I think maybe I mistitled the two posts I wrote recently about setting up a environment for internet tablet software development. No one read them. And maybe that’s because people don’t realize what they’re about.

The most recent post was called Installing Scratchbox under andlinux and the earlier one was Me and Linux, round 4 and a half.

The point of these posts and the thread started by BOFH and contributed to by OSEmuTech, Run Linux on top of Windows, without a virtual machine, is that you don’t have to have a Linux computer — or a dual-boot Linux, or Linux running on a virtual machine — in order to write and test applications for the Nokia Internet Tablets.

And that seems to me to be newsworthy.

So I’m repeating myself by posting again, but this time under a more appropriate heading.

Point: You can easily install andLinux on your Windows computer. Took me all of five minutes.

Point: What you don’t get with this (to quote the andLinux FAQ) is:

• another desktop
• the bench of applications that usually ship with Linux distributions (you have to fetch whatever you want)
• a printer driver
• trouble with further drivers

Point: You can run Linux apps side-by-side with your Windows apps, and use the Windows desktop for all the file-management stuff you already know how to do. And use your Windows printer drivers.

This is way cool, and I think we should make a big thing of it!

Since the internet tablets have an ARM processor (and not an x86-based cpu the way desktops and laptops do), you need to be able to write an app for the NIT, see how it looks while you’re on your own computer, and make a version that will run on a NIT.

So you install Scratchbox and Maemo 4.0.1 to do that. Pete Savage has written a full step-by-step how-to that tells you each thing you need to do. Even I, a perennial Linux tourist (and never a resident), managed it on my first try.

I’m going to repeat myself again: This is way cool! I definitely think we should make a big thing of it!