Palm gets in synch with Linux

Alta Terra Ventures of Alberta, Canada on Wednesday released Linux synchronising software that works with Palm OS devices such as those made by Handspring, Sony, Palm itself and others. The software is one of the few applications available for connecting handheld computers with the open-source operating system.

Alta Terra says that BearOps Handheld Linx for Linux has been tested on Mandrake 8.0 and Red Hat 7.1, as well as the company's own BearOps Linux Desktop OS distribution. It comes with three desktop applications, jpilot, kpilot, and gpilot, as well as 100 games, utilities and applications for the Palm OS.

Handheld Linx will also allow students with Texas Instruments scientific calculators, models TI83 and above, to connect to the Linux desktop.

Support for commercial hardware remains a nagging problem for Linux users, with programmers usually resorting to writing their own drivers and software to interact with devices like graphics cards, modems and DVD players.

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