What About Open2x?

[reiboul]

Most sleep modes just cut off non-critical systems (screen, wifi, backlight, etc) and just leave the ram charged to keep the state of operation. The DS also does this I believe. There would be no benefit in dumping the contents of RAM to SD card... short of it means the GP2X could switch EVERYTHING off to save power.

Given GP2X's battery life, I don't think it is a good idea to have it in sleep mode for a long time like DS with its 15+ gaming hours
But it's good for taking a break without shutting it off! So finalyl i don't think saving on the SD card would be a nice idea But disabling all components except ram is a good idea!

 

[FarazParsa]

*Soils self*

 

[Zeladin]

hmm vlc would certainly be cool, especially if a bluetooth stack/ wifi drivers(for current linuxy ones) were included too. I have plans for watching satellite video on the go almost realtime!. A vitual private network, wifi, or other portable internet connection - nice...

 

[Megatog615]

Maybe a 2-stage sleep mode could be employed... so normally it an just switch off the screen and idle, keeping the RAM charged. Then if it seems that it has been idling in sleep mode for an extended duration (or maybe if the batteries are getting quite low) it can dump the RAM and power off.

This raises a question of mine: Will Open2x fix the problem where if you run out of battery power, it basically goes berserk and draws random stuff on the screen and outputs random sounds? This is not much of an issue, but isn't that not very healthy for an electronic device to be doing such things with such low battery power?

 

[sam fisher]

Maybe a 2-stage sleep mode could be employed... so normally it an just switch off the screen and idle, keeping the RAM charged. Then if it seems that it has been idling in sleep mode for an extended duration (or maybe if the batteries are getting quite low) it can dump the RAM and power off.

This raises a question of mine: Will Open2x fix the problem where if you run out of battery power, it basically goes berserk and draws random stuff on the screen and outputs random sounds? This is not much of an issue, but isn't that not very healthy for an electronic device to be doing such things with such low battery power?

I don't see why its any more unhealthy than just shutting down...

 

[Elektranox]

Will there be Theora support? The lib can be crosscompiled without any problems Would be nice to have OGG Theora support

http://www.theora.org/

 

[mdinire]

would it be possible for a gp2x to "hibernate" I was looking for reasons to get Linux and this stuck out to me
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/susp...rnate/index.php

 

[gohmifune]

Hibernation works by dumping ram to HD, which seems to be questionable for 2x, and is it really needed?

Though I did have a thought about the 2XMB vs Gmenu2x. I'd love to have something like 2XMB for media. My text files, video, music, etc. A scrollable interface would be better, and eventually it would be tweaked to be original. I remember some os somewhere using something similar. Gmenu is standard launcher/desktop metaphor which is fine, but they have different conceptual strengths and I'd like to see a happy medium. Gmenu similar as it is now, but a built in media launcher/file browser like the XMB or similar instead of the file browser or a list.

And a request...
control pad shortcuts. Like clickstick+facebuttons yields 4 simple shortcuts that go directly to prime apps.

ok, I'm done.

 

[firefly2442]

Will you be keeping the server stuff that is in the 2.0+ firmware? Like the HTTP server and PHP and so on?

 

[tkeely4777]

This all sounds good and wonderful, but (excuse me for my ignorance) will Open2x allow for more intimate and direct access to the hardware, meaning fuller and faster software?

 

[slygamer]

How can you get more intimate and direct access to hardware than reading/writing registers? We can do that already. The software won't be any faster. I have no idea what you mean by "fuller".

 

[Super Jamie]

i'd just like to say i have read up about open2x, and whilst i'm not that keen i'd build my own from the current svn, it's great to read how well it actually is coming along. i look forward to the release

super work by all concerned, everyone should support truly free software and upgrade to open2x when it's stable release-quality

(and good idea using gp2xmb )

 

[Cervante]

will open2x support kaillera?

 

[Mudi]

Kaillera is something that would have to be implemented on individual emulators.

 

[Orkie]

Questions

This raises a question of mine: Will Open2x fix the problem where if you run out of battery power, it basically goes berserk and draws random stuff on the screen and outputs random sounds? This is not much of an issue, but isn't that not very healthy for an electronic device to be doing such things with such low battery power?

It doesn't cause any harm as far as I know, but no it won't be 'fixed' anyway, as it isn't a software problem.

would it be possible for a gp2x to "hibernate" I was looking for reasons to get Linux and this stuck out to me
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/susp...rnate/index.php

No, it would probably take longer to hibernate or resume than to just boot up normally

And a request...
control pad shortcuts. Like clickstick+facebuttons yields 4 simple shortcuts that go directly to prime apps.

I've something similar planned, but I don't know when it'll be in there.

Will you be keeping the server stuff that is in the 2.0+ firmware? Like the HTTP server and PHP and so on?

All I really want to have in by default is telnetd, but if somebody were to compile binaries for these, I could patch the bootscripts to let it load automatically.

This all sounds good and wonderful, but (excuse me for my ignorance) will Open2x allow for more intimate and direct access to the hardware, meaning fuller and faster software?

There is already direct access available on the standard firmware

Progress report

• USB networking now works and can be activated from the menu (same for TV-out). As said above there is a telnet server built in.
• I've found a way of installing to NAND without changing u-boot. It's not the nicest method, but it's fairly simple and is reliable.
• Work has kind of started on assembling the built-in applications
• An alpha release has been sent out to a few people, I've had a few bug reports/suggestions but no brickings .
• There is a slight bug in the dynamic SDL_mixer library which means MP3 and OGG are decoded with libraries that use floating point rather than libmad and tremor, which are fixed point. The cause of this is known and a semi-working fix has already been produced.
• There is a bug with the dynamic SDL library where it segfaults if you initialise it with SDL_DOUBLEBUF. The cause of this is currently unknown - any suggestions would be appreciated .

 

[reiboul]

Glad to hear almost everything is going fine! I'm really looking forward to try the result of your efforts As for HTTP server, I think the most important is Samba and Telnet (useful for developpers)

 

[Elektranox]

You skipped my theora question and will there be your apt in it? This would be really cool I plan to install the new u-boot and open2x on the SD Card.... NAND suckz, because if it's defect, the GP2X is broken

 

[Orkie]

Whoops, sorry. I doubt there will be Theora, wouldn't it run slowly on the GP2X? Most video codecs seem to (I could be completely misunderstanding, I'm not 100% certain what Theora actually is).
There will be a form of the old installer in there, but it'll be a different package format which is quicker to use.

 

[Zeladin]

The point of closing off user access to the nand, is of course to stop it getting 'worn out'/ corrupted by some emulator crashing...

I think I read somewhere open2x is bootable from sd, but... out of curiosity, does the uboot go on the nand or is there like some kind of additional memory. I think I know the answer to this already... If I'm right then users really really don't want to go anywhere near the nand...

Edit; wow I should think clearly before typing. What I really meant was if the NAND is up the creek, will uboot be too?

 

[reiboul]

The point of closing off user access to the nand, is of course to stop it getting 'worn out'/ corrupted by some emulator crashing...

I really don't think Linux should becoming 'worn out' by some crashes... Programs don't have to write into the system files (at least not in the important ones)
But one could ever write a program that clear the whole NAND, make it look like a game, and spread it over the GP2X forum... about that : does Open2x log in as root? or does it log into a user with less permissions? You could even make the NAND read-only, but it's a little bit 'too much'