What Linux Distribution On Pandora?

[cosurgi]

Hi,

I remember something being said that Pandora will ship with a debian or debian-derived distro. Then later in the interview Craig said it will be ubuntu. I was wondering what people want, so I made this poll.

If you want another option in 1st question tell it quickly in bold and size=2, so that moderators will quickly notice your request and add your option to the poll. If you will not use bold and big font, moderators will most likely not notice youir request and your option will not be added, so if you really want to - follow my advice

 

[sindbad]

Craig said ubuntu works, not that it'll ship with it. Bad idea.

I'm betting on Angstrom or a custom tiny distro.

 

[emil10001]

I sort of think that this is the wrong way to look at the situation. It's going to ship with something fairly custom, probably built on Angstrom or OpenEmbedded or something.

I think that launching other platforms should be done in some similar fashion to how it's done on maemo. You launch the default interface, which loads quickly, then you can load the larger distro or window manager from there (from the SD card). When you exit the 'advanced' environment, it will reboot and get you back into the default environment. This will allow people to easily install other distros on top of the default environment without wrecking anything. Plus, you can have somebody create and package the 'advanced' environment such that it is simple to install for other users, with little risk.

 

[hotblack]

I can't see the Pandora shipping with or even supporting a full heavyweight distro such as Ubuntu or debian. That said I voted for Ubuntu as (while a regular user of and supporter of debian) it's stricter stance on inclusion of packages means it can be less flexible/suited to the needs of some consumers.

OpenEmbedded/Angstrom could make sense and even if not supported it should be pretty trivial to get going.

I'd agree we're likely to see some custom variant which may be debian based in ways (and using something like apt for package management would seem sensible) but with variations and only ports specifically made for Pandora.

 

[mika13]

we can see a trend in voting now, anyway

nobody cares, we just want pandoras.

 

[TaG]

I'm expecting Angstrom or a debian based custom distro, with lots of unnecessary stuff taken out. I don't mind too much what it ships with but I am sure there will be other distros later.

 

[mindlord]

Ultimately, the chosen distro will not matter since almost any package needed will have to be recompiled for the Pandora anyways. The main differences between distros isn't really that important. Ubuntu is Debian derived, so they are essentially the same under the hood. Indeed, all Linux distros are basically alike except for a few choice packages and which window manager you choose to use.

I don't mean to downplay the differences, and I am aware of the differences in package management. Redhat uses RPM, Suse uses Packman, Debian uses DEB, etc. And different distros use different methods to profile the hardware and such, but the all get the job done is the same general manner. Most distros agree that Gnome is the defacto window manager, but most offer other sub-ditributions that use KDE, Xfce, or something else.

The Pandora will ultimately not use a "distro" per-se, but have a custom Linux that uses the package manager of one of the big three to manage the core operating system in the NAND. Since hardware detection is only an issue for USB devices that cuts back on a lot of overhead and severely impacts the number and type of packages that need to be installed from the beginning. No need to two dozen different video card driver packages to be installed when the Pandora has only one video driver option by default.

There are a great many packages that are included in the big distros that are useless or redundant to the Pandora, and will get pruned out of the final firmware making the Pandora version of the distro look completely different from the PC version. Some packages simply will not work, like Wine, and will be simply left out of the repository.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is this: Asking what distro of Linux the Pandora will run doesn't have a valid answer because the distro of Linux will the the Pandora Linux (Based very extremely loosely on [insert name of distro here]). It will have some things in common with [insert name of distro here] but will end up looking nothing like [insert name of distro here].

And for those who do not like [insert name of distro here] it would be extremely difficult and time consuming to try and replace it with something else.

 

[atomicthumbs]

1. Ubuntu is Debian.

2. I doubt that things would work better if you switched from the Pandora default distro to something else.

3. DJWillis said it's not Debian.

 

[cb88]

correction Ubuntu is *BLOATED* Debian...

Djwillis also mentioned that he was interested in making a debian distro for the pandora but correct not debian by default

Ubuntu != Debian under the hood the whole init system is ripped out and loads of other stuff too

Also Gnome is not a window manager... and it is also more bloated than KDE which is growing on me

since the pandora archive programs will be self contained... and have all needed libs included any distro should be about to run them within reason (ie as long and the standard libs are not older than the defaut panda distro)

T2 sde could be considered but it kind of like a distro building SDK and not a distro itself

 

[Ayla]

Only two choices ??
I want Gentoo.

 

[cb88]

KDE 3.5 on a dual PII at 300mhz (slackware) is almost as responsive as Ubuntu on a 1.8 ghz system... think about that.. note im saying responsiveness not just how fast it can work but how fast it responds when i run something of course the 1.8 ghz is faster but ubuntu is really laggy which is hard to tell one way or the other in those beagle board videos... personally im sure that people would be more satisfied with a custom distro that is compatible with debian

 

[PsoBloke]

Ultimately, the chosen distro will not matter since almost any package needed will have to be recompiled for the Pandora anyways.

Mindlord has it pretty much summed up in my eyes, although you could obviously get different distro's up and running (and lord knows we will), the Pandora Distro's going to have to be it's own.

 

[Judge584]

Only two choices ??
I want Gentoo.

Hi,

Yes, I really like to know if installing Gentoo will be possible.

 

[zxxgp]

Only two choices ??
I want Gentoo.

Hi,

Yes, I really like to know if installing Gentoo will be possible.

If you can compile it to work on an ARM chip then it should work.

 

[Karel Jansens]

I just want something that uses the Pandora's resources as efficiently as possible (if there is eyecandy involved, I want it to be very easy to turn off) and that allows standard Linux apps to be installed after a "simple" recompile (i.e. no Maemo or Hildon cr*p).

This is a computer, not a fashion statement. Please treat it as such.

 

[cosurgi]

To any friendly moderator out there, please add two options to 1st question:

- Angstrom
- Gentoo

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: My request is based on current comments in this thread

 

[PoisonedV]

i dont think any existing, even mobile, linux distro would work well, without extremely heavy modification.
also, do debian and ubuntu really require 2 different choices.

 

[Megamixman]

Please stop judging Gnome based on Ubuntu's Gnome. Honestly, get something like gentoo or Arch, and do a Gnome install. It is as responsive as KDE and actually runs a little less power hungry.

That being said; Gentoo? Are you serious? Compiling a program or two on Pandora is fine, but compiling a whole system on the Pandora would be maddening. Can you imagine compiling KDE on Pandora. Not to mention the fact that You would likely need a swap file in order to even be able to compile things like the KDE base libs.

Also, why isn't Maemo choice? Honestly, the Nokia Tablets are probably Pandora's closest competitor. They have a good distro, that runs on an ARM device, targeted at the same niche of people that would buy a Pandora as a UMPC/PDA.

Angstrom may in fact be the winner in the end just because it will be the most optimized compile time for the OMAP3 set of chips. That being said, we should probably look to Maemo for a good GUI.

 

[FrdJck]

Damn Small Linux is a very neat OS. It's very quick and very small. I don't know if it has touchscreen driver, but it could be a very good companion to the Pandora, I think.

 

[Judge584]

That being said; Gentoo? Are you serious? Compiling a program or two on Pandora is fine, but compiling a whole system on the Pandora would be maddening. Can you imagine compiling KDE on Pandora. Not to mention the fact that You would likely need a swap file in order to even be able to compile things like the KDE base libs.

I don't want to compile my Gentoo directly on the Pandora, I will compile it on a real pc and then I will put binaries on pandora.
It is possible to compile ARM binaries from a x86 Gentoo, wich is very great.