Linux under virtualization?

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Ok, so I'm not anywhere near the kind of programmer to be able to do this, since I pretty much just know basic, and a tiny bit of ANSI C, but I'm a Wallaby user, and would love to run Linux on my phone as my primary OS, but, as you all know, its far from usable on the Wallaby...

If the ARM processor supports virtualization, couldn't someone who's a much better coder than me write a virtual machine to run Linux on some more of these unsupported phones? I know its a bit on the "ugly hack" side, but it would give more people more freedom of choice.

It seems to me that it should be possible to emulate some already-known versions of the parts in the phone (such as lcd, gsm, usb, sd/mmc, etc) and just control the real thing through the windows api.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that this could be an excellent way to make Linux work reliably on MOST windows mobile phones, at least until real compatibility is achieved. I know that it would be slower than the real thing, but hey, its better than nothing!

Under powered by far!

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Virtual machines are highly inefficent methods of running code, especially for what you are proposing.

Think how slow the Java VM is for running even the most basic of Apps.

Now, you may point out that Xen and the like run virtual machines inside Linux - however these have to be specifically compiled for the hardware... which brings us write back to the problem we started with - Linux wont compile properly for the smart phone hardware.

Perhaps a more attractive solution is to look at porting Cygwin and all the Xcygwin tools to windows mobile. Again I have no real idea of how practical this is!

Originally Posted by jummama

I'm a Wallaby user, and would love to run Linux on my phone as my primary OS, but, as you all know, its far from usable on the Wallaby...

Wallaby is full of custom ASICs. Given the limited number of developers it's simply not worth investing time.
Otherwise, there is not techinical reason why Linux will not tun on Wallaby.

Ah well, just thought I'd throw it out there.. see what you all think of it. I just figured that it could be done at a reasonable speed, after seeing what virtual pc and vmware do on the pc, but maybe not. But yeah, what about the porting of cygwin to windows mobile? That seems to me like it would be quite a reasonable solution for a lot of phones.