Release apps+utilities making good eyecatchers in the news

[grobi]

Someone who never heard of pandora might skip the news coverage if it boils down to "a portable linux device capable of emulating all consoles before and including psx and n64 full speed".

Which apps and utilities do you think would make good eyecatchers in the news, making people consider getting a pandora that would not so if it only was about gaming? Think of all those first time eee users that never used linux before and now being converted into addicts.

My favorite list:
Open Office 3.x
Firefox 3.x
An "extract all" utility for ZIP, RAR, tgz and all that
PDF-Viewer
VLC
Blender
Something matching matlab or mathematica (is there something like that?)

grobi

 

[Kyosys]

we did get ubuntu running, and most of these apps should not be a problem

 

[Etinin]

I don't know about VLC (there might not be an optimised ARM port) or Blender (same reason and even with optimisations that might not run so well), but most of the rest should run without any problems and are applications widely wanted (for Mathlab replacement, it's not so wanted, but there's always GNU Octave which can easily be ported).

 

[AireTamStorm]

For the sake of pretty much everything on that list, lets hope the default DPI settings are well tuned and tested .

 

[PoisonedV]

there should be more focus on useful, functional applications than ones that look good <_<

 

[greenmikey]

I don't know about VLC (there might not be an optimised ARM port) or Blender (same reason and even with optimisations that might not run so well), but most of the rest should run without any problems and are applications widely wanted (for Mathlab replacement, it's not so wanted, but there's always GNU Octave which can easily be ported).

I don't know how useful this is but zodttd has vlc on iphone. I think he is releasing code these days.

 

[Kyosys]

zod has a pandora, so he could port it even if it stays closed source

 

[qwerty15]

Something matching matlab or mathematica (is there something like that?)

Sage or GNU Octave are both open source projects similar to matlab or mathematica.

 

[Alpha2]

Get the video player working on it and you can smash a dozen MP4 players pouring out of china right now. The biggest problem with them is poor format suport along with hinky touchscreens and bad TVout, the Pandora has all of these things and with the right movie player, can have support for just about every video format that exists and have one of the largest screens for viewing videos.

and THEN you talk about things like Ebooks, PDF viewers, office software, wifi internet, blutooth, etc...

 

[Etinin]

I don't know about VLC (there might not be an optimised ARM port) or Blender (same reason and even with optimisations that might not run so well), but most of the rest should run without any problems and are applications widely wanted (for Mathlab replacement, it's not so wanted, but there's always GNU Octave which can easily be ported).

I don't know how useful this is but zodttd has vlc on iphone. I think he is releasing code these days.

zod has a pandora, so he could port it even if it stays closed source

It would be illegal not to release the code if he is distributing it in binary form as VLC is distributed under the GPL.

 

[TaG]

we did get ubuntu running, and most of these apps should not be a problem

You did? Congratulations. And to Notaz too. :wink: :lol:

 

[Kyosys]

we did get ubuntu running, and most of these apps should not be a problem

You did? Congratulations. And to Notaz too. :wink: :lol:

We as in notaz. I don't have a pandora

 

[javaJake]

and THEN you talk about things like Ebooks, PDF viewers, office software, wifi internet, blutooth, etc...

...and your heart skips a few beats, you jump around as if you grew wings, before you finally calm down, sit, and continue reading.

No, I can't wait.

 

[iJeff]

we did get ubuntu running, and most of these apps should not be a problem

Does this mean that most of the regular Ubuntu applications will work on the PandA, even if it's on the ARM architecture?

 

[Tom`]

we did get ubuntu running, and most of these apps should not be a problem

Does this mean that most of the regular Ubuntu applications will work on the PandA, even if it's on the ARM architecture?

Indeed it does.
There's probably a good deal of room for optimization in every one of the standard ARM packages, though, so don't expect everything to run well from the start. Applications will benefit from application of armv7-specific optimizations as well as optimization for the Pandora's controls, and many applications will need to be reduced in terms of memory usage for best performance. However, the default ARM packages should run okay in most instances.

 

[iJeff]

we did get ubuntu running, and most of these apps should not be a problem

Does this mean that most of the regular Ubuntu applications will work on the PandA, even if it's on the ARM architecture?

Indeed it does.
There's probably a good deal of room for optimization in every one of the standard ARM packages, though, so don't expect everything to run well from the start. Applications will benefit from application of armv7-specific optimizations as well as optimization for the Pandora's controls, and many applications will need to be reduced in terms of memory usage for best performance. However, the default ARM packages should run okay in most instances.

Sorry, I meant to say "Does this mean that most of the regular Ubuntu applications will work on the Pandora, even if it isn't meant for the ARM architecture?"

 

[Tom`]

Sorry, I meant to say "Does this mean that most of the regular Ubuntu applications will work on the Pandora, even if it isn't meant for the ARM architecture?"

There are a few apps that are x86-specific while still being fully open-source and running on Linux (Noctis and ZSNES spring to mind, and I'm sure there are others), but for the most part ARM packages already exist for almost everything in Ubuntu (and a lot of packages in Debian as well).

 

[iJeff]

Can Google Chrome be ported in to be an optimized, native web-browser for the Pandora?

Source code is released and it's already one of my preferred web browsers: http://code.google.com/chromium
Some Linux version info? http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how- ... ions-linux

It's the perfect web browser with it's function to use docs.google.com in offline mode as a true modern web-capable device.

Sorry, I meant to say "Does this mean that most of the regular Ubuntu applications will work on the Pandora, even if it isn't meant for the ARM architecture?"

There are a few apps that are x86-specific while still being fully open-source and running on Linux (Noctis and ZSNES spring to mind, and I'm sure there are others), but for the most part ARM packages already exist for almost everything in Ubuntu (and a lot of packages in Debian as well).

Oh, that's great.

 

[benjymous]

Can Google Chrome be ported in to be an optimized, native web-browser for the Pandora?

Source code is released and it's already one of my preferred web browsers: http://code.google.com/chromium
Some Linux version info? http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how- ... ions-linux

Judging from the linked page, it's not actually working on Linux yet. I believe it also currently uses Wine quite heavily, so we'd need to wait for someone to port all the UI code to something multi-platform.

 

[benjymous]

Applications will benefit from application of armv7-specific optimizations as well as optimization for the Pandora's controls, and many applications will need to be reduced in terms of memory usage for best performance. However, the default ARM packages should run okay in most instances.

Also it's worth pointing out that many apps won't be too usable "out-of-the-box" if they assume they're displaying on a desktop monitor, since the DPI will be too low, giving very tiny text and icons.

If we crank up the DPI (experimentations I've done suggest about 150dpi should do the trick) you can read the UI, but you find many apps will need a UI redesign to fit on the screen comfortably (e.g. things like moving toolbars to stack vertically down the side of the screen, rather than horizontally) and others may ignore the DPI entirely.

For example, here are some of the Debian Arm packages running under emulation, on a 800x480 screen set at 150dpi.

I've scaled all these images down to 50% to give a better indication of what the actual size would look like on a real Pandora. Also note that the colours are all messed up, due to the emulation's graphics drivers being screwed up somewhere!


AbiWord. The toolbars eat up a good proportion of the screen space. You can run in a "full screen" mode which hides everything bar the page, though.


FireFox2, running in full screen mode. Again, the toolbars and menus eat quite a bit of space.


Thunderbird isn't too bad in the email reading windows, but the main mailbox is pretty messy.

and as a counter example, here's Xterm running, which entirely ignores the DPI setting, thus giving you almost un-readibly tiny text!