Trolltech has announced the discontinuation of its Greenphone open source reference handset. The company says they have run out of stock and will not offer any further additional kits. As an open, Linux-based mobile phone, Qtopia Greenphone was a project initiated by Trolltech to stimulate open development of mobile phones and to serve as an industry catalyst for the open phone movement.

The company is now pointing interested users to the OpenMoko project and FIC Neo1973 phone. Trolltech recently ported its Qtopia Phone Edition software to the Neo 1973 phone.

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Pepper Computer, manufacturer of the original Pepper Pads and developer of the Pepper Linux OS, has admittedly seen better days. After months of silence from the firm’s executives led forum members to write the company off as dead, CEO Len Kawell has finally responded to users’ pleas and posted a summary of Pepper’s current state of affairs — but not before we left a message at headquarters stating our intentions to write up a deathwatch piece this week.

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Yesterday, Buffalo Technology and the German-based New Media Net published a press release claiming that from now on, you can buy Buffalo’s WHR-HP-G54 Router with the open source DD-WRT firmware. You’ll get the usual 2-year guarantee here in Germany, which you would lose with installing free software on most vendors’ products yourself.

Read via LXer Linux News

Palm’s new executive chairman Jon Rubinstein told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview yesterday that it will take 18 months before new products come out utilizing Palm’s next generation operating system. These comments would seem to contradict guidance from CEO Ed Colligan given earlier this month where he stated he expected products to be available be the end of next calendar year (2008).

Rubinstein’s new remarks would push that back until mid-2009 at the earliest. He is quoted as saying “It’s a probably good target,” [...] “These things take time.”

Read via PalmInfocenter.com

Nokia has taken the wraps of its next generation Nokia N810 Internet tablet. The Linux powered N810 features a new slide out qwerty keyboard, a faster processor, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, integrated GPS and the same large 800×480 display.

The Nokia N810 is powered by maemo Linux based OS2008, which will also be made avaliable for the Nokia N800, the previous internet tablet generation hardware. The Nokia N810 features a highly customizable user interface and contains various novelties such as a Mozilla based browser with Ajax and Adobe flash 9, Bluetooth headset support as well as enhanced video and audio features. It is expected to start shipping mid November with an estimated retail price of 479 USD (excluding local taxes). More pictures after the break…

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Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation indicates that a significant portion of embedded software and systems engineering teams continue to adopt Linux as their primary target operating system. Furthermore, the research also suggests that this migration may be lasting, as the majority of current Linux users surveyed plan to use Linux again as their primary operating system on future projects.

Linux remains an attractive operating system choice for a range of embedded development teams for a number of reasons, including: royalty free run-time costs, advanced networking capabilities and technical features, the large base of engineers familiar with the Linux operating system, as well as many other factors. These and other findings from VDC’s Linux in the Embedded Systems Market report continue to suggest that Linux will remain one of the leading operating system choices into the future.

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Can Google’s application development prowess be transformed into a next-generation mobile operating system? It seems increasingly likely that Google, the ubiquitous tech company, is about to throw its hat into the race to develop the next big mobile device. Google’s no gadget-maker, but it does develop quite a bit of software, and reports have been building that the company is relatively close to releasing the Gphone.

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The New York Times lets the latest on the gPhone saga out of the bag, with a new article looking at Google plans for the mobile space. In essence Google has only been showing of prototype phones for it’s new mobile Linux based OS, that it aims to open source and possible license out to other hardware and phone manufacturers.

For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google has been working in secret on a mobile phone project. [...] Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile Internet, a small market today, but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project. The cost of those phones may be partly subsidized by advertising that appears on their screens.

An unnamed Industry executive is quoted as saying Google will open source the new mobile operating system in order to “take the economics out of the Windows Mobile business.”

(Via MobilityBeat)

ASUSTek has introduced the P5E3 Deluxe motherboard, which in addition to using Intel’s new X38 Chipset also features a soon-to-be-announced technology by DeviceVM. SplashTop is an instant-on Linux desktop environment that is embedded onto this motherboard. Within seconds of turning on the P5E3 Deluxe motherboard, you can boot into this Linux environment that currently features a Mozilla-based web browser and the Skype VoIP client. Browser and VoIP settings can be saved and there are plans for the device to provide new features and support via updates. At Phoronix is a review of this $360 motherboard embedded with Linux and a web browser.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A very small Linux operating system, known as Puppy Linux, has had a “major upgrade” after version 3.0 hit the streets this week.

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