PumpkinOS: An Alternative to PalmOS

Ah, PalmOS… That good old operating system that powered our beloved PDAs in the 90s and early 2000s. Brings back memories, doesn’t it? Well, imagine this—an enthusiast has decided to bring it back to life through an amazing project called PumpkinOS.

Behind this autumn-themed name, reminiscent of pumpkin pie, lies a modern reimplementation of PalmOS. But we’re not just talking about a simple emulator, like the many you can find online. PumpkinOS has the ambition to run real PalmOS applications—the famous m68k apps—on today’s machines, whether they use x86 or ARM processors.

The creator of PumpkinOS, a certain Miguel Letto, has published a series of fascinating articles on his blog, detailing the various aspects of his project. I’ll leave the link right here because it’s definitely worth checking out.

So, what’s under PumpkinOS’s hood?

First of all, there’s a launcher, the familiar home screen that lists all the applications. There’s also a Preferences app, which allows you to configure the system to your liking. And the most exciting part (no joke) is the inclusion of PalmOS’s four flagship apps: the Address Book, MemoPad, ToDoList, and DateBook.

Miguel went as far as digging up the source code for these applications from the PalmOS SDKs and adapted them to compile and run correctly on PumpkinOS. It’s a colossal task when you consider the sheer number of lines of code and the architectural differences between the venerable m68k processors and our modern ones.

He explains that there are still a few bugs here and there, and some features haven’t been thoroughly tested, but he has made significant progress on the project.

Now that I’ve piqued your interest, you’re probably wondering how to get your hands on it, and more importantly, how to install it? Well, you’re going to need to roll up your sleeves and compile it yourself. You’ll have to grab the source code from GitHub and open your favorite terminal.

But don’t worry—Miguel has thought of everything. He wrote a guide on how to compile PumpkinOS on Windows using MSYS2. For Linux fans, it’s also possible to compile it on your preferred OS. Once compiled, all that’s left to do is launch PumpkinOS and bask in the nostalgia of the PalmOS interface. The developer even created launch scripts for Windows, Linux, and even WSL, so everyone can enjoy it.

As for installing PalmOS apps, it’s super simple. On Windows, all you have to do is drag and drop the PRC file of the application into the PumpkinOS window, and voilà! It installs itself. Of course, on Linux, it’s a little less automated—you’ll need to manually copy the PRC file into the vfs/app_install directory and restart PumpkinOS. But since Linux users are the smartest people on Earth, I don’t think that will be a problem.

Have fun!