Non-gaming Apps

[plopperz]

Unless you can convince the Opera guys to do a port, that's not likely either.
It's not open-source unfortunately

Thankfully Firefox is a good possibility

 

[Clad]

There is a ton of messages regarding how this or that apps would be available but not practical due to resolution/CPU power issue.

Well, I have a EEE, which have a lot more central memory, true, but same rez and close to same CPU power.

It's running a full blown KDE without any significant CPU usage (hell, it's not like Pandora/EEE are based on Pentium 1 !), and apps such as OpenOffice are fully usable.

And don't stay storage is an issue, I only have 12 gigs on the EEE and never felt limited (and I've installed a whole lot of emulators and old windows games through wine, Half Life 1, Daytona, games of the CD area !). Given that the Pandora is double slot, and the price of SD cards nowdays, anyone would have a minimum of 16 gigas on their machine I expect : http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/default.ph...EARCH&comp=

Hell, for £60 you could even have 32 gigs of class 6 memory ! That's like, 50 standard CD-sized divx if you think about it.

We're just all so used of our unneedlessly absurdly powerful computers, that, while being nice for compilation time or modern gaming, are really underused for everyday use. You pretty much can expect the Pandora to do everything you do on your regular comp.

Regarding flash, don't forget there is an open source flash plugin already (gnash). Sure it doesn't play complex flash games, but it already plays video nice (youtube works), that's good enough to me, I don't play dofus !

Btw, while 128 megs still is quite limitating (it wouldn't be for a regular handled, far from it, but if you start loading a full linux distro with Xorg, KDE and so...), with good high class SD I suppose using cache would be less penalising performance wise that with your regular 5400 RPM laptop hard disk.

 

[DXR_13KE]

* graphic calculator.

 

[PandoraLox]

Btw, while 128 megs still is quite limitating (it wouldn't be for a regular handled, far from it, but if you start loading a full linux distro with Xorg, KDE and so...), with good high class SD I suppose using cache would be less penalising performance wise that with your regular 5400 RPM laptop hard disk.

I'd be quite curious as to how that'd be pulled off. On one hand I'm not sure I'd want that much writing that paging might do to my SDHC card but on the other I'm hearing conflicting stuff about how SDHC can balance the writes across all the bits within the card so it won't die out so easily (similiar to what SSD drives do). If someone can clarify that'd be appreciated.

Also, forgot why I requested for WINE in the first place when I first posted, but from time to time I would like to view pictures on here and a favorite of mines was IrfanView which while being native to Windows also worked flawlessly in Ubuntu via wine.

Since wine isn't going to happen just wondering what would be the next best thing for viewing images on this thing, Mirage I found was pretty useful but when browsing a folder with a bunch of pics I found that it can be an obese piggy with the resources - tho if it can be optimized I'd be interested. Not too familiar with Linux native image viewers (especially with me being a relative n00b to Linux in the first place :huh: ) but guessing that Ristretto (one of my favs), Gwenview, and Eye of GNOME is also in the mix.

 

[trooper]

@Pandora's Lox

I`m using Xubuntu, And my prefered picture view (ie, No bells or whistles) is GQview, Although i still use and recommend Irfanview when i use windows, As there is nothing i have found that can beat it for my use`s.

Trooper

 

[sindbad]

I have fallen in love with Gwenview 4, but it has large dependencies.

 

[PandoraLox]

Ouch.. Gwinview is hoggish on resources? That'd really suck since personally I find it abit simplistic to hog much of anything... is it an app native to KDE? Then again I personally never noticed it but I wouldn't know since I never used it enough to notice.

So what I'm gathering is that many of the available image views on Linux is open source and thus should be easily portable for the Pandora. Whether be Gliv (another nice app i likes) or whatever, yet something simplistic & resource friendly such as GQView would be preferred. Would be interesting to see how some of this stuff could be optimized during porting since I do know that some of the programs can EASILY max out available memory.

 

[sindbad]

Gwenview is not resource intensive, but it has library dependencies that take a lot of space on disk or sd (kdelibs for starters). If you use several KDE apps, the overall space taken is generally smaller than that of several unrelated apps, because they share a lot of functionality in the supporting libraries. Same goes for gnome.

 

[Pleng]

I'd be quite curious as to how that'd be pulled off. On one hand I'm not sure I'd want that much writing that paging might do to my SDHC card but on the other I'm hearing conflicting stuff about how SDHC can balance the writes across all the bits within the card so it won't die out so easily (similiar to what SSD drives do). If someone can clarify that'd be appreciated.

Personally, if swap space was an option I'd prefer to dedicate a whole SD slot for its use. A fast 1 or 2Gb costs next to nothing these days so even if using it as SWAP means that it needs to be replaced every 3 to 6 months (due to wear), then that's a price I'd be willing to pay. Just traet it any other consumable.

 

[Chip]

Personally, if swap space was an option I'd prefer to dedicate a whole SD slot for its use. A fast 1 or 2Gb costs next to nothing these days so even if using it as SWAP means that it needs to be replaced every 3 to 6 months (due to wear), then that's a price I'd be willing to pay. Just traet it any other consumable.

"Fast" is a relative term. Even the speediest SD card writes at only a small fraction of the rate of a SATA hard drive, and a hard drive is glacially slow compared to RAM. While swap space may be needed for some particularly large apps, I hope devs avoid using it unless absolutely necessary. When swap space is needed, you should be able to use a section of any card instead of needing a separate one. SD cards do not wear out nearly as fast as most people think, and they have built-in wear leveling to minimize the risk to any one sector.

So don't worry too much about needing a special swap card. It really shouldn't be necessary.

 

[_VWV_]

Personally, if swap space was an option I'd prefer to dedicate a whole SD slot for its use. A fast 1 or 2Gb costs next to nothing these days so even if using it as SWAP means that it needs to be replaced every 3 to 6 months (due to wear), then that's a price I'd be willing to pay. Just traet it any other consumable.

If andora1: runs Linux swap will be a given and I also hope SDs used for swap will live at least 6 months.

 

[sindbad]

I think using swap in a file would be the best option, so that formatting of the SD card is not necessary.

 

[PandoraLox]

I think using swap in a file would be the best option, so that formatting of the SD card is not necessary.

I agree, using a swap file would seem to be the most flexible option - hope that was seriously considered though in design process otherwise not sure how easy it would be going from swap partition to swap file.

SD cards do not wear out nearly as fast as most people think, and they have built-in wear leveling to minimize the risk to any one sector.

So don't worry too much about needing a special swap card. It really shouldn't be necessary.

Ah ok I knew I heard the same thing but just wasn't sure since I also hear conflicting things regarding that. Question though - would the wear leveling only be as effective as the free space available on a card? Like if only 200MB of free space was left on a card, would it be more suspect to wear out in comparison to a card that has over 10GB of free space to spread disk writes across?

 

[sindbad]

Since in linux devices are files, mounting a file as swap is identical to mounting a partition as swap.

 

[ssstratton]

I guess the thread has moved on - but here's my vote for apps to see on the Pandora:

A good todo list (as in easy and very quick to use)
Shopping list
GVIM (yes I like onboard development)
GCC
Eclipse - oh ok - I'm joking Even if it worked it would be too slow.
A good email viewer.
Firefox/opera with more than 10 windows
Decent Calendar app with repeatable appointments and alarms.
Contact list.
Spreadsheet.
Word compatible word processor.
Python (please)
Lua (if no python)
Java compiler (I assume JVM is a cert).
Outliner/mind map app.




N.B. I use a Nokia 9300i after a Tungsten C and a Psion Revo. IMHO - the Revo had the best keyboard. The Nokia the best display. The Tungsten C the friendliest. No touch screen being THE worst thing about the Nokia.

 

[PandoraLox]

I guess the thread has moved on - but here's my vote for apps to see on the Pandora:

A good todo list (as in easy and very quick to use)
Shopping list
GVIM (yes I like onboard development)
GCC
Eclipse - oh ok - I'm joking Even if it worked it would be too slow.

Careful what you joke about, because it just might be something that'll peek someone's curiosity... certainly it has me wondering about the possibilities of nice dev environment in small portable

 

[Jaxartes]

GCC
Eclipse - oh ok - I'm joking Even if it worked it would be too slow.

Careful what you joke about, because it just might be something that'll peek someone's curiosity... certainly it has me wondering about the possibilities of nice dev environment in small portable


Well, personally I consider linux, gcc, make, and emacs to be a nice dev environment (gdb would be nice too, but I've long felt debuggers to be overrated). Those sound like they would be doable.

 

[Pleng]

A good todo list (as in easy and very quick to use)

Oh yes! And can we have the option of displaying to-do items in the main interface? PLEEEAAAASE?!!!

That's one of the few things that really irritate me about my Nokia E61. If you have 1 to-do item it will display it on the front screen (ie 'Bake cakes for Grandma'), If you have 2 or more items it simply says ('x to-do notes not done').. dispite the fact that the screen has PLENTY of space to list them all (it could easily handle 5, maybe 6!)

 

[Cervante]

I want to see the Gimp on this

 

[CCmachined]

i'd really love being able to save a word document onto a USB stick, plug it into my pandora, and then keep working on it moving around in a car or whatever.

dare i ask for an OOo port? or maybe something lighter, like abiword.