Pandora Software

[StealthBagel]

Parroting the 'accelerated SDL libraries' bit... out of the box the developer should have the ability to write software that fully takes advantage of all accelerated aspects of the SOC, especially graphics. The gp2x shipped with NO accelerated API available to users unless they wanted to do all their graphics in software or program to the bare metal with ASM, and no realistic ability to write cross-platform code for that reason... that was fairly crippling. This time developers should be given the opportunity to hit the ground running.

 

[Pickle]

Parroting the 'accelerated SDL libraries' bit... out of the box the developer should have the ability to write software that fully takes advantage of all accelerated aspects of the SOC, especially graphics. The gp2x shipped with NO accelerated API available to users unless they wanted to do all their graphics in software or program to the bare metal with ASM, and no realistic ability to write cross-platform code for that reason... that was fairly crippling. This time developers should be given the opportunity to hit the ground running.

You hit the head on why i started this thread. So things like Fenix, Allegro... i believe they should be ready to go the day Pandora goes live and most of them should be on the nand when pandora ships.

 

[rokdcasbah]

i think what a lot of the comments come down to is that, for people's desire to be able to use a package manager to come true, there will have to be a repository, with a little bit of oversight. i think this is something that the community could handle quite nicely, and if they do, the results could be spectacular.

with a simple package manager + gui frontend (that could show a screenshot if the image url is listed in the package info) you could window shop for games and install them without having to type much, if at all. if the package system is simple, then there's slightly more work involved in preparing a package instead of just zipping everything and letting the user sort it out, but not too much really. if the community is up to the task, this could be a very special thing, the ability to just add software via point & click, like the wii, except free!

if the package management system is ready & in place at launch then grabbing up to date versions of allegro, fenix, sdl, etc, should be no sweat.

 

[whiskthecat]

if the package management system is ready & in place at launch then grabbing up to date versions of allegro, fenix, sdl, etc, should be no sweat.

"apt-get update"

 

[Pickle]

if the package management system is ready & in place at launch then grabbing up to date versions of allegro, fenix, sdl, etc, should be no sweat.

"apt-get update"


[Beautifal Button]---->apt-get update

 

[magicman5421]

it will have aptitude as a package manager?

 

[Pickle]

it will have aptitude as a package manager?

i think its more of an assumption. Im more of a RPM guy, but i think apt is the preferred package manager on the debian side. Its what ubuntu uses.

 

[javaJake]

RPM is not as good as Debian's system. I've heard enough about RPM to stay away from it.

Edit: Whoops, my first sentence had a double meaning. Sorry about that.

 

[Pickle]

RPM is behind Debian's system. I've heard enough about RPM to stay away from it.

I guess I dont know the details or guts behind apt or rpm, but ive never run into issues running rpm's with opensuse.

Either way a package system is always a lot easier and less time confusing than directly from source.

 

[Karel Jansens]

RPM is behind Debian's system. I've heard enough about RPM to stay away from it.

Apparently not enough to know that RPM (or RedHat Package Manager, as it was originally known) has nothing to do with Debian.

Besides, RPM with a front-end (something like YUM perhaps) is, to an enduser, not that different from or less friendly than apt-get.

Me, I prefer apt-get. Because they did it first.

 

[javaJake]

Apparently not enough to know that RPM (or RedHat Package Manager, as it was originally known) has nothing to do with Debian.

No, I know RPM doesn't have anything to do with Debian's system, and that also explains why I have never used openSUSE, Fedora, or any of those other distributions.

Edit: Just re-read my post, and (heheheh) I didn't see the double meaning before. Fixed.

 

[Pickle]

Apparently not enough to know that RPM (or RedHat Package Manager, as it was originally known) has nothing to do with Debian.

No, I know RPM doesn't have anything to do with Debian's system, and that also explains why I have never used openSUSE, Fedora, or any of those other distributions.

Edit: Just re-read my post, and (heheheh) I didn't see the double meaning before. Fixed.


I think its lame to judge rpm when you never even used it. Ive never used apt or debian, but im not making assumption that it doesnt work.

If you look at distrowatch, both ubuntuu (debian) and opensuse(rpm) are in the top for user share. I take from that fact that the software management for both are satisfactory.

 

[Perky_Goth]

I don't think the package manager would matter much, it would manage a couple hundred packages with not many dependencies. Not having a ton of libraries to worry about should make it a lot easier to make packages of individual apps.

 

[Peter R]

I don't think the package manager would matter much, it would manage a couple hundred packages with not many dependencies. Not having a ton of libraries to worry about should make it a lot easier to make packages of individual apps.

Craigs planned package manager doesn't handle dependencies at all. It's just zipping up files ala the GP2x.

 

[danboid]

I don't think the package manager would matter much, it would manage a couple hundred packages with not many dependencies. Not having a ton of libraries to worry about should make it a lot easier to make packages of individual apps.

Craigs planned package manager doesn't handle dependencies at all. It's just zipping up files ala the GP2x.


Uh oh!!! Is this true??

Just using zips to distibute apps and games would be fine if the distro/rom that ships with the pandora is feature complete, rock-solid stable and includes all the important libs that people will require for producing games and apps, but we've only got 256MB of in-built flash mem to play with and what I've just outlined is nigh on impossible- remember this device is running Linux which gets updated every day!

If this was just be a 'GP3X' and wasn't aiming at being a general purpose device it would simplify things a lot as most games only need SDL, Allegro, glibc and few other common libs but Pandora is running X11 so now we will all need access to the latest GTK, QT, Lesstif, wxwidgets, Mesa, python and on and on- there are 1000's of libs out there that will be required if we want to do more than edit text on the P.

pdaXrom/pdaXii13, which is the most popular X11 based distro for the Zaurus, uses ipkg to manage packages which, as I understand it, is basically a stripped-down apt-get for embedded devices. I would HIGHLY recommend craig and co not try to re-invent the wheel or try and out-do the stringent quality and security checks already implemented by Debian. However many people end up buying and Pandora and then becoming an active developer and maintainer of its OS its never going to equal or surpass the number of people working to ensure Debian is the highest quality Free OS and to maintain its status as great wonder of the digital age that it is. Debian based OS = future proof computing experience and besides it seems most people on these forums are ex-Amigans turned Debian/Ubuntu users like me.

Here are the apps I'd recommend for Zaurus and Pandora users:

FILEMANAGER: rox - always the best choice on embedded devices. Leaves Thunar etc. choking on its dust.

BROWSER: hv3 or kazehakase - Firefox is too bloated for the P, although you could get away with it

MEDIA PLAYBACK: vlc (but I still use xmms)

WP: Ted - great lesstif text ed/wp. Use Abiword if you need to open .doc files, OOo writer too bloated for 128MB RAM.

SS: gnumeric - only serious choice for speadsheet - see comment on OOo writer

GRAPHICS: GIMP - gimp also features screen capture, as someone has already requested. feh makes a great fast + small viewer or gqview if you need thumbnails etc.

FILE TRANSFER: gftp will make it easy to ssh files from you PC to Pandora and vice versa

 

[atomicthumbs]

FILEMANAGER: rox - always the best choice on embedded devices. Leaves Thunar etc. choking on its dust.

BROWSER: hv3 or kazehakase - Firefox is too bloated for the P, although you could get away with it

MEDIA PLAYBACK: vlc (but I still use xmms)

WP: Ted - great lesstif text ed/wp. Use Abiword if you need to open .doc files, OOo writer too bloated for 128MB RAM.

SS: gnumeric - only serious choice for speadsheet - see comment on OOo writer

GRAPHICS: GIMP - gimp also features screen capture, as someone has already requested. feh makes a great fast + small viewer or gqview if you need thumbnails etc.

FILE TRANSFER: gftp will make it easy to ssh files from you PC to Pandora and vice versa

File manager: +1

Media playback: +1 vlc, but mplayer seems to be better for video and Amarok for audio (but Amarok is waay too bloated)

WP: Abiword +1, but I'd probably use Kate.

SS: why?

Graphics: I'd prefer Kolourpaint.

File transfer: I'd prefer Konqueror.


But then again, i'm a dedicated KDE guy.

 

[javaJake]

I think its lame to judge rpm when you never even used it.

Possibly. I figure if I hear bad reviews, might as well not get it and "learn" the hard way.

 

[Pickle]

I think its lame to judge rpm when you never even used it.

Possibly. I figure if I hear bad reviews, might as well not get it and "learn" the hard way.


The only negative ive had using yast and rpm mamnagment was the refresh speed and there was a problem wit they tried to use zenworks. Those problems has been fixed with version 10.3, refresh are much faster and on top of it a new feature one click install was started. The one click is very neat, say you want KDE4, just click a web interface and the process of getting the repos and packages is started automaticlly.

GIve it another shot, a lot has been improved in the recent months.

 

[Orkie]

The only negative ive had using yast and rpm mamnagment was the refresh speed and there was a problem wit they tried to use zenworks. Those problems has been fixed with version 10.3, refresh are much faster and on top of it a new feature one click install was started. The one click is very neat, say you want KDE4, just click a web interface and the process of getting the repos and packages is started automaticlly.

GIve it another shot, a lot has been improved in the recent months.

Many years ago, there wasn't really any decent equivalent of apt to use with RPMs. Since then, there has been yum and apt-rpm, which have closed the gap a lot. This is where all the bad press comes from - before these, RPMs could be a real pain to install.

 

[A_SN]

I think it should come with:

Web Browser - Something that works nicely
Media Player - Music, Movies, Images <-- Thanks Chip, I forgot that last one
Wordpad - Simple text editor
File manager - To move, rename, copy, and delete files
Chat - Basic chat client
Sound Recorder - Might come in handy

OBVIOUCE CAT SEZ OBVIOUCE SINGS