WhatIsOpie

The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment is a completely open source graphical user environment for PDAs and other small form-factor devices running Linux, targeted at resource-constrained and older devices. It began as a fork of the Qtopia environment developed by Trolltech. It is maintained by a small group of people scattered around the world who are convinced of the open source philosophy.

Opie features a sophisticated personal information management (PIM) framework as well as several other productivity applications. It also has extended multimedia capabilities, a document model, networking and communication tools as well as support for more than a dozen languages. Based on common industry standards like XML, OBEX, IrDa et. al., Opie is capable of interacting with various devices ranging from cell phones to server backends. Opie is highly optimized for mobile devices and attempts to support the user with shortcuts and ease of use.

No matter whether one would like to organize life issues, keep up to date with daily news or require a mobile internet access terminal, Opie provides a wide range of capabilities necessary for daily usage. Opie is designed to be able to run on virtually any Linux-based device, and Opie-based images and packages are currently available from 3rd parties for HP iPAQs, Sharp Zaurus and SimPad PDAs. The platform has also proven to be running on Psion5, Ramses, Tuxphone, Simputer and lots of other embedded Linux devices.