Overview of SoC options

[Granitehead]

I would be perfectly happy with 1 plain SDHC slot, 1 SDIO slot, and an eMMC slot on the inside for the OS.

-God Ginrai

Well that's aready one more than we have now, so you seem to agree that at least one more would be good.

 

[slaeshjag]

The eMMC slot will most likely not be a slot though. ED has stated it'll be just eMMC NAND on board.

 

[Granitehead]

The eMMC slot will most likely not be a slot though. ED has stated it'll be just eMMC NAND on board.

*dislike this*

Why not at least put a micro SD slot there, even if you need to open the Pyra to switch the card?

 

[slaeshjag]

An eMMC slot, I could see why if there was any readily available modules for it. There isn't. Afaik, there's no such thing as a eMMCslot. But connecting a TF slot to an eMMC interface is just plain f-ing stupid. Better use the last remaining SD interface for that, if it isn't needed by some internal hardware.

 

[Granitehead]

I didn't mean for the eMMC slot, but for exchangeable internal memory in general. Or does eMMC have that many advantages? Is it (a lot) faster than SDs?

 

[slaeshjag]

The eMMC interface allows for 2x faster communication than the SD interface does. But that's mainly irrelevant, the big point is going to be that eMMC flash in general is much faster than the TF cards you'll find around.

 

[Granitehead]

Well, then I guess if it's big enough it's okay. But I wouldn't in any case go for anything less than 16GB, 64GB would be much better.

 

[zonova]

WHy would it need to be big? Isn't the eMMC just for the operating system stuff?

 

[God Ginrai]

Because a lot of people want to install utilities and such from the repo, which would go on the system, not the SD cards.

Honestly, if we're going to be doing more writing to the NAND than we do on the Pandora, I'd prefer the eMMC to use a micro SD for the OS, so I can replace it to upgrade the amount of space or if it goes bad.

-God Ginrai

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Nah, I would use the fast eMMc/NAND for the OS because the faster it boost the better for me.  All other stuff I would put it on the SD cards just like those PND system now.  They go on the SD card and not the NAND.

 

[Granitehead]

It's impossible to get a real working system only with PNDs (unless they are improved a lot). Their only real purpose is working around the issue of not enough internal storage for all of them.

Everything else has been solved in better ways lots of times by the big distros. In my opinion we should have a real uncrippled Linux by default (no, the Pandoras Linux isn't uncrippled), that is, a big distro and enough space to actually use it.

 

[rohezal]

The pnd is a great way to move programs and configs around. Very easy, copy your sd card and give it your friend with a slow internet connection. No complicated stuff, you can even download the pnd and it just works.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

I would imagine PYRA would be able to run Super Zaxxon as well as any full linux distro.  Super Zaxxon would come default just as it is now with Pandora.  Users, then on their own, install whatever distro they want, or stick with Super Zaxxon.

 

[God Ginrai]

I would imagine PYRA would be able to run Super Zaxxon as well as any full linux distro.  Super Zaxxon would come default just as it is now with Pandora.  Users, then on their own, install whatever distro they want, or stick with Super Zaxxon.

EvilDragon has already said that he's interested in using Debian, so no SZ. Also, SuperZaxxon would be a bad idea anyways, seeing as how it's difficult to build the image.

-God Ginrai

 

[Askarus]

I would go for 32 GB eMMC.

16 seems not enough for me if you want a big distro and some packages installed and still store some stuff in the home folder.

But 32 is far enough then.

For data the SD-cards are fine as well.

EDIT:

Also if 16GB might be enough I would like to have some more space to install a dual boot on my NAND.

I very much dislike booting from SD as it's slow.

At least Slackware/SOLEIL on my Nand as well would be great for me.

Or even a full Android.

 

[EvilDragon]

What stuff do you plan to install into your internal memory?
Even my desktop Linux machine doesn't need more than 15GB for the stuff I need... games should stay on SD Card, so how many tools and standard applications do you need?

Memory and storage are some of the most expensive parts... using 64GB would probabbly increase the end price by 60 EUR compared to 16GB...

 

[ekianjo]

What stuff do you plan to install into your internal memory? Even my desktop Linux machine doesn't need more than 15GB for the stuff I need... games should stay on SD Card, so how many tools and standard applications do you need? Memory and storage are some of the most expensive parts... using 64GB would probabbly increase the end price by 60 EUR compared to 16GB...

Agree, 16Gb is plenty for a Linux distro, and after that, everything can be extended in a separate SD Card. 

 

[thatgui]

What stuff do you plan to install into your internal memory? Even my desktop Linux machine doesn't need more than 15GB for the stuff I need... games should stay on SD Card, so how many tools and standard applications do you need? Memory and storage are some of the most expensive parts... using 64GB would probabbly increase the end price by 60 EUR compared to 16GB...

64GB sure ist overkill, but what about 32GB ? With probably more than one OS available, and more "full blown" OSes possible why not install certain games or applications directly via the repo of that certain distro ? There probably will still be a lot of things that need a pnd. But in my humble opinion it makes more sense to put things like Libreoffice on the nand as it makes integration in the rest of the OS easier and special customisations to accomodate them to the Pyra are not very likely to be made.

 

[slaeshjag]

I have comfortably used Debian on a 4 GB / partition, up until 2011. If you need 32+ GB internally, you're doing something wrong

I'm currently using 13 GB on my laptops /, but that's because I got a lot of crap like 0AD, half a dozen cross compiling toolchains, etc. installed...

 

[rohezal]

Well maybe the price for internal flash memory will go down until pyra is released, so we can go for 32 GB? If not I am fine with 16 GB. I am using less then 6 GB for my development Lubuntu with lots of big packages like QT-dev.