Our New Machine, Pandora

[StealthBagel]

My prior comment about Debian/Ubuntu being 'too heavy' was probably misconstrued.. a default Debian install with minimal apps would be OK but you'd REALLY have to strip it down, so much that you may as well use a ligher weight distro meant for a portable and just bring apt over, and either way a custom app would be better. Your standard ubuntu install loaded with a gig of X apps, KDE/Gnome/etc. would just be totally out of the question and just because something CAN run on the handheld does not mean it should. Too much 'just barely possible to run' software and you get a sluggish clunky interface and wasted battery life due to running the CPU at max speed all the time, when in a simple GUI more than 100 MHz should be more than enough.... an emulator that takes up all the CPU time RAM and engages the GPU is one thing, but a GUI that is working the system out constantly trying to look like Vista or whatever the hell is just outlandish.... don't try and make it something it's NOT (a desktop computer), it's a freakin handheld.

At any rate WinCE would be a nightmare.. no compatible GP2X software, any useful linux apps go out the window, different SDL implementation so on and so forth. NO thanks.... even the latest versions of WinCE (Windows Mobile) are still a sluggish poorly laid out mess.

 

[atomicthumbs]

My prior comment about Debian/Ubuntu being 'too heavy' was probably misconstrued.. a default Debian install with minimal apps would be OK but you'd REALLY have to strip it down, so much that you may as well use a ligher weight distro meant for a portable and just bring apt over, and either way a custom app would be better. Your standard ubuntu install loaded with a gig of X apps, KDE/Gnome/etc. would just be totally out of the question and just because something CAN run on the handheld does not mean it should. Too much 'just barely possible to run' software and you get a sluggish clunky interface and wasted battery life due to running the CPU at max speed all the time, when in a simple GUI more than 100 MHz should be more than enough.... an emulator that takes up all the CPU time RAM and engages the GPU is one thing, but a GUI that is working the system out constantly trying to look like Vista or whatever the hell is just outlandish.... don't try and make it something it's NOT (a desktop computer), it's a freakin handheld.

I agree. Remember, a Debian install can run on a very non-powerful system, complete with window manager and mini-desktop.

At any rate WinCE would be a nightmare.. no compatible GP2X software, any useful linux apps go out the window, different SDL implementation so on and so forth. NO thanks.... even the latest versions of WinCE (Windows Mobile) are still a sluggish poorly laid out mess.

I think Squidge was joking. At any rate, imagine the license costs

 

[javaJake]

Ouch my eyes.

Would it be possible for an administrator to create a Craiginator forum where people could discuss the different topics in separate threads? That way we don't have to read the ones which don't interest us.

I dunno... I kinda like the monster thread...


Please pleas please split this into a forum. It doesn't have to be separate - it can be hosted here, can't it? Then users don't have to flame ideas like this. (Why flame in the first place? It does nothing good besides rid yourself of anger and push that anger on others.)

 

[krosfyah]

The flaming is cos of the idiots doing the flaming, not cos of it being a single topic. I doubt making a separate forum will somehow increase the maturity of members.

 

[Vorporeal]

I agree. Remember, a Debian install can run on a very non-powerful system, complete with window manager and mini-desktop.

QFT.

There are plenty of very pretty and low-overhead window managers out there. We wouldn't have to resort to something as basic as fluxbox or similar to get it running smoothly. WMs like Enlightenment exist - they are very nice looking, and run very smoothly on low-end systems. I'm sure we could find a nice X11 WM that has visuals rivaling KDE/Gnome but doesn't use nearly as many system resources.

 

[Squidge]

Once the console exists *, no doubt there will be multiple forums dedicated to it. Until that time, all that will happen is people discussing what the console should have/etc, and people asking for confirmation of what it has/etc, can do, blah blah.

* - Notice I said "exists", not "purchasable". Difference being, devs can then at least post what they are doing, screenshots/movies/etc.

 

[atomicthumbs]

I agree. Remember, a Debian install can run on a very non-powerful system, complete with window manager and mini-desktop.

QFT.

There are plenty of very pretty and low-overhead window managers out there. We wouldn't have to resort to something as basic as fluxbox or similar to get it running smoothly. WMs like Enlightenment exist - they are very nice looking, and run very smoothly on low-end systems. I'm sure we could find a nice X11 WM that has visuals rivaling KDE/Gnome but doesn't use nearly as many system resources.


WMs that work well on low-end ARM systems that I've tried:

JWM

IceWM

ion2/ion3 (one of my favorites)

Matchbox?

Qtopia/OPIE?

There's also idesk, for adding a desktop to various WMs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDesk

 

[sam fisher]

The Craiginator must support NTFS as there are now plenty of open source drivers for it.

 

[Yrx]

Ugh. Once we get into software debates, this is going to get ridiculous. This is going to be open-source, correct? So if you don't like what it does, you can change it, correct? So go ahead and install Ubuntu and Debian and Slackware and Open2x if you want, but it should preferably be kept simple out of the box.

 

[Vorporeal]

The Craiginator must support NTFS as there are now plenty of open source drivers for it.

What would be the point of NTFS support? There is absolutely no need for it. Any expansion cards would be formatted with FAT/FAT32, as it is a pretty universally supported format.

Also, as Yrx said, everything can be added after you actually own one, it doesn't need to be supported out of the box.

 

[DaveC]

Ubuntu and Debian and Slackware ? I don't know or care about that. I just want to know if it will run SNES fullspeed with sound, if so then that is all that matters

 

[atomicthumbs]

The Craiginator must support NTFS as there are now plenty of open source drivers for it.

What would be the point of NTFS support? There is absolutely no need for it. Any expansion cards would be formatted with FAT/FAT32, as it is a pretty universally supported format.

Also, as Yrx said, everything can be added after you actually own one, it doesn't need to be supported out of the box.


Well, some people format their external hard drives with NTFS.

 

[Frogboy]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me what specifications have been decided on so far and what the time table for release you/they are shooting for? Thanks!

 

[Vorporeal]

The Craiginator must support NTFS as there are now plenty of open source drivers for it.

What would be the point of NTFS support? There is absolutely no need for it. Any expansion cards would be formatted with FAT/FAT32, as it is a pretty universally supported format.

Also, as Yrx said, everything can be added after you actually own one, it doesn't need to be supported out of the box.


Well, some people format their external hard drives with NTFS.


Ah, I keep forgetting that this can be used as a USB host. I worked for a while on the iPodLinux project, so I sorta stopped taking USB into account



Also, looking into some of the WM suggestions made by atomicthumbs, I really liked the look and feel of Qtopia/OPIE. They seemed like great launcher interfaces, and had a style that people used to XP/Vista/MacOSX would take to easily, as opposed to the very boxy styles of ion2/3 and fluxbox and similar, super-slim WMs.

 

[Yrx]

Ubuntu and Debian and Slackware ? I don't know or care about that. I just want to know if it will run SNES fullspeed with sound, if so then that is all that matters

lol, Thank you.

As for NTFS, that can be supported with software too, right? This is open source, people! Look at what the community has already done with GP2X. And with this, the possibilities are greatly expanded.

 

[atomicthumbs]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me what specifications have been decided on so far and what the time table for release you/they are shooting for? Thanks!

See my sig.

 

[Vorporeal]

Ubuntu and Debian and Slackware ? I don't know or care about that. I just want to know if it will run SNES fullspeed with sound, if so then that is all that matters

lol, Thank you.

As for NTFS, that can be supported with software too, right? This is open source, people! Look at what the community has already done with GP2X. And with this, the possibilities are greatly expanded.


NTFS requires kernel support. Any type of basic FS support requires support on a kernel level.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Ubuntu and Debian and Slackware ? I don't know or care about that. I just want to know if it will run SNES fullspeed with sound, if so then that is all that matters

lol, Thank you.

As for NTFS, that can be supported with software too, right? This is open source, people! Look at what the community has already done with GP2X. And with this, the possibilities are greatly expanded.


NTFS requires kernel support. Any type of basic FS support requires support on a kernel level.


No, FUSE (Filesystem in UserSpacE) is a framework for filesystem drivers in userspace.

In addition, there's the new userspace driver framework in the newest kernel.

 

[Exophase]

Ubuntu and Debian and Slackware ? I don't know or care about that. I just want to know if it will run SNES fullspeed with sound, if so then that is all that matters

Sorry everyone but I agree with DaveC too. The fuss people make over minute OS details is insane. I care about what software will be on it, how I go about running it is much less important.

 

[Vorporeal]

No, FUSE (Filesystem in UserSpacE) is a framework for filesystem drivers in userspace.

In addition, there's the new userspace driver framework in the newest kernel.

As far as I remember, FUSE used the kernel source in some way when I tried to set it up on my Linux install... In any case, built-in NTFS support would be much easier to include.

EDIT: Looking at some information about FUSE, it seems like you have to have support for FUSE in the kernel. http://fuse.sourceforge.net/fuse_structure.png