GPE (a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hofs ...

for GPE Palmtop Environment) is a discontinued

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

environment for handheld computers, such as

palmtop A handheld computer, also called a palmtop computer, is a term that has variously been used to describe a small-sized personal computer (PC) typically built around a clamshell design, clamshell form factor and a laptop-like Computer keyboard, keyb ...

s and

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...

s (PDAs), running some

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

-based operating system. GPE is a complete environment of software components and applications which makes it possible to use a Linux handheld for tasks such as

personal information management Personal information management (PIM) is the study and implementation of the activities that people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use informational items such as documents (paper-based and digital ...

(PIM), audio playback, email, and web browsing. GPE is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

, subject to the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

(GPL) or the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

(LGPL).

Supported devices

GPE is bundled with embedded

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s targeting the following platforms: * Sharp Zaurus *

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

iPAQ The iPAQ is a discontinued line of Pocket PC devices produced from 2000 until 2010. It was first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000. iPAQ included Personal digital assistant, PDA-devices, smartphones and GPS navigation device, GPS-navigators. ...

* Hewlett-Packard Jornada 72x *

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the positi ...

SIMpad SL4 In addition, GPE maintainers and the open source community are developing ports for additional devices: * GamePark Holdings GP2x * Nokia 770 *

Nokia N800 The Nokia N800 Internet tablet is a wireless Internet appliance from Nokia, originally announced at the Las Vegas CES 2007 Summit in January 2007. N800 allows the user to browse the Internet and communicate using Wi-Fi networks or with mobi ...

* Palm TX *

Palm Treo 650 The Palm Treo 650 is a Palm OS-based smartphone, the successor to Palm's Treo 600. It began shipping in November 2004, and was discontinued in 2008. Specifications Carriers The following GSM and CDMA2000 mobile phone operators currently or ...

* HTC Universal * HTC Typhoon * HTC Tornado * HTC Wizard * HTC Apache On February 5, 2007, The GPE project announce
GPE Phone Edition
a new variant of GPE developed for mobile phones.

Software components

GPE does not have any of the

GNOME Core Applications The GNOME Core Applications (also known as Apps for GNOME) are a software suite of software applications that are packaged as part of the standard free and open-source GNOME desktop environment. GNOME Core Applications have a consistent look and ...

, but instead software was written from scratch, tailored to the embedded environment. GPE is based on

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

, and because GTK+ did not gain support for Wayland until versions 3.10, GPE uses

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

as its windowing system, e.g. with the combination

X.Org Server X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System (X11) display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation. Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of ''X11 libraries'', which ...

Matchbox A matchbox is a container or case for matches, made of paperboard, cardboard, thin wood, or metal, generally in the form of a box with a separate drawer sliding inside the cover. Matchboxes generally measure 5 x 3.5 x 1.5 cm, and commonly have ...

. The project provides an infrastructure for easy and powerful application development by providing core software such as

shared libraries In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

, database schemata, and building on available technology including

SQLite SQLite ( "S-Q-L-ite", "sequel-ite") is a free and open-source relational database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it ...

D-BUS D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple Process (computing), processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org pro ...

GStreamer GStreamer is a Pipeline (computing), pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one f ...

and several of the more common standards defined by

freedesktop.org freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operatin ...

. One of the major goals of the GPE project is to encourage people to work on

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

for mobile devices and to experiment with writing a GUI for embedded devices. Some of the applications already developed for GPE include: * ''GPE-Contacts'' - A contacts manager * ''GPE-Calendar'' - The calendar application * ''GPE-Edit'' - A simple text editor * ''GPE-Filemanager'' - A file manager with

MIME type In information and communications technology, a media type, content type or MIME type is a two-part identifier for file formats and content formats. Their purpose is comparable to filename extensions and uniform type identifiers, in that they ide ...

and remote access support * ''GPE-Gallery'' - Small and easy to use image viewer * ''GPE-Games'' - A small collection of tiny games * ''GPE-Mini-Browser'' - A CSS and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

compatible compact web browser * ''GPE-Sketchbook'' - Create notes and sketches * ''GPE-Soundbite'' - A voice memo tool * ''GPE-ToDo'' - A task list manager * ''GPE-Timesheet'' - Track time spend on tasks * ''Starling'' - A GStreamer based audio player GPE's PIM applications (GPE-Contacts, GPE-Calendar, GPE-ToDo) can be synchronized with their desktop and web counterparts (such as Novell Evolution, Mozilla Sunbird and

Google Calendar Google Calendar is a time-management and scheduling calendar service developed by Google. It was created by Mike Samuel as part of his 20% project at Google. It became available in Software release life cycle#Beta, beta release April 13, 2006, ...

) through the use of ''GPE-Syncd'' and the OpenSync framework. GPE also contains a number of GUI utilities for configuring 802.11 Wireless LAN,

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

IrDA IrDA is a wireless standard designed for exchanging data using infrared (IR). Infrared ports for this purpose have been implemented in portable electronic devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, and medical devices. The mai ...

Firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spre ...

, ALSA, Package Management, among others. A mobile push e-mail client based on the Tinymail framework is in development.

Linux distributions

GPE can be found as a primary environment in the following embedded Linux distributions: *

OpenEmbedded OpenEmbedded (OE) is a build automation framework and cross-compile environment used to create Linux distributions for embedded devices. The framework is developed by the OpenEmbedded community, which was formally established in 2003. OpenEmbed ...

(ex OpenZaurus) *

Ångström The angstrom (; ) is a unit of length equal to m; that is, one ten-billionth of a metre, a hundred-millionth of a centimetre, 0.1 nanometre, or 100 picometres. The unit is named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814–18 ...

* Familiar Linux Though it may not be as highly supported as the distributions listed above, GPE is also available through package management utilities in the following distributions: *

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

* Internet Tablet OS

Controversy

There are ongoing controversies surrounding the GPE project regarding a change of hosting service, ownership of an

IRC IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...

channel, and a trademark dispute.

Web hosting

Serious issues first began developing over a proposed change of hosting service. GPE had been hosted a
Handhelds.org
since April 2002. Some of GPE's developers suggested, and later followed through with, a move t
Linuxtogo.org
by October 2006. Handhelds.org responded by removing the user accounts of the departing developers, and any links or reference to the ne
GPE Linuxtogo.org
location on the origina
GPE Handhelds.org
site.

Trademark

George France, has filed for trademark registration with the

USPTO The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Ale ...

for GPE, in addition to OPIE and Ipkg as of March 6, 2007. On June 25, 2007, the USPTO declined to accept a screenshot of the Handhelds.org GPE website as proof of Handhelds.org's ownership, and in addition requested a better specimen for a “GPE product”. Handhelds.org, and OSI board member

Russ Nelson Russell Nelson (born March 21, 1958) is an American computer programmer. He was a founding board member of the Open Source Initiative and briefly served as its president in 2005. Career In 1983, Nelson and Patrick Naughton wrote Painter's App ...

, assert that the GPE project was given over to Handhelds.org for public development. The GPE developers working at Linuxtogo.org maintain that they represent the active GPE project, and Handhelds.org was only a hosting provider. Furthermore, they point out that the GPE project existed before it was hosted on Handhelds.org. The USPTO issued a final rejection regarding the GPE trademark on February 27, 2008. George France amended the application (removing references to

GNU GNU ( ) is an extensive collection of free software (394 packages ), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popu ...

and Linux). The GPE trademark was officially published for opposition June 3, 2008. Despite George France's impending personal GPE trademark, the core GPE development team at Linuxtogo.org has abandoned much of the Handhelds.org GPE infrastructure. Linuxtogo.org developers have switched GPE to a new bootloader and replaced IPKG with OPKG, and made major changes to the GPE gui applications. The Trademark of GPE was registered to George France on Aug 19, 2008 by the USPTO.

References

External links

GPE web site at LinuxToGo

GPE web site at Handhelds.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gpe Desktop environments based on GTK Embedded Linux Graphical user interfaces X Window System