Release What software will the unit ship with?


LynxJSA

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I checked the Big List and looked through the forum. I did not see it listed in either place. Has it been decided yet or is that still up in the air?
 
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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."
 
If by software you mean Non-OS apps like MP3 players, Ebook readers, movie players etc. then I asked the same question not long ago, and nobody knew anything (or those that did gave no answer): all the rest was speculation.

It seems almost certain that it will ship with just the OS only, and all other apps will need to be downloaded at some future date.
 
Lobo said:
It seems almost certain that it will ship with just the OS only, and all other apps will need to be downloaded at some future date.
This is correct. Openpandora is not Dell or Gateway. They're not looking to load down your new computer with gigabytes of software you may or may not want. There is only 256MB of on board flash, so it should be up to each user to decide what is important enough to be "built in".

There is not yet a final list of what apps will come bundled, but be sure that it will be short.
 
I suspect there would be a fairly large deal of launch titles, applications, and drivers available to download when it gets released, actually see the fruits of all those developer copies :lol:
 
Cool beans. Thanks for the answers, all. Very happy to hear it will be a blank slate instead of loaded down with a bunch of pre-installed stuff that I more than likely will end up turning off or uninstalling.
 
There should be Firefox 3 and a basic game or something to demo the hardware specs though.. its easy to delete something like that..maybe? hehe
 
OK, so I'm still a little confused about this and thought I'd ask here:

I understand that Pandora will be using Angstrom, and that it's the ARM7 architecture, right? So does that mean that all the ARM7 stuff in the angstrom repository can just run on Pandora without recompiling or anything?

If that's the case then I'm gonna be very happy. I've been browsing the repo and think that the following should be the very first stuff to be installed on p&|a

-Mplayer or VLC
-XMMS
-Firefox
-Pidgin
-Abiword
-ZIP

I think those apps would be of general interest to just about everybody who has bought a Pandora.

Then on the games front I see we have Quake 1,2 and 3 already in there! Too bad we don't have a PSX emu already done ;)


Anyway, please feel free to rain on my parade: I'm sure that what I'm thinking is, in reality, not the case at all :wacko:
 
Lobo said:
OK, so I'm still a little confused about this and thought I'd ask here:

I understand that Pandora will be using Angstrom, and that it's the ARM7 architecture, right? So does that mean that all the ARM7 stuff in the angstrom repository can just run on Pandora without recompiling or anything?
Don't quote me on this one, but in the way I understand it : yes :p
But the Cortex A8 is a ARM11 (I readed this somewhere...)That's a gap in CPU features as it look like its 4 versions. So I guess that if running 386 code on 686 CPU is not very efficient (think gentoo...) that a recompile will help performance. If I understand correctly what's is going on on the dev side, they are currently doing this :)

Lobo said:
If that's the case then I'm gonna be very happy. I've been browsing the repo and think that the following should be the very first stuff to be installed on p&|a

-Mplayer or VLC
-XMMS
-Firefox
-Pidgin
-Abiword
-ZIP

If it's not already in the pandora on shipping, they will appear in the archivewithin the first weeks of delivery :). And libzip have to be there anyway, as we have to be able to open stuff comming from there anyway :D

Lobo said:
I think those apps would be of general interest to just about everybody who has bought a Pandora.

Then on the games front I see we have Quake 1,2 and 3 already in there! Too bad we don't have a PSX emu already done ;)
Be sure that even if there will be emulator ready for lunch time, it won't be preloaded by default, but will a download away from your pand :)
The Quake game won't obviously fit in the 256M of internal flash so they wont be preloaded too. but still it will be a download away...
 
Don't quote me on this one, but in the way I understand it : yes :p
But the Cortex A8 is a ARM11 (I readed this somewhere...)That's a gap in CPU features as it look like its 4 versions. So I guess that if running 386 code on 686 CPU is not very efficient (think gentoo...) that a recompile will help performance. If I understand correctly what's is going on on the dev side, they are currently doing this :)
Nope, Lobo is referring to the instruction set. Its not an ARM11 (which supports the ARMv6 instruction set), its a Cortex A-8 (which supports the ARMv7-A instruction set). That said, i can see how it can be confusing.

I think Lobo is correct about the repo, most X11, ARMv7 (and probably lower) applications should just work if the dependencies are present. The Neon accelerated Mplayer will be the first i try.
 
Mobile Firefox, from what I understand, is a gimped version of Firefox made to run on the typical low specs and resolutions of mobile devices. Pandora presumably won't need such a thing because it is powerful enough to use the standard version of Firefox.
 
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