Pandora doesnt look as good as i expected !


paddy said:
its resorces manager doesnt come close to windows,with this i mean
it runs great for 20 mins then slows to a crawl.
Wow.

Can't read you anymore with such talk :lol:

My linux (well, all my pc are linux…) PC works for monthes without ANY slowdown.
 
I suppose you could always use a nes pad with a pad converter through the usb port, or is that not the point?
 
lingenfr said:
Where is Chip when we need him? Close the thread and ban the troll.
Don't bother Chip right now, he's devising a new 3-years-long plan for destroying gp32x.de. :wink:

Kidding.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Man is this a storm in a teacup hehe ,now i do agree that the DPad thing is personal
taste/opinion and what I said was rather harsh to say the least in regards to the job
Craig is doing i must apologise ,sorry Craig. I do beleve the nintendo trademark
DPad is superior to any other and there must be a reason why nintendo use it at
every given opertunity without change and please don't get me wrong as I am not
a Nintendo fan at all,but further to this is that i just don't like the look of the
Pandora DPad and i think it will fail but i can be proven wrong yes ?

As far as my experience of Linux goes,i am at a loss when ever i use Linux plain
and simple,i think there are many many great things about Linux but i really
don't like its media capabilities,yes it can play lots of media files and are supported
but to me it doesn't run them very well and i have read all over the Internet that
this is true of many many Linux users,but hey when you actually speak to a hardened
linux user about this you get reply s blaming your hardware or lack of knowledge.

I am trying to imagine the pandora running stuff via linux,as a desktop and just
cant understand why the pandora,much less powerfull than many eepc's/notebooks
will run games,apps and emulators faster than a notebook that is twice as powerful
using the same emulator ? and at the same time in My experience running those
same emulators within Linux desktop on a notebook is still pretty slow,for instance
the dell mini running ubuntu,snes,megadrive,gba and n64 is really quite slow and
i dont think you can blame the dell mini when those emulators run fine within
windows.

anyway sorry to all i have offended but yeah, I wish i was on the panda team
as I think i would have changed a few things but i am sure it will still be a beautiful
device,all the best to the Pandora team.

Paddy
 
paddy said:
Man is this a storm in a teacup hehe ,now i do agree that the DPad thing is personal
taste/opinion and what I said was rather harsh to say the least in regards to the job
Craig is doing i must apologise ,sorry Craig. I do beleve the nintendo trademark
DPad is superior to any other and there must be a reason why nintendo use it at
every given opertunity without change and please don't get me wrong as I am not
a Nintendo fan at all,but further to this is that i just don't like the look of the
Pandora DPad and i think it will fail but i can be proven wrong yes ? [1]

As far as my experience of Linux goes,i am at a loss when ever i use Linux plain
and simple,i think there are many many great things about Linux but i really
don't like its media capabilities,yes it can play lots of media files and are supported
but to me it doesn't run them very well and i have read all over the Internet that
this is true of many many Linux users,but hey when you actually speak to a hardened
linux user about this you get reply s blaming your hardware or lack of knowledge. [2]

[3]I am trying to imagine the pandora running stuff via linux,as a desktop and just
cant understand why the pandora,much less powerfull than many eepc's/notebooks
will run games,apps and emulators faster than a notebook that is twice as powerful
using the same emulator ? and at the same time in My experience running those
same emulators within Linux desktop on a notebook is still pretty slow,for instance
the dell mini running ubuntu,snes,megadrive,gba and n64 is really quite slow and
i dont think you can blame the dell mini when those emulators run fine within
windows.

[4]anyway sorry to all i have offended but yeah, I wish i was on the panda team
as I think i would have changed a few things but i am sure it will still be a beautiful
device,all the best to the Pandora team.

Paddy
(I marked a few spots in your text for my comments)

[1] Your line of thought seems valid, yes. However, as you haven't felt the Pandora D-Pad yet, you shouldn't say that anything is superior to it since the Pandora developers might have developed something even better.

[2] It's all about knowledge... You think that things are easier in Windows® because you are used to Windows®. In Windows®, you download a codec pack and bam, you can play all kinds of media formats. In Linux, or specifically Ubuntu, you install a "package" (aka a piece of software) called "ubuntu-restricted-extras" and you can play all media formats known to man without any hassle. It's equally "difficult", and if you are used to the Linux way of doing things, you would see that its way isn't difficult at all.
I, who am a Linux user primarily, find it very strange that I have to DOWNLOAD DRIVERS in Windows® for example.
In Linux all my drivers are just there and I don't have to care about them. In Windows®, I need to search through the whole Internet just to find a weird driver for my hardware... That's a bit unnecessary, don't you think?

BTW (and I'm talking from my own experience here), Linux in general has far better media format support than bare Windows® (not counting the software packages you can buy for $10 that give you access to certain proprietary codecs), because in Linux you have everything you need for free and most of the time in one single package, so you don't have to comb through the web to find all the codecs you need. And ffmpeg (a very good video converter in Linux) supports all the formats I've ever heard of, and I haven't heard of anything similar on the Windows® side.

[3] First of all, this is an ARM device we're talking about, which means that it isn't "worse" than something else just because it's clocks are lower. Have you ever seen an ARM device in action? You can do astounding things with this kind of hardware!
Secondly, I've run very many benchmarks in my life, and they have generally shown that you get more "instructions per seconds" (aka faster code execution) in almost all cases on the Linux platform. This means that the Linux platform just is faster than the Windows® platform, probably because it's more down-to-the-metal, and doesn't use as much boilerplate as Windows®. For example, in Windows® the kernel interface happens through a DLL (kernel32.dll) which means that all your instructions become slower because of one extra layer between the kernel and you, while in Linux you "call the kernel API directly" (in lack of a better expression) making your code execute faster.
You can't compare any other experience you have had with Linux to the Linux experience you'll have with this device, because this device was specifically built and optimized for the Linux platform, and all the applications that are going to run on it are being handcrafted and optimized for the job as we speak. You can probably expect some astounding performance from this little device, especially in combination with the ARM platform.

[4] I'm interested to hear: what would you have changed? Remember that this device has to have
1. good development support with a wide variety of APIs and SDKs available for the developers that are easy to use, so that we can see good games for the platform without having to have professionals hired to do that job for us
2. a MODERN platform that uses the latest technology etc so as to interest homebrew people and new customers who want to test exciting new stuff
3. support for customizing the device in any way you want (software-wise).

Windows and the x86-platform wouldn't be able to provide this because:
1. there are many APIs and SDKs available for Windows®, but many of them are difficult to use, and are not as modern as the equivalents on the Linux side, and since the source for them generally isn't available, this becomes a problem.
2. the Windows® platform is extremely old, carries around old bugs and loads of problems with it, doesn't evolve very rapidly (a new Windows® version comes out every 6 years while a Linux release happens every 6 months).
3. well, Windows is closed source, and you can't really customize your software in Windows: everyone uses the same boring GUIs, the same boring applications with the same boring settings. No thanks.
 
Every Pandora will have the same hardware, the user doesn't have to worry about driver and configuration problems that most new Linux users run into. As said above, many packages will be made specifically for the Pandora, and should run easily and flawlessly. With the PND and pxml systems, just dragging and dropping the files onto an SD card will have the application show up in a menu on the Pandora, ready to be run.
 
@paddy: You've brought about an interesting conversation. However, I think you need to revisit some lessons regarding run-on-sentences and how they might make you appear to others.


fischju said:
Every Pandora will have the same hardware, the user doesn't have to worry about driver and configuration problems that most new Linux users run into. As said above, many packages will be made specifically for the Pandora, and should run easily and flawlessly. With the PND and pxml systems, just dragging and dropping the files onto an SD card will have the application show up in a menu on the Pandora, ready to be run.

+1

That's exactly it. Developers get to pound away and exchange tricks and methods for juicing as much possible out of a single static hardware configuration.
 
also alot of the linux game emulators arent specifically made for netbooks, or the atom processor. Hence why itll run slow. As its not optimised a standard device architechture will allow developers to squeeze that extra juice out
 
dflemstr youre just... wrong. but i dont feel like arguing so ill just leave it at that.

the pandora is becoming a fakkin RELIGON :D
 
hansfranz said:
dflemstr youre just... wrong. but i dont feel like arguing so ill just leave it at that.

the pandora is becoming a fakkin RELIGON :D
If you don't want to argue, a good way of reaching your goal isn't to state that someone else is wrong.

However, I don't really care. I have always found that rational thinking is the only way to approach a problem, because that's the only method of deduction that "works" in all cases.
If you say "No, you are wrong because I am right!", you aren't thinking rationally and thus don't deserve to be part of any discussion, because you wouldn't possibly be able to contribute with something worthwhile since your statements aren't valid.

I would say that it's YOU who are religious or at least a fanatic, since you don't want to argue about what you think, therefore have a closed mind and aren't open for new ideas. If you would at least be willing to discuss certain things and compare pros and cons, then you could form a valid opinion about something, and might even gain our respect.

You cannot have a "valid" opinion without having some arguments backing it up.
You can claim anything: That the sun is green, that Santa Claus exists, that emulators run better on Windows, without exception, in all cases. However, without arguments backing up your statement, it simply is false and/or invalid, because it doesn't fit into the consensus network of truths.

BTW: This is exactly how religious people argue, which is why they never win any argument (and generally speak rational untruths):
"Yeah, God exists." - "How do you know he exists?"
"Well, the Bible says so, and the Bible must be right..." - "And why should the Bible be right?"
"Because the Bible is the word of God, so it must be true." - "And why would the word of God be true?"
"Because God exists" etc
 
Pictures and speculation about the Pandora paint it as an "in-between" between a portable game console and a netbook, while this isn't true at all. The pandora when looked at in terms of form factor and capability, is essentially a PSP-esque system with more powerful hardware and a keyboard. It is altogether a different class of machine from netbooks, even at the most rudimentary level -processor architecture.
The fact that the Pandora uses an ARM processor instead of an x86 processor indicates that the Pandora is NOT intended to replace or function remotely near the capabilities of a PC or netbook style derivative. Instead of general purpose computing, the Pandora is aimed towards developing a similar 'scene' to that of the PSP or GP2x where numerous open-source developers code various emulators, applications, media players, and other tools. This scene, which is far from any sense of maturity cannot be compared to the software library available to x86 Windows-based machines. Games that were mentioned such as Half-Life and Diablo, were written and compiled for an entirely DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURE and MACHINE and would have to be essentially REWRITTEN to work on the Pandora. That said, it's completely unrealistic to expect that kind of program to be running or even be suitable for the Pandora.
Emulators for VIDEO GAME CONSOLES, that use a much more similar architecture at least in the sense that they are RISC instead of CISC, are much more feasible, and I am confident that the aforementioned N64 and emulators of a similar class will eventually run flawlessly on the Pandora.
Keep in mind that we are talking about a device roughly the size of a Nintendo DS. I've owned an EEE PC, and the DS, and right from the form factor, I can tell you that I could never use one device to replace the other, as usability would be down the toilet -both ways.
 
dflemstr said:
[2]BTW (and I'm talking from my own experience here), Linux in general has far better media format support than bare Windows® (not counting the software packages you can buy for $10 that give you access to certain proprietary codecs), because in Linux you have everything you need for free and most of the time in one single package, so you don't have to comb through the web to find all the codecs you need. And ffmpeg (a very good video converter in Linux) supports all the formats I've ever heard of, and I haven't heard of anything similar on the Windows® side.
Just wanted to point out - the klite codec pack is an equivalent; it plays just about anything, and it's a single package for Windows. With the klite codec mega pack, it can install whatever media player you want, too.

ffmpeg is also available on Windows. There's also ffdshow, the awesome decodes-everything codec. :D
 
Kramy said:
dflemstr said:
[2]BTW (and I'm talking from my own experience here), Linux in general has far better media format support than bare Windows® (not counting the software packages you can buy for $10 that give you access to certain proprietary codecs), because in Linux you have everything you need for free and most of the time in one single package, so you don't have to comb through the web to find all the codecs you need. And ffmpeg (a very good video converter in Linux) supports all the formats I've ever heard of, and I haven't heard of anything similar on the Windows® side.
Just wanted to point out - the klite codec pack is an equivalent; it plays just about anything, and it's a single package for Windows. With the klite codec mega pack, it can install whatever media player you want, too.

ffmpeg is also available on Windows. There's also ffdshow, the awesome decodes-everything codec. :D
I think the point there is that if you need codecs or something else you just say "Hey Synaptic (or whatever package manager) I need codecs so go get those and install 'em yourself" and you don't need to surf the web looking for some codec pack's installer and click "Next" a dozen of times, Synaptic will do that work for you.
 
latiosu said:
Kramy said:
dflemstr said:
[2]BTW (and I'm talking from my own experience here), Linux in general has far better media format support than bare Windows® (not counting the software packages you can buy for $10 that give you access to certain proprietary codecs), because in Linux you have everything you need for free and most of the time in one single package, so you don't have to comb through the web to find all the codecs you need. And ffmpeg (a very good video converter in Linux) supports all the formats I've ever heard of, and I haven't heard of anything similar on the Windows® side.
Just wanted to point out - the klite codec pack is an equivalent; it plays just about anything, and it's a single package for Windows. With the klite codec mega pack, it can install whatever media player you want, too.

ffmpeg is also available on Windows. There's also ffdshow, the awesome decodes-everything codec. :D
I think the point there is that if you need codecs or something else you just say "Hey Synaptic (or whatever package manager) I need codecs so go get those and install 'em yourself" and you don't need to surf the web looking for some codec pack's installer and click "Next" a dozen of times, Synaptic will do that work for you.
Also, klite is illegal in many countries (so is gstreamer-plugins-ugly but still; on Linux you at least have the option to install "legal" codecs only, while in klite you get some illegal ones too, without the choice to exclude the illegal ones (you can uncheck some codecs at installation but you can't tell which ones are illegal and which aren't))
And to add to the sease of use experience on Linux: In Fedora, I double-click on a MP3 and if I don't have a codec, it asks me "This media file cannot be played. Do you want to download codec blablabla to be ale to play it?" or similar. I press OK and I get the codec in 1 minute. This isn't possible on Windows (It's not possible on Ubuntu, either, but Ubuntu has always been a little "slow")
 
@dflemstr some people have different beliefs than you and just because they aren't the most rational blokes and aren't well studied enough to give you a run for your money in an argument doesn't mean you should dismiss them as crackpots. I believe the world (errr cosmos multiverse whatever..) was created with the appearance of age my merits as a logical person are hardly enough to do justice to a more indepth explination i merely state "you should know better shame shame (wags finger)" sure you got free speech but don't abuse it for instance I happen to have good friends that are atheist I don't let my beliefs turn me into a butt head

now off my high horse ;-)


1. oh an BTW I think the pandora looks great and i think most would agree
2. Quake3 wasn't render natively proformace losses expected duurhh
3. ARM ~2 watts iirc Intel Atom ~20 + watts iirc (counting the chipset and ram and all which is integrated on arm)
4. Debian Lenny runs updatedb (complete file index) sometime after boot makes proformace suck for a little while.. I bet ubuntu does similar
5. I for DVD support you kinda have to know to install libdvdcss and friends
6. for the rest VLC and mplayer usually got it covered

/rant yay XD
 
dflemstr said:
(It's not possible on Ubuntu, either, but Ubuntu has always been a little "slow")
Maybe you are saying it does this from the file manager in Fedora. Ubuntu does not do that, but a number of the applications do.
 
Well lets face it, what can a netbook do that pandora can't?

Trevsweb said:
I scrapped my plans of a netbook for the pandora recently, I have thought about it for ages and i know it'll be the best choice in the end.

The fact that pandora developers are there to talk to and that the product lifecycle is about 4 years your going to get more support from the device in terms of firmware fixes and additional plugins that are device specific where as if you buy an eeepc a new one will already have been announced with a better something....

netbooks are good but ten a penny. This UMPC is superior in more ways other than not running windows.
I really think the pandora can become something special.
 
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