IT has been covered very much before; its a many pronged thing. Essentially.. yes people have thought about it, and yes it will happen, and yes we need more bodies .. feel free to help out
(And when you say 'desktop', you suddenly mean Windows, OSX and Linux, which makes it extra big
Theres several pushes..
- on-pandora
- using a repository (in traditional linux sense), so easy to do auto-updates to latest versions and easy to get new apps installed; conn is that tends to depend on device being connected, and implies applications are more than a single file. Apps would still need to be pandora-ified to handle being on SD with data going to SD instead of home directories.
- using pnd files as is, but with a repository or other file manager to assist getting new apps and new versions, but otherwise working as we have now; downloading pnd files is fine by hand, but we'll ultimately build something to do it more automated. (by 'we' I mean the community)
- a repo is being set up now so that firmware updates can be done on pandora with a simple command
- off-pandora
- without going into middle-men to help with pnd or repo downloading and dependancies, we have several websites to make it easi to get pnds (dl.openhandhelds which may go away, the app store, The Box system by dflemstr, and a couple others), and likely as these catch on more, we'll have tools to scan what apps you have and hit the online systems to see if there are any updates.
- for firmware updates the reliable old hotfix .pnd files will be made available still
The reason things like this are not here yet, is really just because theres not many devs with units yet, and the system is still very young. Feel free to help out.. most of the Pandora stuff comes about because we all (everyone) are building it
jeff