Should The Pandora Become An Ubuntu Partner?

[Svartalf]

It's great that you've just gotten into the whole OE/Bitbake/MTN/Angstrom scene and are building what's already been done before... But really, which apps have you ACTUALLY ported over? Which libraries?

1) Libraries typically don't need "porting" over if they reside on Linux- what does need resolving is aligned write problems (With properly written code, you don't have these anyhow- unaligned writes sap performance on x86 and they pretty much crash out of the gate on other architechtures...), endianness issues, and sometimes FP issues when there's no hardware FP available. Of which, none of these largely need to be done on this platform.

2) To my recollection, I've done a port project for OpenPlay to PowerPC, which is pretty radically different than x86. There's others, but with as much as I've done over the years, I've kind of lost track.

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It's one thing to develop a new arm application, it's another to port over an x86 one then dedicate your time to maintaining the patches.


Considering that I've been doing Linux stuff since the .9x kernels, did Alpha stuff, and work with PPC, ARM, and MIPS binaries for Linux and have done so for nearly a decade now...

(By the by... I've also done commercially supported game development on the Linux platform... Go look up Ballistics for Linux on MobyGames... You'll find the name "Frank Earl" there...that's me...)

Sigh...I'm actually getting a bit tired of trying to explain to people just what we've got in hand here. And if you think you need hand-holding, Ubuntu isn't going to help you any better on that score than I or any of the other volunteer or main devs will on this. Ubuntu is sure as HELL not going to help us make Ogre work on Pandora. Same goes for any of the games. It's not their space.

Keep in mind, folks, I'm not against this. What I want people to clearly understand is what they're bringing to the table- and it's largely NOT what people keep repeating over and over again in this and several other threads.

 

[likwidoxigen]

1) Libraries typically don't need "porting" over if they reside on Linux- what does need resolving is aligned write problems (With properly written code, you don't have these anyhow- unaligned writes sap performance on x86 and they pretty much crash out of the gate on other architechtures...), endianness issues, and sometimes FP issues when there's no hardware FP available. Of which, none of these largely need to be done on this platform.

Fair enough on those points.

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2) To my recollection, I've done a port project for OpenPlay to PowerPC, which is pretty radically different than x86. There's others, but with as much as I've done over the years, I've kind of lost track.


Well, thank heavens you at least have experience (a hell of a lot of practical experience to boot), it makes explaining my point much easier.

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(By the by... I've also done commercially supported game development on the Linux platform... Go look up Ballistics for Linux on MobyGames... You'll find the name "Frank Earl" there...that's me...)


That's pretty sweet.

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Sigh...I'm actually getting a bit tired of trying to explain to people just what we've got in hand here. And if you think you need hand-holding, Ubuntu isn't going to help you any better on that score than I or any of the other volunteer or main devs will on this. Ubuntu is sure as HELL not going to help us make Ogre work on Pandora. Same goes for any of the games. It's not their space.


I never once mentioned hand holding, because you're right it's not an issue. And I never said that ubuntu would help you make the packages work, they sort of will but only really in comparison to how things are done with OE/Bitbake.


OE/Bitbake is a grab source and patch based system. Under Ubuntu it would be an actual arm codebase that gets updated while not a terribly important distinction it's important for the next point. For a whole host of "standard" packages (who knows what they decide on) there will be Ubuntu supported/financed devs keeping them updated and in line so that people like you can get Ogre ported as well as work on whole new project that fill out what would be in the Universe/Multiverse repos while not having to worry about the basics.

 

[jellmoo]

Ubuntu is popular because of it's ease of use, and the fact that it is very "newbie friendly". Drivers are readily available, peripherals are configured for you, codecs are simple to find.

Pandora, however, has one set of hardware. It also has a strong community to help out. The main advantages of Ubuntu are pretty much not needed for Pandora.

i really don't understand this kind of argument. i personally couldn't care less about usability and newbie-friendlyness. the one thing that counts and that angstrom just doensn't have is the apt-repositories ubuntu inherited from debian. the moment you show me that everything in ubuntus repos is available for angstrom i will stop cheering for ubuntu.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't each and every one of those packages have to be re-compiled?

And if this is the big issue, then Debian would be just as good, or even a better choice than Ubuntu.

Is package management really all that important for Pandora?

 

[Svartalf]

OE/Bitbake is a grab source and patch based system. Under Ubuntu it would be an actual arm codebase that gets updated while not a terribly important distinction it's important for the next point. For a whole host of "standard" packages (who knows what they decide on) there will be Ubuntu supported/financed devs keeping them updated and in line so that people like you can get Ogre ported as well as work on whole new project that fill out what would be in the Universe/Multiverse repos while not having to worry about the basics.


All Ubuntu does is grab, patch, and package- just like OE does. It's just scripted with bitbake in OE as opposed to however it's scripted with Ubuntu's build process... Moreover, most of the patching work done is done by everyone including the OE people to make the stuff go- everyone shares the fixes and mods because they HAVE to in most cases per the GPL and LGPL that the bulk of the Linux userspace and the kernel are licensed under. Moreover, many of the people doing OE stuff actually have paying jobs paying for them to do the work (/me waves his hands...) on other projects for their company's product work. Some work on OpenMoko. Some work on telecom or network monitoring systems...

Keep in mind, this is not a desktop, it's an embedded system with nearly the same resources as a desktop, save for storage space. It doesn't HAVE a lot of store. Ubuntu's packages have a lot of honestly unneeded dependencies (I remove one irrelevant thing and it rips out vast swatches of things like GNOME, etc. because it was listed as a dependency... So I leave crap in my machine I don't want because it busts the hell out of the machine...) which add to the bloat. Until they can fix that, they're not going to be a firstline play for the firmware on this device.

Again...they're a good long-term play and I'm keen to be working with them on things (I USE it on my desktop...); but they're not going to bring what you think they're going to bring to the picture for the near to medium term view of things.

i really don't understand this kind of argument. i personally couldn't care less about usability and newbie-friendlyness. the one thing that counts and that angstrom just doensn't have is the apt-repositories ubuntu inherited from debian. the moment you show me that everything in ubuntus repos is available for angstrom i will stop cheering for ubuntu.

Here's an observation for you...

Is it useful to have Apache for the Pandora? Probably not.

There's a vast quantity of the vaunted repos in Ubuntu and Debian that are COMPLETELY irrelevant to any of the use cases for Pandora. They'd be a "because I can" thing. Apache is but one example thereof.

Please, spare me discussions of the breadth of the repos when the bulk thereof just simply isn't going to be something you're going to find a use on the Pandora for.

 

[Megamixman]

So other then learning that Svartalf's real name is Frank Earl and therefore we will refer to him as Frank, because we can, what have we learned/accepted?

 

[TaG]

So other then learning that Svartalf's real name is Frank Earl and therefore we will refer to him as Frank, because we can, what have we learned/accepted?
That it is irrelevant because openpandora are going to do this regardless of technical value and purely because of marketing value...

There may be longer term benefits, and not just for Pandora 1.

 

[hch]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't each and every one of those packages have to be re-compiled?

And if this is the big issue, then Debian would be just as good, or even a better choice than Ubuntu.

Is package management really all that important for Pandora?

quite happy to correct you: cannonical will do the compilation, complete with cortexA8 optimization.

and sure, i would prefer debian (actually, my first post to this forum and my only concern before preordering was exactly if i could run debian on it). but given the option ubuntu or nothing, i happily go with ubuntu. plus the fact, that debian is rather generic armv7 i think and ubuntu will be optimized. (please correct me if i'm wrong about that)

 

[hch]

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i really don't understand this kind of argument. i personally couldn't care less about usability and newbie-friendlyness. the one thing that counts and that angstrom just doensn't have is the apt-repositories ubuntu inherited from debian. the moment you show me that everything in ubuntus repos is available for angstrom i will stop cheering for ubuntu.


Here's an observation for you...

Is it useful to have Apache for the Pandora? Probably not.

There's a vast quantity of the vaunted repos in Ubuntu and Debian that are COMPLETELY irrelevant to any of the use cases for Pandora. They'd be a "because I can" thing. Apache is but one example thereof.

Please, spare me discussions of the breadth of the repos when the bulk thereof just simply isn't going to be something you're going to find a use on the Pandora for.


well, thanks for choosing what is useful software for me. that's the open source spirit, right? all i would need on my pandora is in windows ce anyways.

as it so happens, i don't plan to run appache on my pandora since i'm not a web guy, but a web guy might want, who knows? what i will definitely run on it are dhcp and tftp server. i'm working a lot with really large clusters and you see, a machine in my pocket that has a boot image and can serve it to nodes is immenseley practical to me. as it might be practical to someone, for whatever reason, to carry around a http server in her pocket. do you know this won't happen?

now in principle i could compile all the stuff myself (i'm also a gentoo user, so i'm not really afraid), but heck, why not just have it installted with apt?

and finally about your bloat worries: come on, you can't be serious. yes, ram limitations are something to consider but disk space??? already today i could cram 64GB into the pandora. i really don't cate about another GB of disk space in the least.

 

[bawjaws]

So other then learning that Svartalf's real name is Frank Earl and therefore we will refer to him as Frank, because we can, what have we learned/accepted?

That Frank thinks that *we* think that Ubuntu is a good replacement for PandoraOS (or whatever the Angstrom based launcher stuff that's going in the firmware is referred to as), and that Frank doesn't see the value in *also* having a complete standard desktop (Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora) on the Pandora.

You can see how those two things go together, and so every time someone says "Ubuntu Woot!" ('cos they want their Pandora to be a tiny netbook with a full distribution on it, as well as a dedicated gaming/internet handheld), Frank hears it as "I'm going to replace Angstrom with Ubuntu, cos I'm a total newbie who knows nothing about Linux except that Ubuntu rawks!" which, if anyone actually meant that, would indeed be stupid.

debian is rather generic armv7 i think and ubuntu will be optimized. (please correct me if i'm wrong about that)

I believe Debian is ARMv3 (arm) and ARMv4 (armel).

Handheld Mojo's unofficial Ubuntu port was targeting v5 and v6.

I believe Ubuntu ARM will be optimised for v7 and it seems likely that the specific OMAP SoC used in Pandora (and other devices like BeagleBoard) will be one of the targeted systems.

I have no idea what level of impact that has on performance and battery life, but I'm guessing it's positive.

Edit: the Press Release also specifically notes Netbooks and MIDs as target systems, which means if Ubuntu really does have unnecessary "bloat" then it'll be in their interest to fix it. Not that they want to compete with Angstrom for the teeny tiny embedded market but SSDs and SD cards are still smaller than hard disks.

 

[jellmoo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't each and every one of those packages have to be re-compiled?

And if this is the big issue, then Debian would be just as good, or even a better choice than Ubuntu.

Is package management really all that important for Pandora?

quite happy to correct you: cannonical will do the compilation, complete with cortexA8 optimization.

and sure, i would prefer debian (actually, my first post to this forum and my only concern before preordering was exactly if i could run debian on it). but given the option ubuntu or nothing, i happily go with ubuntu. plus the fact, that debian is rather generic armv7 i think and ubuntu will be optimized. (please correct me if i'm wrong about that)


Are they? What I've read indicated that they are porting over the full Ubuntu desktop, but didn't specifically mention the apt repos.

If it's straight forward port then I'm not sure how I feel about it. I don't think that it would suit the Pandora screen size at all. Now, something tailored specifically for Pandora would be a different story, but then it could be argued that it really isn't Ubuntu in anything but name.

 

[hch]

[If it's straight forward port then I'm not sure how I feel about it. I don't think that it would suit the Pandora screen size at all. Now, something tailored specifically for Pandora would be a different story, but then it could be argued that it really isn't Ubuntu in anything but name.

well, ubuntu has the netbook remix version, taylored specifically for the eeepc's 800*480 screen. i guess a straight port of that would suit the pandora quite well.

 

[Chip]

This non-argument shows one of the worst thing about "Linux people". A lot of them take their operating systems way too personally.

There is no rational reason for this discussion to even take place. Canonical is optimizing their OS for A8-based netbooks and MIDs no matter what. All we've done is offer our assistance. Whether they take us up on our offer is not going to affect the Pandora much one way or the other. It just seemed like the right thing to do - both because of the small amount fame-by-association it might bring us, and because we support open source software.

If we do end up helping them out, then Ubuntu-for-ARM will probably be ready to run on the Pandora from day one (day one of their release, not necessarily ours). If we don't, then a Pandora version may take all of a week to show up. If you want Ubuntu on your Pandora, absolute worst case, you might have to wait a bit. If you don't want Ubuntu on your Pandora, then whether Canonical uses Pandoras or TI dev boards to test their software has exactly zero effect on you. There is no down side. It's not like we're supporting Ubuntu instead of something else. We're just looking to give everybody as many options as we can.