Could Ubuntu 8.10's Usb Internet Device Support Be Ported Over To


CCmachined

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those of us who've tried the Ubuntu 8.10: Intrepid Ibex Alpha will know how well it autodetects and makes using GSM,3G usb dongles really, really easy. just go to the network chooser and it's right there, one click and it works. I haven't heard of a single card that isn't working yet.

as Ubuntu is open source, could we include a similiar function in the Pandora's OS? i understand only open drivers can work (ARM != x86) but i believe most are... could this be integrated into the OS or as a package installable by package manager(apt, whatever)? as Ubuntu has already assembled a massive list of configs for each card and got it all working nicely with PPP, they've already done most of the work? or...? hmm.


edit: thanks GP32X for allowing me to type in a long threadname and truncate it xD
 
Yes some parts of Ubuntu MID could be ported over. It's not likely that the whole OS will be ported to Pandora because of the larger RAM requirements. Things like the hildon desktop will probably be ported.

The drivers are part of the Linux kernel. Idk exactly, but I'd imagine there are shell scripts to recognize the hardware and those could be used on pandora.
 
greendots said:
Yes some parts of Ubuntu MID could be ported over. It's not likely that the whole OS will be ported to Pandora because of the larger RAM requirements. Things like the hildon desktop will probably be ported.
What "larger RAM requirements"? Right now, it will run mostly okay in 128Mb of RAM on X86 machines (You'd want a bit more RAM to give it a speed lift, but it should still run in 128Mb...).

The ARM processor typically provides denser code, so the odds are that it will run on the Pandora. However, while it'll run, it's inefficient as a whole to use on the Pandora- we're probably going to want to use something like Hildon on the Pandora for the advanced version UI, etc.

QUOTE

The drivers are part of the Linux kernel. Idk exactly, but I'd imagine there are shell scripts to recognize the hardware and those could be used on pandora.


Some of it's shell scripting. Some of it is UI pieces.
 
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noooooo!
what i'm referring to is the work Ubuntu put in to get pretty much any usb internet etc dongle to work out the box. this aint another "i want Ubuntu on my pandora" thread...

would be cool if most usb 3G/GSM dongles worked out the box on the pandora, with 1 click... would make it a truly awesome device. what other internet tablet of this form factor could boast compatibility with 90%+ of wireless internet usbdongles?

anyway, is it possible? the x86 != ARM difference might be an issue...
 
CC_machine said:
noooooo!
what i'm referring to is the work Ubuntu put in to get pretty much any usb internet etc dongle to work out the box. this aint another "i want Ubuntu on my pandora" thread...

would be cool if most usb 3G/GSM dongles worked out the box on the pandora, with 1 click... would make it a truly awesome device. what other internet tablet of this form factor could boast compatibility with 90%+ of wireless internet usbdongles?

anyway, is it possible? the x86 != ARM difference might be an issue...
It's not an issue, as we are talking about drivers already in every kernel for a long time and some shell-scripts that prevent the usb-modems to be detected as mass-storage-devices (they are mostly both, since an integrated mass-storage contains the win-drivers). The rest is network-manager + predefinde configs, that could easily ported to pandora.
Will it be part of the main-firmware? probably not, as it should be easy to configure this by hand with the help of a wiki and a much lighter networking-stack.
 
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He's talking about network-manager 0.7, which is the version available in ubuntu inty.

Assuming there is dbus support on the pandora, network-manager should work well once ported.
 
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