Should The Pandora Become An Ubuntu Partner?

[likwidoxigen]

Considering that Ubuntu doesn't even have an ARM package repository yet (it's all x86 and powerPC, near as I can tell) Angstrom has infinitely more packages than Ubuntu.
Every application that you see in the package repository will need to be recompiled for ARM and fully tested. They will not just magically work.
Angstrom, on the other hand,

WON'T MAGICALLY WORK!?!? SAY IT ISN'T SO!!

I do develop software, and have used OE/BitBake for building ipk's that work in Angstrom.

http://mojo.handhelds.org/ Check through the available packages. You're right though, I don't see any of the quakes.

Koen and co. are great and all, but they're small and not well funded especially when compared to the resources Ubuntu can throw at it.

 

[Chip]

wOOt! for Chip. You couldn't have picked a better PR guy IMO.
They could have, but it's too late now

I wanted to wait until I had everything lined up before I made any sort of announcement about my official involvement with the project. As usual, I got outed before I could get everything in order. Hopefully I will be giving you all some more details about my work with Openpandora and some (potential) interesting developments soon.

For now, I think it's safe to say that we're reaching out to Canonical now to offer our assistance with their Ubuntu on ARM project. Pandora is (as far as we know) going to be the first fully-functional, consumer-ready computer available with the Cortex A8 processor. We're hoping that Canonical will be able to benefit from using Pandoras as test machines. It should go without saying that Pandora users would benefit from having a full desktop disto designed specifically for their hardware. It's a win-win situation - not just for us, but for the entire open source ultraportable community.

However, before anybody gets too worked up about this, please remember that all we're doing is offering assistance. Canonical may not be interested. They may only want us to do some alpha / beta testing for them. Our involvement might not be that big a deal.

Even if our involvement is trivial, the Ubuntu on ARM project is not. Even if they are not interested in the Pandora, we are still interested in Ubuntu. One way or another, Canonical's efforts to professionally port their distro to ARM is going to benefit the Pandora community. So we've got that going for us.

 

[Sphinxter]

Oh hell no.

 

[mazza558]

wOOt! for Chip. You couldn't have picked a better PR guy IMO.
They could have, but it's too late now

I wanted to wait until I had everything lined up before I made any sort of announcement about my official involvement with the project. As usual, I got outed before I could get everything in order. Hopefully I will be giving you all some more details about my work with Openpandora and some (potential) interesting developments soon.

For now, I think it's safe to say that we're reaching out to Canonical now to offer our assistance with their Ubuntu on ARM project. Pandora is (as far as we know) going to be the first fully-functional, consumer-ready computer available with the Cortex A8 processor. We're hoping that Canonical will be able to benefit from using Pandoras as test machines. It should go without saying that Pandora users would benefit from having a full desktop disto designed specifically for their hardware. It's a win-win situation - not just for us, but for the entire open source ultraportable community.

However, before anybody gets too worked up about this, please remember that all we're doing is offering assistance. Canonical may not be interested. They may only want us to do some alpha / beta testing for them. Our involvement might not be that big a deal.

Even if our involvement is trivial, the Ubuntu on ARM project is not. Even if they are not interested in the Pandora, we are still interested in Ubuntu. One way or another, Canonical's efforts to professionally port their distro to ARM is going to benefit the Pandora community. So we've got that going for us.

Excellent news. I reckon once Adobe (and other companies) cotton on to ARM notebooks, we'll quickly see stuff like Flash 10 working.

Unless I'm mistaken, MS don't have a desktop OS that works with ARM, do they? 1-0 to us!

 

[TaG]

Unless I'm mistaken, MS don't have a desktop OS that works with ARM, do they? 1-0 to us!

No they thought WinCE was good enough. I expect them to develop Windows Mobile as the hardware becomes more powerful.

Congratulations Chip.

 

[mali]

@Chip
Thumbs up! A good speaker for a difficult job, a wise decision IMO

 

[johnjtaylor]

This approach is great stuff - nothing but good can come of it. Ubuntu pushing the ARM version will get us a "work-capable" distro very quickly and (as a few have said) we have Angstrom for the quick and dirty stuff. Plus, of course, once you have an ARM capable version it is relatively straightforward to port it between distros so there will be a lot of cross-fertilisation.

And to all the "my distro is better than your distro" folks - it's open source, we can have them all! This is why we're in this game. If it wasn't so open we wouldn't have any choice at all and we'd all be trying to jailbreak the thing just to run some "hello world" homebrew

 

[puppydee]

Not really up on my distro's or Ubuntu/Angstrom but I'm all for getting more people involved with developing software for the Pandora so i give my big thumbs up to anything that can come from all this.

 

[Xisiqomelir]

There's an official PR guy? Does this mean regular updates henceforth?

 

[Creature XL]

I didn't read all the post till now, but I can't hold one question back:

What if UBUNTU don't want US?

Look, they want publicity htemselfes. I don't know, there are maybe 1 million netbooks?
This si the number of units these guys see and think, hm.. we can get some publicity if we ship 100000 or 200000 units with ubuntu. Be it on any modern mobile phone or what ever. It might even be, they don't care about the pandora. Here is the thing to think about: The Pandora is in the media since month. Its on a few geek sites. I am pretty sure someone who is rsponsible for the ARM-Ubuntu-thing has read about the pandora. And? did anyone contacted the devs (as in craig, ED, and the rest of the team)? I think not!

However, the chance to contact them should be taken. But not before the pandora is rady. theonly thin gthey will say is: "Hm.. Pandora. nic eidea. If you have some ready show them to usand we maybe consider it." So, the earliest and latest poin tin time (for short, the only good point) is after the first part (600 or something) are ready, tested and shipped. Hold 3 or so back and send them to the Ubunto-ARM dudes.

P.S.:
Its hard. But i think I really do manage to look at this board only in two days (or almost) most discussion here are....
I wonder what most of you have done before the P existed (in the mind of the devs).

 

[daveski]

I just don't understand why. Why do people go all gaga over Ubuntu? If they do - around here, I must say Linux, in itself, has a lot more "name" to it than Ubuntu - But, given that they do, it would be stupid not to cash in on it. Still confuses me no end, though.

Ubuntu has just about got into the mainstream - and that is the point. Linux has been around for a while in many, many different formats / distros etc. but it means nothing to the average bod on the street. The name 'Ubuntu' has started to trickle into the minds of people other than enthusiasts and technical computer users / geeks. It does not have to be technically better like a Hoover does not have to be technically better than a Dyson, but still people say they are Hoovering whatever equipment they are actually using.

Ubuntu WILL be on the Pandora whether it is done by Canonical or by the community (either the Ubuntu community or the Pandora community). If Canonical are interested then this becomes a freebie for the Pandora devs and community as they will not have to do so much work, and as a plus point the Pandora gets caught up in the Ubuntu marketing/PR machine - benefiting from the multi-million dollar investment.

 

[conso]

I didn't read all the post till now, but I can't hold one question back:

What if UBUNTU don't want US?

Look, they want publicity htemselfes. I don't know, there are maybe 1 million netbooks?
This si the number of units these guys see and think, hm.. we can get some publicity if we ship 100000 or 200000 units with ubuntu. Be it on any modern mobile phone or what ever. It might even be, they don't care about the pandora. Here is the thing to think about: The Pandora is in the media since month. Its on a few geek sites. I am pretty sure someone who is rsponsible for the ARM-Ubuntu-thing has read about the pandora. And? did anyone contacted the devs (as in craig, ED, and the rest of the team)? I think not!

However, the chance to contact them should be taken. But not before the pandora is rady. theonly thin gthey will say is: "Hm.. Pandora. nic eidea. If you have some ready show them to usand we maybe consider it." So, the earliest and latest poin tin time (for short, the only good point) is after the first part (600 or something) are ready, tested and shipped. Hold 3 or so back and send them to the Ubunto-ARM dudes.

P.S.:
Its hard. But i think I really do manage to look at this board only in two days (or almost) most discussion here are....
I wonder what most of you have done before the P existed (in the mind of the devs).

just to remark: some of the ubuntu-devs involved in the ARM port already stated that they have preordered several pandoras. not sure if they contacted the dev's about a corporation.

 

[WizardStan]

I'm still concerned about maintaining library and kernel compatibility. Someone will have to do the work to make sure Pandora apps will be able to run under both environments.

 

[PoisonedV]

hey

Hah, I think alot of folks here would rather it without Ubunto, including myself (although I have no problem if there was an option with Ubunto), but there are a whole bunch of others not part of this community who might be interested in the Pandora with Ubunto. As I've already mentioned in my previous post, if it was available in retail stores to the general community then I think it would be wise to ship it with Ubunto, and have an option to buy online without Ubunto or something like this. Hmm, well as long as it stays open then you could just remove Ubunto, hehe.

So yea, this is not only about what "we", or "I" want, we must look outside the box, or Pandora's Box, hehe. edit: Maybe I should say we must not be scared to OpenPandora's Box, hehe.

edit
Again, I would like to mention that if you are sure you are interested then I think you should make contact regardless, that is sooner rather than later, as for reasons I mentioned in my previous post on page 3.

cyas


did anyone else see this gem of a post?

i just wonder how well, you know, the games would run on ubuntu with all that bloatware
I can see how this will benefit the pandora as a commercial venture by getting more publicity and more buyers- but i dont see how it would actually be practical to use, or even to attract developers
nevermind that, but how will compatibility be? I'm also kind of worried that less games will be getting developed specifically with the pandora in mind- something I appreciated about the gp2x was that games were made with its control scheme and 'features' (disadvantages) in mind

 

[valhalla]

An official version of ubuntu would be excellent for pandora-as-a-netbook, but not so much for the pandora-as-a-gaming-device: if they can manage to become partners but keep on with angstrom+gmenu on the flash and ubuntu on an SD that's great, otherwise i'm afraid that it could become an handicap.

A few different requirements for netbook and gaming devices:

on the netbook, you will want to keep updated to the latest releases of software, so the 6months release cycle is excellent, on the gaming device you'll want to keep a stable release that's compatible through the its whole life, to keep binary games compatible (and that means no major updates, just bugfixes and security)

on the netbook, you'll want a proper package management tool, and you want to add and remove applications as needed, but that takes quite some space; on a gaming device it is better to have a fixed system that every game can count on, and keep the actual games / applications separated

then of course, as soon as i get my pandora i will install some customized system on an SD, so whatever they may decide won't hurt much my usage; what i'm worried about are less geeky users that will want it to just work.

 

[mali]

More publicity and more devices out there will attract more game-developers from other systems, if they think it's worth it. And when they see the extreme gaming friendly design, they will freak out and push their games through to us. You can quote me on that :lol:

 

[Chip]

What I don't think a lot of people are understanding in this thread is that Ubuntu is just going to be another option for the Pandora.

Canonical does not plan to release their version of Ubuntu for ARM until well into next year, but even if it was available today, it still wouldn't ship on the Pandora. We're giving you a very simple menu system for selecting applications, and anything you want to add beyond that is entirely your decision.

Ubuntu is great for some people, but not for all. The good news is that everybody will be able to make that decision for themselves. There is no such thing as "Too many options."

 

[Pleng]

What I don't think a lot of people are understanding in this thread is that Ubuntu is just going to be another option for the Pandora.

Canonical does not plan to release their version of Ubuntu for ARM until well into next year, but even if it was available today, it still wouldn't ship on the Pandora. We're giving you a very simple menu system for selecting applications, and anything you want to add beyond that is entirely your decision.

Ubuntu is great for some people, but not for all. The good news is that everybody will be able to make that decision for themselves. There is no such thing as "Too many options."



It's quite amusing really. 'Back in the day' you'd install the 'full' OS on your PC's hard disk and load up all the drivers and TSRs you would need for a full day's productivity in your config.sys and autoexec.bat. You'd create a boot-disk for a more streamlined OS to get the maximum out of your computer. The Pandora is a mirror of the old times, you'll have a simple system installed on the unit to get the most out of the hardware, and you'll need a boot-disk to load up a full OS

 

[Bosbeetle]

What I don't think a lot of people are understanding in this thread is that Ubuntu is just going to be another option for the Pandora.

Canonical does not plan to release their version of Ubuntu for ARM until well into next year, but even if it was available today, it still wouldn't ship on the Pandora. We're giving you a very simple menu system for selecting applications, and anything you want to add beyond that is entirely your decision.

Ubuntu is great for some people, but not for all. The good news is that everybody will be able to make that decision for themselves. There is no such thing as "Too many options."



It's quite amusing really. 'Back in the day' you'd install the 'full' OS on your PC's hard disk and load up all the drivers and TSRs you would need for a full day's productivity in your config.sys and autoexec.bat. You'd create a boot-disk for a more streamlined OS to get the maximum out of your computer. The Pandora is a mirror of the old times, you'll have a simple system installed on the unit to get the most out of the hardware, and you'll need a boot-disk to load up a full OS



Thats a nice analogy, I remember having several bootdisks for different games in MS-DOS

 

[mali]

And having a boot manager you don't even need to swap disks nowadays
Just a few seconds away from the appropriate config.