Your Holy gaming Grail for Pandora 2..?


@Craig if we will only understand when we see the design, why can't we see it?


Although simple is good, a true Pandora successor will have palmtop functionality too. android isn't really in a state to supply that atm.


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Would it be possible to take the android core (hardware drivers, things that make apps work) and port a Pandora2-specific interface layer (inc desktop) and PND support?


Then we get something which is much closer to real Linux, but all the hardware compatibility is done for us.
As The p2 is only on the drawing board it could naturally be subject to great changes over time for many reasons hardware/parts availability who knows.Also I should expect they don't want to reveal the ace up their sleeve as it could be copied by another company.If we were shown a p2 design now i believe we would assume that that design was written in stone and then later be a touch disappointed when the actual p2 had deviated from the initial prototype design.Best for them to reveal the p2 when its finalised really. :)
 
best for them to reveal the p2 when its finalised really. <-you mean after the damage has been done and there's nothing that can be done about it? I respectfully disagree.


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The Pandora is your Oyster, just don't let it Craig shut.
 
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I for one would like to see the designs, I think part of what made the Pandora great was the community involvement in it's development.


In the same vein It would be great if we could have a Pandora 2 section where all P2 threads can go into.


What do you think about setting up a Pandora 2 section Craig?
 
best for them to reveal the p2 when its finalised really. <-you mean after the damage has been done and there's nothing that can be done about it? I respectfully disagree.


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The Pandora is your Oyster, just don't let it Craig shut.
they can discuss software and other considerations with the forum members when the P2 has taken some kind of preliminary shape in terms of sketches design possibilities etc. but we can't really jump on every snippet craig gives us (Im sure the p2 design is far from finalised for him too) because there is simply too many of us and we don't know the whole picture yet. It would be unproductive to take 'snippets' out of context something i fear would happen all too often in a p2 section.The P2 could change alot from initial prototypes too as thats the nature of creating anything really. A p2 section to discuss the design and such would be fun but it would probably be a gargantuan place full of countless posts by the time the p2 gets further into developement.It could be 2 years away.I trust edd/craig will indeed open a specific pandora 2 thread/area when the times right as they simply cannot afford to ignore the community ie backbone as we are currently the sole audience they have.As i said i imagine they need/want to keep their designs under wraps for now in case someone copied their no doubt novel ideas.
 
Probably going to have to just disagree with you on this one. Although I can see your points. What it does mean, is that we would be wating until an advanced stage 2 years down the track before we saw what they had designed. Thats way to late, if the community didn't like aspects of the design it would mean they could have wasted the entire 2 years of effort. The point of having a discussion regarding the P2 now is so the open pandora team can see what people are wanting in a P2 and then use that information in there designs.
 
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This discussion is just meh.


Pandora OS already is heavily a Community effort with some outstanding figures like notaz. If there will ever be a P2, I bet Craig won't throw more money in the OS direction then now. So again, it will heavily depend on volunteer work in which direction the development will go. Now Craig makes some asumptions and that's ok. Nothing to really discuss about that heavily.


But... about the Android port being dependent on the SoC, how stupid of an argument is that? There are like 1000 Android phones out now using the exact same SoC as the P1 and we still don't have that awesome just working Android build.
 
Oh, and craig: if you want to go the Android road, there is a way to do that a lot more cleverly: Extend the ICP with a keyboard, maybe on the back. It would be cheaper and futureproof -> more interesting
 
If you want to play Pandora 1, then play with your Pandora 1.


If you want to play Pandora 2, then play with your Pandora 2.


Nothing wrong with having 2 or more devices.
If you want to play Pandora 1, play with your Pandora 1.


If you want to play Pandora 2, play with your Pandora 2.


If you want to play (NDS, 3DS, PSP, PSVita, LYNX, various other retro consoles, etc.), play with your (NDS, 3DS, PSP, PSVita, LYNX, various other retro consoles, etc.).


If you want to make a call, call with your cell phone.


If you want to make calculations, calculate with your calculator.


If you want to receive pages, use a pager.


If you want to watch tv, watch on your tv.


If you want to see a movie, go to your movie theater.


If you want to "know" the weather, use your weather station.


Just how big are your pockets??!
 
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The current OS state is not that bad, we can say we have a real Linux with plenty of good apps. And it's the work of a few dedicated persons.


I'm porting Slackware, and for now i'm pretty satisfyied because it's easy to setup, easy to maintain and working pretty well.


The bottleneck is, imho, the kernel not yet made mainstream.
 
Are we heading for a situation where Android is just a touch-friendly interface, rather than a mobile OS?
 
Are we heading for a situation where Android is just a touch-friendly interface, rather than a mobile OS?
That's not how I'm understanding it, as the kernel doesn't account for the rest of the software stack that's provided. What this would seem to mean is that Android would be using the "vanilla" Linux kernel, the same as any Linux distribution does, rather than using a derivative.


I don't know if this would make running Android software on Linux easier, but I'd guess it would.
 
That would probably mean that the Dalvik VM could run a mainline kernel. It currently relies on some android-specific hacks for IPC etc.
 
This seems like really good news. I'd love to see a dual boot scenario where both Android and a more traditional Linux OS are running off the same kernel. It'd also make it easier to support direct program compatibility with the other within each - a lot of Pandora's compatibility would boil down to kernel space support. And it should simplify the boot process, since you'd be choosing separate user space instead of separate kernel, and hence won't need a new graphical boot loader but can leverage already available Linux tools.


Pandora's OS image is only a few hundred MB at most, so hopefully the built-in storage on Pandora 2 will be much larger than it is now and including a distro with a user space similar to Pandora's won't be a big deal. I'd much rather see a true dual-boot than something where you select at time of purchase.


IF it comes down to holding back launch then yes, I think OPT should launch with only Android. But even a pretty lousy Pandora 1-like environment would be preferable to nothing at launch. Above all I what I think we're getting at is we want to see OPT give a shit and actually try, which includes getting the thing out to the right people soon enough. And I know this sounds crass but if it comes to the wire and it just isn't happening I'd prefer to hear this situation backed up by more than Craig.
 
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