ACCESS Linux Platform

Remember ALP? Before Palm came up with Nova, the successor to the current Palm OS Garnet, they had ALP. ALP (ACCESS Linux Platform) was supposed to be the new operating system for Palm PDAs and smartphones. ALP is developed by ACCESS, who bought Palmsource, which used to be part of the original Palm. Confused yet? Join the club.

Ryan Paul of Arstechnica writes about his experience using the ALP Software Development Kit (SDK). Theoretically, ALP has a lot of good stuff under the hood. It’s based on Linux, which means it’s stable and expandable. ALP has support for 3 types of applications : native ALP, Java (which is found in most phones) and the classic Palm OS. Aside from PDAs and smartphones, ALP can also be deployed on Mobile Internet Devices (MID).

The future seems bleak for ALP. Since Palm is working on their own Linux-based OS, ACCESS is left to find new mobile phone manufacturers who want to use their ALP. However, manufacturers now have many choices to pick from in terms of operating systems : Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and various flavours of mobile Linux. I guess things would have been very different now if Palm did not spin off Palmsource in the first place.

Filed under: Mobile Software

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