidenote, I was going insane trying to find stuff on the device without a suitable locate command... so I stuck this in the /etc/profile file:

locate ()
{
        find / -name "*$1*"
}

and sourced it (. /etc/profile) to be able to run things like locate UtilsIcon on the command line.

The next item on the list was filling the iPAQ to the brim with nifty software. After a quick (ok, not so quick) ipkg update / ipkg upgrade, it was time for some free software shopping.

Since Opie does not use the X-Window system, finding a way to get access to the graphical apps from the desktop was a priority. This was easily done thanks to the awesome iPAQ Linux-PDA fbVNCServer, which allows you to use vncviewer from your desktop to access the handheld and provided the opportunity to take the screenshots seen here. Though there's a nice icon to click, I like having extra room on my desktop, so I usually SSH in and launch the VNC server using /usr/local/vnc/fbvncserver -double which doubles the number of pixels on the desktop display rendering it a lot more comfortable (pun unintentional but thoroughly enjoyed).

To complete the list of impressive PIM applications (calendar, contacts, todo list, "today"), I installed IQNotes. IQNotes provides an interface for all sorts of notes (regular text, contact info, TODOs, sketches, etc.) and lets you organize them in a hierarchical manner. It is a good replacement for my old Palm memopad and, since everything is stored in an XML file, I actually managed to whip up a script to convert my (hundreds of) old memopad memos and have them imported into the IQNotes file. I also configured IQNotes to save a backup file (through the Options -> Preferences -> Backup menu) in /media/ram which means I can get my data back after a big mistake by replacing the messed up XML file but that this backup is erased on reboot and doesn't take any space on the device's flash.

A few things about IQNotes are annoying (e.g. it asks you the file to load on each launch) but if I have time and can get my hands on the source, this should be fixable. On the upside, it doesn't seem to have any issues with my 350k of notes and the tree structure is really cool. Overall, it greatly surpasses memopad and I'm quite happy to have found IQNotes.

After installing opie-mail I was really happy to see that it supported (dreaded) HTML mail, multiple mail accounts and IMAP. More importantly for me, OpieMail handles SSL (secure socket) connections and is smart enough to know how to connect to the IMAP secure port (993). Though in the past I've used SSH tunnels to connect to mail servers securely when in danger of being snooped (such as in every wifi enabled internet cafe I've ever been to), this feature makes it easy and fun to keep your mail and account password private.

Sending mail is pleasant and provides for standard headers (To, CC and BCC), attachments, SSL connections, mail sigs and it works smoothly.

My PDAs get extensive use as electronic books, so reader applications are extremely important to me. I seem to have hit the jackpot with Opie on this front. Installing QPDF2 (qpdf2 or opie-qpdf) provides a PDF viewer. Though it can be difficult reading PDFs on such a small display, the viewer allows for a "text only" mode which is quite helpful.

The most important viewer in my case is opie-reader. This program supports a wide range of document formats: Plucker (so pretty much anything you can find on the web), "Doc" (Aportis or AportisDoc), Weasel, gzipped text, iSilo 3, plain text, HTML and more. The program is easy and comfortable to use and I'm still just discovering its extensive feature set.

Browsing the web is also possible thanks to konqueror-embedded, QtE based Palmtop Environments edition of KDE's Konqueror. Konqueror/Embedded is not a fork of Konqueror as it is based on the actual rendering engine source, so it supports HTML4, CSS, Javascript, cookies, SSL and all the goodies you'd expect in a desktop browser. The screen real estate is still limited though, so you're best heading towards the text only or embedded optimized versions of your favorite sites.

Also worthwhile, if you are a network explorer, are the tcpdump and opie-wellenreiter (a wireless network monitor) ipkgs.

Finally, for your viewing and listening pleasure, installing the opie-mediaplayer2 ipkg will provide the outstanding OpiePlayer2, based on libxine. I'd always had issues playing MP3s under GPE but there are no problems or delays with OpiePlayer2 (notwithstanding that my system is an older h3600 device). I've even watched an episode of ST:TNG, as it supports mpeg, wav, ogg, quicktime, divx and others in addition to mp3. You'll need to re-encode films in order to watch them on the handheld. I use mplayer's mencoder with the command

mencoder MYFILM.avi -vop scale=320:240 -ovc lavc \
  -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=92 -ofps 12 \
  -sws 2 -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=16:mode=3 \
  -o OUTPUTNAME.avi

You can experiment with the vbitrate, frames per second (ofps), sound options (lameopts) and others but I find these give decent results that work, which weigh in at about 1Meg/minute (so you'll need to use a flash card).

Other notable apps to install include portabase, a program for creating, browsing, and editing custom tables of data. Portabase is useful for any kind of list (inventories, password management, photo albums, etc.) and features import/export in CSV or XML and AES encryption. Finally, puzz-le is a fun arcade logic game worth trying.

After only two days, I'm not done exploring the possibilities of this Opie install but I'm having loads of fun already. If you want to give it a try and have a GPE installation on your iPAQ already, you can back the whole thing up and install the image. I use this little script to backup the entire image to an NFS drive (on a host named pluto):

#!/bin/sh

MOUNTPOINT=/mnt/pluto

mount pluto:/path/to/wherever/exported  /mnt/pluto/ -t nfs


dd if=/dev/mtdblock/1 of=$MOUNTPOINT/ipaq-opie-backup.jffs2

This way, you can flash your device and give it a shot without fearing you'll be stuck if you don't like it.

Feedback and comments are welcome :)