Ubuntu 9.10 And Android 2.0

[Windy]

Is anyone likely to work on a port of Android 2.0 and Ubuntu 9.10 both of which have been recently released.

I am interested as I am keen for my Pandora to be an all round device, in particular for long journeys on crowded commuter trains. As such I am very interested in the normal Pandora type apps such as the emulators and media players for entertainment and relive aspects of my youth, but I am interested in using it for self training and making myself familiar with Ubuntu and Android.

 

[gruso]

In time, yes. Look here: http://pandorawiki.org/Projects_Under_Development

And search the forums, you'll find plenty of discussion.

 

[haptagud]

Okay, I'm going to probably sound really stupid, but here goes anyway...

Are the emulators, games, etc being developed for one specific OS or will say Psx4All or Mupen64plus run on the Pandora hardware irrespective of the OS you are using?

 

[Dead1nside]

Okay, I'm going to probably sound really stupid, but here goes anyway...

Are the emulators, games, etc being developed for one specific OS or will say Psx4All or Mupen64plus run on the Pandora hardware irrespective of the OS you are using?

I'm not an expert at this so I apologise if my comment is misplaced. However the OS in all these cases Android, Moblin, Angstrom, Ubunutu - is always ARM based Linux. So as long as you have all the package dependencies needed for the emulators in each case, then it should run fine.

 

[Lozrus]

Okay, I'm going to probably sound really stupid, but here goes anyway...

Are the emulators, games, etc being developed for one specific OS or will say Psx4All or Mupen64plus run on the Pandora hardware irrespective of the OS you are using?

For the most part, it is best to assume that a binary will only work with the OS it's intended for. However, when the OS's are all flavours of Linux (such as Angstrom, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Maemo, Android), there is also a high degree of binary compatibility and a good chance that the binaries can be made to work (but no guarantee).

I imagine that it's even possible to make a binary that will also work on the GP2X, Wiz and Pandora by dynamically linking to and hardware specific parts (like SDL). In reality I think that 99% of existing GP2x binaries are not made this way. Different display sizes, control layouts etc. would also make this a pain.

 

[juniorm33]

Although it's not running Ubuntu as it's default OS. It's still Linux, so I take it you want to learn Ubuntu specifically which is just another flavour of Linux?
What you call normal Pandora app's are just the things that people are currently interested in, but you do have access to most things Linux (AbiWord etc), so it is already an all round device. What else would you like to do on it, learn about?

No the emulators are not specific to the default OS, although that will be the easiest way to run them with PMD's until the PMD software is put onto other Pandora OS's which to be fair probably wont be long.

[Edit] Wow I've been h34r: h34r:

 

[Critical_Impact]

Wouldn't there be some way to write a loader that runs on the different OSes that allows for games and apps written for Pandora to work correctly on any given OS?

 

[juniorm33]

Wouldn't there be some way to write a loader that runs on the different OSes that allows for games and apps written for Pandora to work correctly on any given OS?

See my previous post. Once the OS (Linux flavour) is ported and working on Pandora, wouldn't be long if any time at all before the PMD software (or as you called it loader) is ported also.

 

[EvilDragon]

As all programs should use dynamically linked libraries, they should work if these libraries are present on the system (regardless whether it's Ubuntu ARM or any other linux flavour).

The dicscovery functions for PND and PXML are handled by a library and daemon (libpnd, see the git here(.

As libpnd creates standard .desktop files for every GUI when you insert a card, it should work with any desktop manager (which makes use of .desktop files).

So if anybody implements the library and daemon into the the OS (for Ubuntu, it's easiest if somebody creates a .deb package to install it on any ARM system), PND files should be discovered and work out of the box.

 

[juniorm33]

Sorry I keep calling them PMD's when it's PND (Use PMD at work lol)
Yea What EvilDragon said!

 

[valhalla]

I'm not an expert at this so I apologise if my comment is misplaced. However the OS in all these cases Android, Moblin, Angstrom, Ubunutu - is always ARM based Linux. So as long as you have all the package dependencies needed for the emulators in each case, then it should run fine.

This is mostly true (with the caveats others have mentioned) except for Android, since it uses the linux kernel, but it's missing everything else that one expects in a linux system (no glibc, no X, etc.)