Repository Or Manual Downloads?

[huufarted]

Now, I'm not a C programmer and I haven't done a lot of programming or installing on the Linux side, but how does that work? A few questions relating to this:

Will there be an official repository for the Pandora and updates on it?

As far as repositories go, I gather it's a way to have a central place to find updates for programs that reside on that repository.

How does that work? I use an iPod Touch and the repositories there are divided into categories and such so you can see which 'games' and which 'utilities' are there and what versions they are. If you tap it, it installs to the appropriate places from that repository.

 

[Kyo]

I think it will be just manual download through the file archive, but this is just a guess

 

[huufarted]

I think it will be just manual download through the file archive, but this is just a guess

Ok, so what do you mean by file archive? Is it just going to be a list of programs on a web page or will the Pandora be able to reference it automatically similar to how a repository is?

Then again, if it referenced it auto, that would MAKE it a repository wouldn't it?

 

[Squidge]

At the moment, it's currently manual download. I'd be suprised if this was still the case in November however.

 

[Kyo]

The pandora file archive. it's a website with all the pandoras downloads. Chip posted a link somewhere.

 

[sebt3]

The pandora file archive. it's a website with all the pandoras downloads. Chip posted a link somewhere.

which is : http://archive.openpandora.org/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi

 

[hotblack]

Getting together a user friendly app dowloader/installer and a cli package manager would be high priorities for me.

Anything to make the user experience better and help ensure solid compatibility and a 'known' set of libraries etc to work against is A Good Thing™.

 

[Lorkile]

hotblack, I like how you think.

I'm none too familiar with this whole community or even Linux (both of which I've been spending more time familiarizing myself with while I have time), but I do know the PSP homebrew community and wish there was more of a togetherness about it.

Looks like even getting firmware updates these days isn't as easy as it once was, but that could just be because the main website isn't in English anymore.

 

[benjymous]

Has anyone played with any Linux Live distributions recently?

For example Slax - you can burn a roughly 200mb iso onto a CD for a bootable linux distro, but if you visit the modules page whilst running slax, you can pick a module (e.g. Firefox) that's not included on the CD, and click "activate" - this automatically downloads and installs it in an almost invisible fashion (click link - wait a few seconds - program is installed)

Something like that would be great on the Pandora

 

[scrag_10]

does it just install it on the ram too?
also amazed it doesn't come with FF.

 

[benjymous]

does it just install it on the ram too?
also amazed it doesn't come with FF.

Yeah, if you're running of CD it just installs to RAM (so it's lost if you reboot and restart)

I think you get a proper install if you're running off a USB flash drive, though.

It uses KDE, which has a pretty powerful browser built-in, so I guess they omit FF by default to keep the size down.

 

[Chip]

Anything to make the user experience better and help ensure solid compatibility and a 'known' set of libraries etc to work against is A Good Thing™.

Believe it or not, you're not the first to realize that

 

[Sphinxter]

Having difficulty picturing apt working with a multiple of removable media.

 

[verm71]

Anything to make the user experience better and help ensure solid compatibility and a 'known' set of libraries etc to work against is A Good Thing™.

Believe it or not, you're not the first to realize that

I've never been very lucky at determining, downloading and compiling dependencies, unless the package does it for me. I've never been able to successfully compile anything on my Ubuntu/Mediatomb box. Everything on that box came from the package manager.

I hope there won't be much need for compiling stuff (why would there be? The architecture is a known quantity, therefore binaries should be portable, no?) and things like python-based games will work out of the box (not to mention having an easy-to-install-or-upgrade python interpreter/compiler ready to go).

I don't mind extracting archives with binaries into a folder of an SD card. But as soon as compiler command line switches come up, my eyes glaze over unless they're well-documented.

Too many years of Visual Studio and .Net Framework have turned my brain to mush.

 

[BazaarIdea]

Getting together a user friendly app dowloader/installer and a cli package manager would be high priorities for me.

I agree.
The app downloader should automatically fetch screenshots to help the user make an informed judgment before downloading/installing. AFAIK there are no conventional package managers that facilitate screenshots (yet), but, if you have ever used the HappyPenguin web site, you really do appreciate the screenshots.

How to economize the Panny's fixed and removable (SD) storage area for warehousing the dependencies -- will vary by users preference. What happens when the fixed storage space gets exhausted ? That is a rather interesting problem and I'm sure someone here may already have figured it out.

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

Eh, a repo would be nice, but manual installs are just fine as well. I think that if we have self-updating software now that we've got WiFi in a handheld, it'll work out just as well as a centralized repository, at least initially.

 

[ashdjones]

By complete accident today I came across this site:

*beep*

I'd imagine most of the regulars here know about this, but i'm not part of the scene so I was pleasantly suprised!

I wonder if there will be a Pandora tracker?

 

[atomicthumbs]

By complete accident today I came across this site:

*beep*

I'd imagine most of the regulars here know about this, but i'm not part of the scene so I was pleasantly suprised!

I wonder if there will be a Pandora tracker?

Don't link to it.

 

[anexanhume]

I know the site can't be repeated, but what type of site was it? I know ROM sites are off limits, but that didn't seem to fit the context of his post.

 

[ashdjones]

My mistake. No more talking about Fight Club. Sorry!

I know the site can't be repeated, but what type of site was it? I know ROM sites are off limits, but that didn't seem to fit the context of his post.

Yeah it did have some roms, but it also had collections of GP2X software arranged into SD card-size collections.