The TuxScreen is a discontinued StrongARM-based color touchscreen webphone product, once manufactured by Philips as the IS2630 WebPhone. It was created as a joint development of Philips and Lucent and sold for $650 retail. Only a few were sold, the division lost $30 million, and the product was subsequently scrapped. The devices are now being offered to developers for project and experimentation purposes at a price of $99, which represents less than one third of the cost of the components from which they were made.

A brief description of the TuxScreen webphones is available here.

LinuxDevices.com contacted Tim Riker, who is currently handling the sale of the devices to the developer community, to learn more about the current state of the TuxScreen project. Here's what we found out . . .

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Q: How did you end up with these devices?

Riker: Habitat Communications in NY bought 1400 units as scrap, with the intention of updating the software. After trying for a while, they decided to drop that project. I found out about it through Mark Oberg, who worked for Caldera at the time. I offered to house the remaining 1200 units, work on the Linux port, and spread the word on their availability to the Linux community. We are selling them for $99 (“as is”, and without warranty or support).

Q: What's the status of the Linux port?

Riker: Linux runs. The framebuffer, serial port, pcmcia slots, and infrared keyboard are working. The touchscreen driver does not initialize right on some units, this is being looked into. Linux is not yet talking to the Lucent DSP. The plan is to write a Linux Telephony driver for the DSP.

Q: How many are still available?

Riker: At this time, there are about 900 units remaining. I have gotten a number of offers to buy the entire inventory. These have been companies interested in reselling the devices. I would much prefer to sell them to the community that is making these and other embedded devices useful with the many excellent development projects out there.

Further information on the TuxScreen webphone and associated project is available on the TuxScreen website.

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