Will Linux Ubuntu be preloaded?


FWIW, I agree strongly about being debian-based. apt alone makes the decision an easy one, not to mention the large base of pre-compiled software.

Of course, part of the beauty of the Pandora is that it's going to be a piece o' cake for each of us to run a differently configured system with a different window manager. I'm sure several will be downloadable, ready to throw onto an SD card & be booted up. But it sure would be nice to have the default (internal) be such that most of us are content with it. And such that it plays nicely with the "Joe user" crowd as well as being inviting to the rest of us who like to push it a little harder.

Re: Ubuntu, I can see the argument about riding on their coattails. So maybe a CD (or even a bootable 512Mb SD card) could be included with the machine. Maybe just a bootable distro linked online so we can say it's done. But Ubuntu wasn't made for a machine like the Pandora. It was made for my full-size desktop with my full-size mouse/trackball. It's very cool, I agree, to see it running on the Pandora hardware. But only as a demo. It's too bloated. Running it would be a gimmick. By the time you've configured it properly for the Pandora (it's just Debian underneath: perfectly malleable) you're no longer running THEIR set of packages. It's no longer Ubuntu. How much better to forget the name and run a purely custom-fit set of packages with an interface and a design made just for the Pandora. As, e.g., Nokia did with their "web tablets".


Speaking of interface, the Pandora fits a niche in computing which is still fairly new. I hope that it will hit a sweet spot that replaces my Palm device completely and my desktop/laptop for everything except for those applications which particularly call for big screens and fast CPU's (software development, video editing, etc.). This new device may call for a different kind of interface.

I'm specifically thinking of the Nokia N800. I owned one for a couple of weeks. It was nice, though slow, and the lack of a keyboard eventually became a deal-killer for me. But its interface wasn't terrible. I definitely don't want a window manager which relies heavily on a mouse. A joystick as a mouse is even worse. On the other hand, we have a touch screen! Even on my ancient, keyboard-less Palm I rarely have need of the stylus. Which window managers/panels/etc. are going to be friendly to the touch screen, giving us big buttons to grab and intuitive gestures for control?

Personally, I'm partial to fluxbox and its family of window managers. I love their speed, their simplicity, and how easy it is to configure them. But for the most part they still seem tied to the traditional paradigm: big screen and a mouse. Yes, I configured & used lots of keyboard shortcuts with fluxbox. But multi-key keyboard shortcuts on the Pandora's little keys would be just as bad as a joystick-mouse! Both will work in a pinch, but they would be most unfortunate as primary interface methods.

Of course, since about a year ago, the new standard everyone is looking at for touch screens is the iPhone. I've not played with one, but they look snazzy from afar. What can we learn about touch-screen interaction from them?

--Todd
 
Well I think it would be a good idea to build something based on Ubuntu. I personnaly think that, as far as pandora is a massive nerd handheld, it should be accessible to as many people as possible. I think it would be good to have the pandora come with a nice looking and easy to use system and ubuntu is very good for that and also has a reputation now. After that, we're free to install whatever slackware or puppy distro we want; but let's not forget about everybody else.
It would be bad for the console to become an elitist handheld. Make it accessible with the possibility of being elitist!

So, I pretty much agree with Gruso up there!
 
Well the MID version ahas been developped for intel-based handheld....
That might require a lot of work...
 
dockthepod said:
I was always a fan of fluxbox. It was sooo minimal. I haven't used linux in a bit but I'd like to be able to run fluxbox. I guess we should be able to chose pretty easily right? We will have a normal X server?

I use fluxbox on my desktop pc, but I've tried it on an eee with 800x480 res and I had quite some problem with the size of windows; also, it uses the right mouse button quite exensively, so I don't think that it would be confortable to use with the stilus.

Anyway, I'd rather not have ubuntu preinstalled on the device: a minimal fast loading gui would be way better; it would be more interesting to be able to buy a separate SD with ubuntu preinstalled, instead.
 
I say go for an Enlightenment E17 Angstrom image, use the 3D hardware from the outset! :)
 
Despellanion said:
How about openSUSE? I use suse 11 on my computer at home and would very much like to see it in action on a pandora :D

As far as I know SUSE is not available for ARM, so it would mean an huge work recompiling.

I believe that the only mainstream distros with arm packages are debian and ubuntu. Gentoo could probably compile for the pandora with little additional work, but I believe that custom distro are better off based on OpenEmbedded / Armstrong.
 
How about leave it with a homebrew OS and software, with the option of downloading the Ubuntu crap later. It would only be a "Right click and save" away anyway. It would also allow for "other" ideas for the mobile market instead of all the same stuff rehashed over and over again.

Noisome
 
just my 2 cents (I'm not linux-expert):
make it based on Debian (or *.deb compatible) so we do get a huge load of packages, and newbies want programs more than everything.
 
Pandora's OS should named as Pyrrha. But I don't concern if it would derivate from Ubuntu or other Linux distrubution.
But I personally prefer Ubuntu on desktop and .deb packages system.
 
noisome said:
How about leave it with a homebrew OS and software, with the option of downloading the Ubuntu crap later. It would only be a "Right click and save" away anyway. It would also allow for "other" ideas for the mobile market instead of all the same stuff rehashed over and over again.

Noisome

I think I agree. Let's see the homebrew OS and stuff first. Ubuntu isn't the be all and end all.
 
+1

Ubuntu is completely inappropriate for embedded devices. I want to be able to use as much as that 128 MB of RAM for user apps as possible, which means having the simplest X server and window manager, no desktop environment except gMenu2x perhaps. Anyone that seriously tries to run Ubuntu on this will be disappointed when all the applications run slowly and constantly read and write from swap memory.
 
qwerty15 said:
From http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/ :

Pandora gaming handheld runs Ångström
Posted September 18th, 2008 by koen
For all the gaming enthousiast out there: The Pandora gaming handheld will run Ångström by default!
As one of the developers is quoted saying:

"We derive our current filesystem from Ångström with lots of custom Pandora buildrules and string the whole lot together with Open Embedded."

Tom said:
Yes, it will be running kdrive/some minimal X server on top of Linux 2.6.26. Possibly it'll be based on Angstrom, not sure about that though. It's been indicated that there's an interest in promoting Ubuntu as an official alternative later on.

So, they have been trying out Ångström. Why make them change and ship with something different?

EDIT: s/make them/suggest that they/
 
No one's "making" them...

craigix said:
The Ubuntu focus is for casual users who are scared of Linux - it works very well with them, but we still want it polished and as optimised as possible, no doubt. Very good PR too - gives us a chance to compete with bigger devices.

Everyone else can use whatever they like, I'm pretty sure we will seem many versions available.
 
Why don't you just have a package for Pandora Ubuntu - 'Advanced Mode' or something, which strips out all of the bloat and replaces components with Pandora optimised ones?
 
Thinking about it, I think i agree with Noisome and adamorjames.
Something light and simple first and then people can do whatever they want with it. That was one of the good sides of the gp2x
 
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