Whos Excited For Tomorrow?! (friday)


I've gotta say after being unable to update my fimware, every update has been a little treat.

It sounds stupid, and I know *real* issues have to be the priority, but it would be nice to have definate differences between versions, new splash screen, some naff animation, music anything.

I'm suprised that there isn't a splash screen contest like they do for gimp.
 
deepmenace and acidic;

DivX video-audio synchronisation issue is a common problem. According to the GP it's mostly solved. Though i didn't quite understand what did they mean by the word "mostly"...
 
Heh, when the source gets released maybe I can patch it myself!  I can call it the Panda Edition Firmware and justify all those people who were worrying that the firmware would splinter into a million different hacks the moment it's released  :lol:

hmmm... yes, i like it! Maybe I'll make a 'Shrubbery Edition'. I don't know anything at all about the workings of the firmware, but i'm sure I could hack in a few extra bugs, by randomly changing some variable names :lol:
come on GPH, release the source, so that I can have a go at mangling it beyond repair. :D
Funny, I like. :)

Again, though, who really needs the source, I know that, if it were released, I'd be too tempted to mess about with it, mainly to put that 2nd CPU to use (The wiki site said it's unused :p) and probably gum it up.

Hey! If I did that, I could release it as 'GP2X Linux: BRICKed Edition', could even have red-brick PNG's as the background (For those lucky enough to get it booted :lol:)

Seriously, all I'm interested in, though, are the bugs being worked out, which, lets be honest people, thats all any of us want. Since this thing is a homebrew handheld, anyone with half a brain would simply go online, pick up a copy of iPaq Linux, and fiddle with it til it worked, since that ones also based on ARM processors. :p
 
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Again, though, who really needs the source, I know that, if it were released, I'd be too tempted to mess about with it, mainly to put that 2nd CPU to use (The wiki site said it's unused :p) and probably gum it up.


I think that the Open2x project would really appreciate it, though not strictly need it because of...

Seriously, all I'm interested in, though, are the bugs being worked out, which, lets be honest people, thats all any of us want. Since this thing is a homebrew handheld, anyone with half a brain would simply go online, pick up a copy of iPaq Linux, and fiddle with it til it worked, since that ones also based on ARM processors. :p

Yup. I think that if we don't have the source to the GPH-linux soon we'll probably end up turning our attention elsewhere. I hope we don't have to though because it's a hell of a lot more work to do this way - reinventing the wheel.
 
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The source is going to be released, and not just the kernel source either. However, they can't just release it or they'll get sued, so they are making sure it contains no proprietary code.

And please, no "they shouldn't have put the non-gpl code in there in the first place" as we have been through that already. We know what they should have done and shouldn't have done, we know what they have actually done, and we know that the source is going to be released once it's in a suitable state.

So just stop bitching and wait.
 
I just hope they release binary and source at the same time, to do anything else would be in bad taste. If this takes a little longer so be it, I want GPH to be a successful company and that's not going to happen as long as they keep breaking the law.

I'm a little confused by this whole Divx issue, in particular why the $2 fee. I've done a little looking into why this might be the case, as usual wikipedia serves as a good source of information.

My first thought was why not use the Xvid codec, apparently in some countries software patents of Divx make it illegal to use Xvid. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvid)

My next thought was doesn't Libavcodec support Xvid? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libavcodec) Apparently not. What it does support however:

Implemented Video Codecs
  • MPEG-1
  • MPEG-2
  • MPEG-4 Part 2
  • H.261
  • H.263
  • H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (decoding only)
  • WMV (version 7/8 only)
  • Sorenson codec
  • Cinepak
  • MJPEG
  • Huffyuv
  • Snow
  • Theora
  • VP3
Implemented Audio Codecs
  • Apple Lossless
  • Cook Codec
  • FLAC
  • MP2
  • MP3 (native decoder, encoding through LAME)
  • Shorten
  • QDM2
  • RealAudio 1.0
  • RealAudio 2.0
  • Vorbis
  • Windows Media Audio
So with that in mind, if there is a licensee problem with DivX (and I can see how there could be) perhaps GPH should just drop DivX all together and use Libavcodec to give us support for a pretty solid list of other codecs. I think there is a case for using Xvid as well, it just depends on laws regarding software patents in the various countries where the GP2X is sold.

Bottom line is we need to give GPH some time to sort this out, and GPH needs to hold off on any new firmware releases till they can make a legal one.
 
The source is going to be released, and not just the kernel source either. However, they can't just release it or they'll get sued, so they are making sure it contains no proprietary code.

And please, no "they shouldn't have put the non-gpl code in there in the first place" as we have been through that already. We know what they should have done and shouldn't have done, we know what they have actually done, and we know that the source is going to be released once it's in a suitable state.

So just stop bitching and wait.

Your post wasn't there when I posted – I can't agree more, we should all be very pleased that this shows that GPH is working towards releasing all the GPL'd code not just the kernel. If Craig could perhaps just give us an update once a week on how things are progressing, just something as simple as mentioning the DivX hangup, I think everything will be fine.
 
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I doub't Craigix will be posted much about the issue with all the flak he's been getting, but no doubt if you tune into #gp2xdev, you'll probably see messages from him every so often about the current state of the situation.
 
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