Make Pandora Look Cool . . .


second exodous

second exodous

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Hey, found this on digg, thought it was cool. Apparently the OpenMoko FreeRunner Linux phone is going to launch on July 4. This isn't the Pandora, but the Pandora's specs are a little better. Here's a link:

ars technica article

Basically, the odds of this phone being adopted by very many cellular companies is slim, but plenty of developers are buying it just to port apps to. At the bottom of the article is a pretty exciting link on KDE:

KDE handheld

Bugs here and there yes, mainly on the fonts, but it's KDE 4, which is impressive. I hope that the Pandora is powerful enough to interest the developers that are buying OpenMoko's phones not because of the phone feature but the features it shares with the Pandora. Getting it into the hands of a few KDE developers would be awesome.

Just a thought.
 
The 2.8" touchscreen just kills this device as anything other than a phone for me. Anything less than the iPhone's 3.5" is too small to use and even that is a bit cramped. One thing I really like about the Pandora is that it matches the psp's screen size of 4.3"

Put another way the Pandora has 2.35 times the screen real estate of the free runner. It really comes into play when you start using apps that don't match the aspect ratio of the screen and you have to chop them down and you get even less.

On the topic of "Make the Pandora look cool" I say make the Pandora as ugly as it needs to be to do what it was intended for, then figure out ways to spruce it up that won't compromise function. Ugly stuff roxor
 
I think the list of KDE apps would add functionality, a lot of functionality. I think this is the perfect Linux handheld for the KDE group to show off what KDE can actually do on a handheld. Hopefully a lot of people will see it like that. Linux is very limited in the DRM-Free handheld area, but then again there are few DRM-Free handhelds period.
 
That GSoC project seems to be coming out nicely. It should be very possible to get KDE on the pandora.
 
The bloatedness of kde is largely a myth. It runs pretty fast and it's not too big either, while bringing a LOT of features. Plasmoids alone make it ideal for customisation on a pandora.
 
I don't know how much bloat there is in the way of speed, but in the way of functionality on a 2.5" screen I think it's a bit overkill. XFCE is much simpler, so it would better suit a smaller environment like that which will likely not get much activity outside of calling and some basic web browsing.
 
A kde-based interface specifically made for small devices with small screens and optionally touchscreens is much more suited than xfce, which is designed for desktop computers with huge screens (just like kde). And such an interface is being worked on already as part of a GSoC project.
 
CyruzDraxs said:
I don't know how much bloat there is in the way of speed, but in the way of functionality on a 2.5" screen I think it's a bit overkill. XFCE is much simpler, so it would better suit a smaller environment like that which will likely not get much activity outside of calling and some basic web browsing.
Click to expand...
Well, KDE 4 is completely scalable. I'm not sure if you've played with it, but the Plasmoids, pretty much widgets like OSX has, are completely scalable. In KDE 4.1 I hear you can always have them come out the same size, so tiny for the Pandora.

As far as XFCE, it's not a popular project in the open source world, very little development. KDE, on the other hand, has a ton. It's the biggest GUI and has the most work done on it. Also, the footprint size is not that much bigger than XFCE on handheld, a lot of work is being done on the handheld side of KDE. I can't find a good XFCE handheld project, but there are a few for KDE.
 
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As far my memory serves me right, KDE3 comes with a large memory footprint. Something like 70-80mb for KDE alone (not including X though its usage is really small). I guess its usage could be brought down somewhat i still think thats still too much. Gnome isnt better here. Actually i have figures in mind even a bit more than KDE itself. I guess both KDE & Gnome are too heavyweight for new console :eek:

On behalf of the original topic: i'm missing some ambient lighting - maybe lights placed under the analogue controller and its full rgb and could change its lighting according situation.
 
second exodous said:
CyruzDraxs said:
I don't know how much bloat there is in the way of speed, but in the way of functionality on a 2.5" screen I think it's a bit overkill. XFCE is much simpler, so it would better suit a smaller environment like that which will likely not get much activity outside of calling and some basic web browsing.
Click to expand...
Well, KDE 4 is completely scalable. I'm not sure if you've played with it, but the Plasmoids, pretty much widgets like OSX has, are completely scalable. In KDE 4.1 I hear you can always have them come out the same size, so tiny for the Pandora.

As far as XFCE, it's not a popular project in the open source world, very little development. KDE, on the other hand, has a ton. It's the biggest GUI and has the most work done on it. Also, the footprint size is not that much bigger than XFCE on handheld, a lot of work is being done on the handheld side of KDE. I can't find a good XFCE handheld project, but there are a few for KDE.

Yeah, I started on Gnome, but it didn't feel quite right to me so I tried KDE3 back when it came out and didn't like it at all. After ditching those two I tried XFCE and have been using it ever since. Maybe I'll try out KDE4 in a VM when I get some time, but I'm not really expecting much of it.
Click to expand...
 
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StarG said:
As far my memory serves me right, KDE3 comes with a large memory footprint. Something like 70-80mb for KDE alone (not including X though its usage is really small). I guess its usage could be brought down somewhat i still think thats still too much. Gnome isnt better here. Actually i have figures in mind even a bit more than KDE itself. I guess both KDE & Gnome are too heavyweight for new console :eek:
Click to expand...
CyruzDraxs, wait to try KDE 4 when 4.1 comes out, which is Jul 28th, in 20 days. Unless you want to try the beta, which is cool too, I had some problems getting it running on Gentoo because it's not in portage right now, because it's beta.

Anyway, yes, KDE 4 is a lot smaller and faster than KDE 3.x, both in size and resources needed to run it. It seems like it's a fad to get things smaller now, like firefox, takes up less space and is faster, oh, and OpenOffice is doing this also. So I think guis like XFCE are going to become more redundant as time goes on.

EDIT: Oops, meant to quote StarG, I fixed it.
 
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second exodous said:
It seems like it's a fad to get things smaller now

Well, it should've always been like that. >.>

It's just getting more focus now because of portable and embedded devices on the borderline of full computing capabilities. Trying to run a full on installation of Ubuntu on an OMAP3 likely wouldn't run too well, but if it was carefully optimized and stripped down a bit it could make a rather functional, yet very portable device. Developers are starting to recognize the advantages of this and are starting to work harder and ironing out performance issues because everyone knows that the more stable a program is the more people will want to use it. ^_^
Click to expand...
 
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Yeah, there have always been movements to make things smaller, spurred I'm sure by smaller devices, but there has been a major push, at least it seems like to me. Even Mac OSX seems to be slimming down now. Windows probably will always be bloated unless they throw everything away and start over though.

I also think the summer of code had something to do with it, I remember the first year there were a lot of projects aimed at making things smaller.

But this will help small handhelds quite a bit. If KDE 4 will run on the Pandora it will be amazing.
 
CyruzDraxs said:
second exodous said:
It seems like it's a fad to get things smaller now

Well, it should've always been like that. >.>

It's just getting more focus now because of portable and embedded devices on the borderline of full computing capabilities. Trying to run a full on installation of Ubuntu on an OMAP3 likely wouldn't run too well, but if it was carefully optimized and stripped down a bit it could make a rather functional, yet very portable device. Developers are starting to recognize the advantages of this and are starting to work harder and ironing out performance issues because everyone knows that the more stable a program is the more people will want to use it. ^_^
Click to expand...
Actually if all the packages were recompiled to take full advantage of the NEON instruction set along with the DSP, it would run fine. The problem is the interface. Running a full Desktop WM on a 4.3" Screen is no fun. Running Ubuntu with Matchbox would probably work quite well. It isn't the most effecient manner tho.
Click to expand...
 
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