Pandora's Gui? Will It Even Have One?

[deadfishes]

Hey all,

I have seen bits and pieces of this topic scattered about. Something about matchbox and then something about Linux command lines being necessary to run emulators. I am wondering if the Pandora is going to come with a software CD, a nice file management utility and a nice on-console GUI.

Thanks for any post (even flames, they keep me warm at night)

 

[Kramy]

You took those comments a bit out of context.

Yes, it'll have a GUI. The underlying OS is based on Angstrom. Check out the screenshots for an idea of what it might look like, or look at the youtube videos being posted, and find one where someone opens GIMP.

That matchbox thingy is what you'd consider the Desktop. Older consoles like the GP2X completely hid CLI, which was annoying when debugging, and super annoying if you actually wanted to do any command line stuff. The Pandora will have a full terminal, which is nice, but you won't actually need it. By the time software is ready to be downloaded, almost all of it will be GUI-powered. Even the emulators.

Software CD? No. You'll have to use the file archive. They'll probably also have nice repository software like Synaptic, or something. (check out Ubuntu for more info )

 

[midna25]

Don't worry. I won't bite Welcome to the community.

The Pandora has an excellent and smooth interface called Angstrom Linux built right in. It's be there when you order and boot right into it when you start up. It's quite reminiscent of a desktop computer's OS, like Windows or common Linux and requires no special knowledge whatsoever to operate.

And BTW. If you haven't ordered one and want to, do so now. There's still a few orders left!

Edit: Looks like I've been ninja'd.

 

[Esn]

Not so sure about the software CD, as it's not really necessary... all programs will be available to download at the Pandora File Archive:
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi

 

[midna25]

Not so sure about the software CD, as it's not really necessary... all programs will be available to download at the Pandora File Archive:
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi

There won't be a CD. It would be more hassle then it's worth. Mostly because the Pandora doesn't have a CD drive so you'd need to go and copy all the files through your computer. Also, the Pandora's hard drive'll be stocked with all the essentials already. The rest is up to personal preference, so there's no real need for a CD anyway. Oh. I should also note that the Pandora runs Firefox, and so can download any and all files you'll need anyway.

 

[Sphinxter]

Not so sure about the software CD, as it's not really necessary... all programs will be available to download at the Pandora File Archive:
http://dl.openhandhe...bin/pandora.cgi

There won't be a CD. It would be more hassle then it's worth. Mostly because the Pandora doesn't have a CD drive so you'd need to go and copy all the files through your computer. Also, the Pandora's hard drive'll be stocked with all the essentials already. The rest is up to personal preference, so there's no real need for a CD anyway. Oh. I should also note that the Pandora runs Firefox, and so can download any and all files you'll need anyway.

The pandora does not have a hard drive.

 

[Enverex]

Don't worry. I won't bite Welcome to the community.

The Pandora has an excellent and smooth interface called Angstrom Linux built right in. It's be there when you order and boot right into it when you start up. It's quite reminiscent of a desktop computer's OS, like Windows or common Linux and requires no special knowledge whatsoever to operate.

And BTW. If you haven't ordered one and want to, do so now. There's still a few orders left!

Edit: Looks like I've been ninja'd.

Also Angstrom is the Linux Distribution, not the interface. The interface will be Matchbox.

Thread is full of wrong information!

 

[Luftwaffles]

The pandora does not have a hard drive.

I've heard people say the pandora doesn't have a hard drive every day, you know what they mean, they're referring to the internal NAND, so enough with the semantics plox.

 

[Enverex]

The pandora does not have a hard drive.

I've heard people say the pandora doesn't have a hard drive every day, you know what they mean, they're referring to the internal NAND, so enough with the semantics plox.

But when you say Hard Drive people think large capacity spinning media, not a small 512MB NAND. So keep poking them saying it doesn't have a HD but has 512MB of solid state storage and hope they eventually catch on

 

[Squidge]

Harddrive and internal NAND flash are two completely different things. It's not semantics. If people say Harddrive and no one corrects them, other people will assume it has one and then complain when they find out theres doesn't.

The internal nand shouldn't even be used for user stuff, so it should be made clear that a sd card is required, and all software should be installed onto that.

 

[Enverex]

Harddrive and internal NAND flash are two completely different things. It's not semantics. If people say Harddrive and no one corrects them, other people will assume it has one and then complain when they find out theres doesn't.

The internal nand shouldn't even be used for user stuff, so it should be made clear that a sd card is required, and all software should be installed onto that.

I'm assuming installing dev libraries and such to the NAND wont be frowned on as it's probably the best place for them and they shouldn't be too large anyway? (I may end up resorting to compiling -on- the Pandora because cross compiling is driving me around the bend).

 

[dflemstr]

Harddrive and internal NAND flash are two completely different things. It's not semantics. If people say Harddrive and no one corrects them, other people will assume it has one and then complain when they find out theres doesn't.

The internal nand shouldn't even be used for user stuff, so it should be made clear that a sd card is required, and all software should be installed onto that.

I'm assuming installing dev libraries and such to the NAND wont be frowned on as it's probably the best place for them and they shouldn't be too large anyway? (I may end up resorting to compiling -on- the Pandora because cross compiling is driving me around the bend).

Well, I for one won't make applications that extract anything on the NAND, and won't touch the NAND at all myself.

And, as I've said many times before: I would really have preferred if the NAND hadn't been used for anything at all, so that the OS would have had to be on an SD card and installing apps via IPKG would have been possible. Now we always have to think about rerouting everything into PND packages and making self-contained dependency-less software distributions. Annoying.

 

[Luftwaffles]

Who would assume the Pandora has a moving parts hard drive
Maybe Jourdy

 

[dflemstr]

Who would assume the Pandora has a moving parts hard drive
Maybe Jourdy

Maybe everyone who has seen a netbook with 80 GB hardd rives that you find a dozen a dime of nowadays. People who first find the OpenPandora project usually assume that it's a larger device than it actually is.

 

[viridior]

Well, I for one won't make applications that extract anything on the NAND, and won't touch the NAND at all myself.

And, as I've said many times before: I would really have preferred if the NAND hadn't been used for anything at all, so that the OS would have had to be on an SD card and installing apps via IPKG would have been possible. Now we always have to think about rerouting everything into PND packages and making self-contained dependency-less software distributions. Annoying.

Why do you assume to use the onboard NAND OS at all? You could easily copy it to your SD card and run it from there. Therefore not even worrying about read-only/read-write, eventually NAND failure, size-limitations, or speed. If you don't want to keep pressing the "boot from SD" option you could also change the bootcmd/bootargs in U-boot to automatically boot from /dev/mmcblk0pX/boot/uImage and of course you may need to edit a couple things in /etc/fstab, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating this for the general user, but there are quite a few of you here that understand what I am saying and would be able to do this, dflemstr being one of them

 

[dflemstr]

Well, I for one won't make applications that extract anything on the NAND, and won't touch the NAND at all myself.

And, as I've said many times before: I would really have preferred if the NAND hadn't been used for anything at all, so that the OS would have had to be on an SD card and installing apps via IPKG would have been possible. Now we always have to think about rerouting everything into PND packages and making self-contained dependency-less software distributions. Annoying.

Why do you assume to use the onboard NAND OS at all? You could easily copy it to your SD card and run it from there. Therefore not even worrying about read-only/read-write, eventually NAND failure, size-limitations, or speed. If you don't want to keep pressing the "boot from SD" option you could also change the bootcmd/bootargs in U-boot to automatically boot from /dev/mmcblk0pX/boot/uImage and of course you may need to edit a couple things in /etc/fstab, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating this for the general user, but there are quite a few of you here that understand what I am saying and would be able to do this, dflemstr being one of them

These are not news to me, I know it's possible to move the OS image to anywhere; I just wish this had been the default setup (aka that a guide would run the first time an SD card is inserted that copies the OS from the NAND, and after that, the NAND only serves as an OS backup) so that we could have used IPKG as the default package management system.

 

[Squidge]

The problem with that is people would soon complain that so much of every sd card is used up by os installs, or that they can't find there SD card with the OS on.

 

[Sphinxter]

The pandora does not have a hard drive.

I've heard people say the pandora doesn't have a hard drive every day, you know what they mean, they're referring to the internal NAND, so enough with the semantics plox.

Enough with heresay, rumour, false advertising and spreading bullshit.

 

[Kramy]

These are not news to me, I know it's possible to move the OS image to anywhere; I just wish this had been the default setup (aka that a guide would run the first time an SD card is inserted that copies the OS from the NAND, and after that, the NAND only serves as an OS backup) so that we could have used IPKG as the default package management system.

Might be nice to have the option, but IMO that takes up too much space. It'll also fracture package management. I'd like the core firmware to be unified for everyone, if possible, so that developers know exactly what they have to work with and what needs to be bundled in their PND files.

The problem with that is people would soon complain that so much of every sd card is used up by os installs, or that they can't find there SD card with the OS on.

Valid points.

 

[rv6502]

The problem with that is people would soon complain that so much of every sd card is used up by os installs, or that they can't find there SD card with the OS on.

very true.
also, it would be quite annoying to have the kernel,X,GUI,etc crash/panic when you accidentally eject the SD card.
this has happened a couple of times I tried Linux on my iPAQ from the SD card.
(its still unusable as a Linux PDA, hopefully my Pandora will soon replace it)