Any Hints On How The Base Os Is Going To Be Set Up?

[douglasamcintosh]

Have managed to get myself a Simpad off eBay to tide myself over until Pandora Day. I noticed (one of my reasons for getting it) that it is now supported by the Angstrom Distro.

I am presuming the OS will primarily be there to provide some base libraries and allow for the launching of external apps (emulators and homebrew) and probably some built in apps (browser, text editor, whatever). Probably based off one of the X11 type images as opposed to Opie. The base OS will live in the NAND memory.

My question is will be provided with an Angstrom Image with which to flash the Pandora and whatever software they choose to include is all we are getting from that side of things.

Or will we be provided with a base minimal image and access to a repository of Angstrom Pandora software with which we can use to 'beef up' the main OS. There is a fair amount of flash memory that could be used up.

I noticed some of the following apps in the Angstrom Package Browser:

fbreader (in the X11 section)
epdfview ( as above)
opie-reader (in the opie section but looks good, probably not transferrable?)
Also found xmms (for a quick media player till something better happens, scummvm and mythtv for more media playback.

Quite a selection of decent stuff that looks like it would compile fairly easily for the Pandora.

I am sure the homebrew developers will quickly give us specialist Pandora apps to install on our gigantic SD cards, just trying to get an idea of what will be built in and how easily will it be to add to?

Thanks for your time. Looking forward to getting my Pandora in March (my birthday

 

[Tinnus]

...ScummVM for media playback? :blink:

 

[douglasamcintosh]

...ScummVM for media playback? :blink:

Ummmm ... yes I see what I did there.

Ooooops.

 

[Fishbong]

What did you pay for the Simpad? Does it work with a normal WiFi PC-card?

 

[Capn_Fish]

Most apps in the Angstrom repo should work on the Pandora. If you look at an app, and it has "armv7a" listed in the package list at the bottom (as epdfview and xmms do, but not fbreader) they're already available, and the others should be a simple "bitbake PACKAGENAME" away (after setting up the dev environment, of course).

 

[douglasamcintosh]

What did you pay for the Simpad? Does it work with a normal WiFi PC-card?

Got it for 40 quid with a Wi Fi card which should work with the Angstrom images. When I last had one a couple of years ago it used to be picky about what cards it would work with. Compatibility may be better now. Am sure a quick search of the Opensimpad forums will give info on which cards work.

Bummer about fbreader not being the right architecture. Would give my back teeth to have that built in to the main OS.

 

[lardman]

Most of the stuff in the package feed is compiled for the lowest common denominator, e.g. bog standard armel for arm4 devices, so everything in the feed should work, assuming the libc version is compatible (which I presume it should be).

Looks like things have changed and we now have per-machine feeds anyway, the Cortex is backwards compatible, so you could always chose a feed for a lesser device and use that

I understand that an OE/Angstrom dev has received a Pandora dev board, so I presume it will be added in as an officially supported platform anyway, with its own feed, etc.

 

[mali]

ED said, that he will beta-test the apps in the repo and report issues to the devs. Maybe they plan to add them to a Pandora feed then.

Edit:
Off topic but interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH4ZSpehNQw
DSP-accelerated GStreamer on Beagle Board taking only 11% CPU
http://beagleboard.org/

 

[Kimundi]

My dad also has a Simpad, and I want to put angstrom on it, too.
But acording to opensimpad there is at the moment no good Browser for it, do you know of one?

 

[douglasamcintosh]

My dad also has a Simpad, and I want to put angstrom on it, too.
But acording to opensimpad there is at the moment no good Browser for it, do you know of one?

I believe konquerer embedded is in the latest image. Not sure how good it is but it will probably meet my needs. There is a version of fennec floating about but not sure if it is working for the simpad or not. There might also be a version of midori.

So nothing brilliant but hopefully something good enough and probably better than an ancient version of pocket ie.

 

[DJWillis]

I understand that an OE/Angstrom dev has received a Pandora dev board, so I presume it will be added in as an officially supported platform anyway, with its own feed, etc.

That is still being sorted out.

But as an aside the Pandora machine files and basic kernel build details have been in Open Embedded's development GIT for a few days. As things settle then more and more of the recipes for our custom stuff will be pushed up there also. Tasks and image templates etc..

 

[douglasamcintosh]

Looks like some of my questions have been answered.

http://openpandora.org/blog.php

 

[tonous]

it's really already defined in OE git server openembedded git pandora conf file

Thats exactly what I hoped for - to became as open as possible in this area.

 

[Fishbong]

What did you pay for the Simpad? Does it work with a normal WiFi PC-card?

Got it for 40 quid with a Wi Fi card which should work with the Angstrom images. When I last had one a couple of years ago it used to be picky about what cards it would work with. Compatibility may be better now. Am sure a quick search of the Opensimpad forums will give info on which cards work.

Bummer about fbreader not being the right architecture. Would give my back teeth to have that built in to the main OS.

WOW, that´s a really good bargain, i tried to get a SL4 fot under 80€ for a while now and it hasn´t worked out ...

 

[douglasamcintosh]

Yep. Total bargain. It was listed in the wrong section for eBay which I think helped a bit. When I sold my previous simpad a couple of years ago it went for about 100 pounds.

Not arrived yet though, but here's hoping.