Welcome to Linux on Psion Handhelds!

Openpsion (formerly psilinux) is a project to port the Linux operating system to a group of palmtops produced by Psion. At present, working linux systems can be installed on any of the Series 5, Series 5MX, Series 5MX-Pro, Revo (Revo+, Mako) machines (NOT the Series 3).

All root file systems are based on either Debian or handhelds.org (openembedded) linux, since precompiled binary packages (e.g., "*.deb" or "*.ipk" files) for the ARM processors are available. The Debian approach (Sarge) is presently the most developed. Installation of linux on a Psion requires some prior experience with the linux operating system.

Our status page shows the status of support for the various Psion devices. Support for the 5MX/5MX PRO is now complete. Linux on the Series 7/netBook is more or less working, although kernel support for the hardware is not quite complete.

6/2/06 Looking for an ARM cpu emulator? Try Qemu and a Debian ARM system! Debian ARM Linux on Qemu Download a suitable kernel and a modified Debian Sarge system, and then use apt-get on your emulated ARM Debian system to install development files, etc.

5/17/06 Linux on the 5MX has received a general update recently. The 5MX HOWTO has been revised and updated, the latest Debian stable distribution, code named "Sarge", will run fine on the 5MX, and a few kernel developments have brought the 2.4.27 kernel for the 5MX to the point where all the hardware components are supported, including sound (play and record) and the real time clock. (There have been a few reports that this new kernel fails to detect a few select compactflash cards, however. 6/2/06) See the HOWTO and Sourceforge "downloads" (link above) for details. It took us a while, but we got there!

5/12/06 The 5MX pages contains links to developer pages for linux on the 5MX. If you have a page describing your work on this subject, please post the URL to the mail list with a short description you would like to include.

10/16/05 Wiki Troubles... Because of a security problem (and other problems, e.g. wiki spam), our Wiki has been disabled. A number of pages contained useful information and applications compiled for netBook or 5MX that could be downloaded, and so these have been salvaged for now as static html pages Here. These pages look like wiki pages, but they are not.

9/6/05 Debian 3.1 (Sarge - "stable") released, and a package tarball of Sarge is also released for netBook. See the Files section of Sourceforge. Requires a 256MB or greater compactflash card. This package can be adapted to the 5MX.

Series 7/netBook Summary

We have X-windows, rudimentary compactflash, PCMCIA, and touchscreen support working on the netBook! Most wireless network cards and compactflash work "out of the box".

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Feature Request Tracking System

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© Jason Barie Morley aka Inertia 2003

With thanks to Mike Rhodes for the original CSS