Loads of stuff is happening with Open2x at the moment, we've just been keeping quiet until something usable came about, which happened last week hence why some people may have noticed a slight increase in the mentions of it
I don't know a whole lot about the status of things outside my 'field' but I can tell you exactly where the root filesystem is now and where I hope to take it (and this is all the stuff you as a user will see, so it's probably the most interesting).
Firstly, where it is now. Over the last week or so, things have moved
very quickly. I've gone from half a bootable system to a pretty complete, bootable system. Currently, there isn't a whole lot new (though it is fairly similar with regards to features to say 2.1.1). It uses newer dynamic libraries so developers will be able to link dynamically, reducing binary sizes hugely (from 1MB to 10KB for a fairly simple program should be a simple case of recompiling). This also speeds up the loading times of applications (assuming they're dynamically linked).
There are more basic Linux command line applications in the firmware itself which will again, be of more interest to developers when debugging.
For a menu, we've decided to use a modified version of GP2XMB (which I've been working on to add extra functionality -- this should be hopefully merged into the main tree when I submit patches to the author), though autorun.gpus are supported (and are faster to load than GPH's firmware because they aren't launched from GP2XMB, but a smaller launch script which runs in an instant) so you can use gmenu2x on SD if you like.
Boot time has been reduced, by how much I'm not entirely certain yet since I've not tested it properly, but I reckon it'll be at least a 1/3 reduction by release.
SD cards should now automount with any supported filesystem (I'm going to compile a few extra ones into the kernel).
I've used a few little tricks to build a backwards compatibility image which contains the entire of 2.1.1 and you can drop back into 2.1.1 through the menu without rebooting for near perfect compatibility (which is the case with Open2x anyway, but there may be one or two early apps that don't work for whatever reason) and to access the applications GPH included (like the movie player etc.). DJWillis has done a bit of work on our own version of mplayer, but if somebody else has the time when a beta firmware is released, it'd be much appreciated if they could build one
What isn't supported right at this very moment is USB host and networking, but those are the two things I'm working on now, so hopefully they'll work when there is a release. I'm also working on a nice update system which will mean minimal flashing via u-boot, most things will be handled from within Open2x itself. We've also taken the decision to remove the 'user' portion of the NAND (which some people may be upset about, sorry) to make room for the built in applications, configuration files etc.
Now onto where I'm hoping to go from here. There are currently no built in applications, which is a bit of a pain (though the GPH compatibility layer works for now). As was previously mentioned, the X server will be included directly in the firmware itself and we have plans to try and integrate ParkyDR's GP2Xpdf and any other useful X things that appear. For music, text reader and image viewer, we're still undecided as far as I know, but there are good replacements for all of these out there now. As I said before, you'll have to use the compatibility layer for playing movies for a while, until somebody fixes up a version.
Another feature I'd like to get in (though I can't promise anything yet) is the ability to mount zip files. For those who don't know a lot about *NIX, this will allow the contents of a zip file to be seen as a normal directory by any program so for any emulators which don't support zip loading, you'll be able to roll all your ROM images into one large zip and use them from there.
The last few things that will be in there is a built in mmuhack module (so programs won't need to ship with them -- in fact, the original module won't load into our 2.4.26 kernel, so developers will have to use it but this is now sorted and I have a working module ready). I'd like to have a small daemon which can put the GP2X into a sort of a sleep mode at some point too (set clock speed to 33MHz and disable backlight and whatever else you can). The package manager will make a comeback in a slightly different form that more people may be pleased with, though of course its use won't be mandatory. Some people may have noticed that diemumiee wrote a module which lets you use the GP2X controls as a standard joystick device, this should be in the new firmware too. I may throw a couple of useful resources such as TTF fonts in if there is space at the end.
That's basically everything I can think of off the top of my head.
So in summary:
- It is usable
- It will be coming soon
- It should offer a significant enough improvement over the GPH firmware that most people will use it
I'll be sending alpha versions out to a few people in the next few weeks (don't ask to be included in this, I don't want to brick people's GP2Xs who I know won't be able to repair them easily) and then sometime after that, there will be a public beta release I expect, but we want to make sure it works and make it worth upgrading to first
Hope this answers some questions and explains what has been going on. Feel free to ask any questions.
What a long post!
EDIT: Oh, I do know that SDHC code is working for most cards and it has been integrated into the Open2x kernel tree. Have a look here for more information:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...=35840&st=0
And look at our wiki too sometime:
http://wiki.open2x.org/open2x/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
