An effort to bring everyone more together on the issue at hand, because there is good reason to do things differently now,
The problem here is that pnd files are made dependant on a fixed environment (superzaxxon), and that system upon itself as a result, and it doesnt always change, but when it does, as even remotely feasible solutions do, it breaks backwards compatibility. Instead of having source code available to be able to do something about this, its down to a "possibly, some of the time-approach" to do anything about it.
Add to that a package manager that cant deal with dependencies, and the problem is systemic to pnds. Opkg, the package manager in angstrom, which is ok enough, is no longer poiting towards angstroms own package tree in superzaxxon, because those are now incompatible with superzaxxon as a result of it not staying up to date with changes upstream.
So there is a super zaxxon maintained tree, which is very lackluster. The "firmware" happens behind the scenes with magic, and pnds are conjured up in no (symbiotic) relationship other than another layer of ugly hacks. Its a marvel and a beast, and i have great respect for the ones who can keep it running.
So two versions of super zaxxon, in varying relations to angstrom, and everything else as pnds, which compatibility with saxxon to suppersaxxon broke over time, the alternative is a fresh .next approach to doing it right, but losing compatibility for the same reasons. This time in bulk. What happens is you end up having to roll out new programs manually as pnds. That is really grim.
Thanks to debian, being debian, the debian way, much of this is in the past. For the reason pnds arent as good as deb files, the baggage of pnds with usable data is tricky to maintain. Doing something to angstrom, even the right way, is hard (.next), doing something ugly in debian is easy enough, like a chroot, its ugly in the sense the problem is there to begin with, in the pnd structure.
Before one goes about reimplementing anything, having the source code, available, in machine readable format, is a good thing. Before you get to a freedom aspect, its broken in a fundamentally technical way.
Having the devs available and not dead, isnt a fully working system, its a poor excuse to tax them, or anyone else with work they shouldnt be doing in the first place, ideally. That is the lesson to learn.
The debian approach to a stable system that stays sane, while no excuse to be lazy about the fact, is debian stable, then rolling release is testing, which is what the stable is made from at intervalls of a few years give or take, and if you want anything else, get it from unstable or experimental
pnds are born out of the nand space being limited, which no longer (presumably) wont be a pressing issue.
For a variation over the theme,
enough space, you install / at nand, then have SD cards for whatever /home things you might have. (music, films, media, personal files etc etc)
But what about big games, (which otherwise might saturate the internal space) and to a lesser degree system apps?
Self-contained environment packages isnt much of a thing once the base system has shiny stuff available, and that means things can work together, whenever something becomes incompatible, updates, it can be dealt with in an automated (best-case) manner.
.deb files are great, but whatever symlink, unionfs, or custom, whatever approach you take, dpkg doesnt like stuff going missing. And having the system be aware of dependencies is something best preserved, which is back to the debian way.
Having binaries on SD cards, going missing, is the issue to be dealt with, with as little glue-hacks as possible, and maintainable for the forseeable future. Being able to download offline, and put on sd cards, and run, is convenient, but i would argue a little bit more defunct now that wireless speeds will be super duper, always, without fail, some of the time, everywhere, when wind direction premits.
Pandian is available for the pandora, which is a nice way of maintaining a current approach to having debian do the heavy lifting, and compatibility on pandora with whatever stuff is made for the pyra, atleast as good as can be.
Spending effort on porting pnds to something that is maintainable is worthwhile. And its doubly effective since then one doesnt have to document a non-standard system.
For reasons sharing is good, giving back to debian by way of games and emulators is a nice gesture for the use of the fantastic service and tools it provides.
