A friend sent me a Linux port for his phone.
The device was a pocket PC running Windows. Small screen. Stylus. Cellular connection. Just enough computer to make somebody ask whether it could run a completely different operating system.
Somebody had made it work and put the project online. My friend sent the link with a short note that this was the phone he had.
Most of my Linux work lived on servers. Windows ran beside it. The phone put both operating systems into something small enough to carry around.
I saved the link. I had not installed it or sent back a result. For now it was one more technical thing worth looking at when I had the time.
My normal equipment was much larger. Linux and Windows servers, Cisco networking, firewalls, mail, monitoring, backups, and storage. A Pocket PC phone compressed the same basic question into one device: what hardware worked once the operating system changed?
The phone still needed its screen, buttons, storage, and cellular radio. Getting a kernel to boot was useful, but it was not the same as having a working phone.
I had no test notes and no picture of Linux running on the device. I only had the link my friend sent. That was enough to put it on the list, not enough to claim I had built anything with it.
For the moment his phone still ran Windows. The Linux port stayed in my inbox.
Nothing else in the thread settled it.
I left it there for now.