Today, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are getting more and more popular, allowing the power of a 5-year old PC to fit in your hand, for the high-end models. Most of these PDAs come with an operating system and a set of softwares such as a contact management, a diary, a mail reader, a task manager, a calculator, a terminal emulator, a file explorer, a multimedia reader, a spreadsheet, a word processor, and of course, games.
Unfortunately, all these softwares are proprietary, and only licensed to the final user, who have no way to modify or improve them. Even worse, software development is difficult too, since proprietary development tools are required, which mean in turn that a programmer has to learn this tool and the provided Application Programming interface (API).
Hopefully, an alternative to this sad situation exists. Free Software, best represented by the GNU/Linux operating system, has proven its capability to provide quality tools through knowledge sharing, community support and good will. Moreover, the power of creativity is given back to the developers, allowing them to write programs using whatever API they prefer best, or even write their own if they want to.
This document proposes you to free your iPAQ from commercial software licenses by replacing the proprietary softwares by a GNU/Linux operating system and a set of application softwares that will provide the same (or even better...) tools than the original ones. Not only will it give you a taste of freedom, but it will also bring you back the joy of creativity, knowledge, and fun.
I hope you'll enjoy reading this document as much as I have enjoyed writing it.