“Curiously under-reported yesterday was exactly which flavour of
Linux forms the core of Transmeta’s embedded Mobile Linux. This
comes as part of the package for its offering to would be OEMs of
Internet appliances.”
“Recall that of the two chips, the little one – the single-watt
TM3120 – is being shipped with a stripped down distro in 32MB,
which Torvalds said amounts to roughly 64MB of code at current
compression rates. Enough to run Netscape, and the usability gizmos
added Transmeta such as a pop-up keyboard and support for Palm’s
Graffiti.”
“Given Linus professional impartiality towards the distros
he helped spawn – he often cites choosing Transmeta as confirmation
of this – we think a little odd no one thought to find out
yesterday.“