Stephen Shankland, staff writer of CNET News.com, writes . . .

“Though Transmeta won't specifically sell a Linux product, it will give a version of the operating system called 'Mobile Linux' to hardware makers so they have one to run on portable Internet access devices using Transmeta's chips, said product manager Marc Fleischmann . . .”

“Getting Linux to work in very small devices has posed challenges because of limitations on how much memory and processing horsepower is available to manufacturers, because powerful processors usually mean batteries drain quickly. They do so because hard disks often are completely missing, and because input hardware such as keyboards and mice are hard to use if present at all. Transmeta's [Mobile] Linux aims to help addresses these areas.”

“[Linus] Torvalds and other Transmeta programmers have been working on several improvements to Linux for small devices, rather than competing in the growing market for server-based products. 'We're not competing against Red Hat or anything,' said chief executive Dave Ditzel . . . 'We're helping people craft and put it together.'

Many Linux improvements are under way at Transmeta. Employees have developed support for touch-sensitive screens that get around the need for a keyboard and mouse. They've written a program that draws a keyboard that can be used to type on a touch screen and that recognizes handwriting in a method similar to that used on Palm Pilots. They also built in a way to automatically store files in a compressed form for computers with small storage space or no hard disk at all. And they've written software that will let small handheld devices run programs actually stored on powerful computers across a network.”

“Transmeta's improvements to Linux have been or will be released to the open-source community that collectively develops Linux. Under the terms of the General Public License (GPL) that governs the heart of Linux, companies shipping products using the software must release that software for free.”

“'One improvement under wraps enables such devices to run software that actually resides in compressed form on another, more powerful computer connected over a network,' Morgan said. Software running on the device uses only what it needs, downloading new pieces stored on the server as it goes. The device wouldn't have to load the entire piece of software into memory, only the portions it uses. This concept takes advantage of two pieces of software recently introduced into the development version of the Linux kernel.”

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