Messages

1

New products and alternatives / Pandora Is Starting To Really Interest Me

« on: December 09, 2008, 05:02:51 pm »

I've got mixed feelings/impressions on Gentoo. While I love the distro (hence me using it on my main box), it seems odd to port it to the Pandora, only to add in a packaging system. Seems like it would be better to just port Debian with the optimizations or something to me, but I'm not going to complain having about more (as in quantity) optimized distros available.

Reasons are two fold:
1) Hard-core Gentoo users are almost as fanatical as hard-core BSD users on wanting to port their operating system choice on every platform imaginable.
2) Portage allows you to port and do some optimizations with almost no effort of the end user, just emerge the needed package (pending it's flagged as Arm compatible).

2

New products and alternatives / Pandora Is Starting To Really Interest Me

« on: December 07, 2008, 08:15:32 pm »

You mentioned that Ubuntu will be available, (I've also read over at the Pandora forums about people working on Gentoo...)....while that is good, won't I still be in the same boat as with the Zaurus, that is being dependent upon people to recompile apps so that they run on the ARM  CPU??

Thanks.

With Gentoo, you could compile apps directly on the device by just using the package manager, and Ubuntu should have a fair number ARM packages available. Still, the utility of this device to a non-gamer, and non-programmer is highly debatable, pending you need more than web browsing and terminal use.

3

New products and alternatives / Pandora Is Starting To Really Interest Me

« on: November 16, 2008, 05:19:10 pm »

It looks like they're looking for developers to write apps and do kernel work to seed with pre-release units still: http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=45218

Getting developers from the Zaurus community to work on it would be great, IMO, as the productivity of the Zaurus could be moved to the Pandora.

4

Asus Eee PC / Alternative Distros

« on: November 14, 2008, 03:48:25 pm »

A recommendation when installing another distro to an SDHC card; don't use the internal SSD for /home. If you fill up /home Xandros can't even boot and KDE can't load in other distros (IceWM did load in Mandriva, but it complained about dcopserver interprocess communications). I accidentally filled up /home (16GB SSD) by copying files from an external disc that I meant to copy to SDHC card, which had enough room, to the internal SSD, which didn't.

If I install another distro, I'll likely just have /home be on the card, and link to the internal SSD from there.

5

5x00 General discussions / Zr5700, Still Good?

« on: October 31, 2008, 02:43:36 pm »

To answer 6 first, no, not really. The ZR series don't run anything but the internal programs, IIRC. Also, the probability of finding software to convert modern formats back and forth to it is minimal.

BTW, this forum is actually about the SL-5x00 series that succeeded the ZR series and is much more versatile.

6

New products and alternatives / Pandora Is Starting To Really Interest Me

« on: September 30, 2008, 04:13:54 pm »

Sooo... The pre-order sites are up. Anyone is going to jump in?

Too poor at the moment, but I'd take the wait-and-see approach even if I had the money. The more practical aspects of a handheld platform like this seem to be secondary to gaming in the minds of the developers and the current community surrounding it.

7

Asus Eee PC / Alternative Distros

« on: September 14, 2008, 11:41:04 pm »

Oh yeah, if anyone wants a works straight out of the box distro for the EEE, Mandriva (spring 2008 release) is the way to go. I installed it to an 8GB SDHC in my EEE 900 a few days ago to try out some things (mainly the updated video drivers compared to Xandros), and the hot keys, wifi and most other things worked. No scripts to run, just works. I've heard some things like the mic don't work, but at least that's not a critical thing. All other distros I've tried don't have WiFi out of the box, and need to plug it into Ethernet to run a script to get it working.

8

SIMpad forum / Simpad Keeps Turning Off

« on: June 04, 2008, 03:17:46 pm »

It sounds like the partition table was corrupted in your flash. JTAG should be able to fix the problem, unless the physical chip died (in which case, you'd need to replace the chip, then JTAG in a new image).

Note: General info obtained from other platforms, I likely won't be able to help with anything more specific to the Simpad.

9

General Discussion / Pandora

« on: May 20, 2008, 09:24:13 pm »

Here's a video of the prototype running a slideshow, compared to a Nintendo DS Lite:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1WOMFrOCti4&feature=related

Is anyone following the Pandora scene? I'm curious, do they plan on a better keyboard or if they've finally given in and added a second set of shoulder buttons in the final model? How's the software side coming along?

10

Asus Eee PC / Anyone Else Getting, Or Have Gotten, An Eee Pc 900?

« on: May 13, 2008, 03:42:31 pm »

I ordered mine from Newegg yesterday, 20GB Linux version of course. Should be here Thursday according to UPS. I can't wait for it's larger screen and more powerful capabilities (hooray for non-underclocked FSB). The storage bump is nice too, as I could actually have the SD card slot open to take pictures from my camera's card, instead of needing it filled for the EEE's own storage.

11

Asus Eee PC / Asus Eee Pc 701 Vs Fujitsu P2120?

« on: May 05, 2008, 04:37:54 pm »

The 701 beats it severely performance wise. Transmeta Crusoe is no match for a Celeron M, even the underclocked one in the EEE 701.  512MB vs. 384 or 256MB of RAM is noticable even under Ubuntu. The 701 runs rings around my P1120.

The newer 900 model is even faster in testing (likely due to full-speed FSB).

12

Asus Eee PC / How Much Ram Is In Your Eee Pc?

« on: April 03, 2008, 06:30:07 pm »

I've upgraded to 1GB, because I was thinking about using VMWare Player to emulate Windows, and it was cheap at Staples. I've not noticed any real difference in speed, though I haven't done much in Synaptic since then. Prior to getting the 1GB stick, it had ground to a halt a couple of times trying to unload and reload libraries when it ran out of memory.

13

Asus Eee PC / Alternative Distros

« on: March 08, 2008, 07:59:54 pm »

I just have Ubuntu 7.10 on the SDHC with the scripts to get it more ready for the EEE ran (look in the eeeusercom wiki for the script set). Xandros is still on the SSD with Advanced desktop enabled, mplayer downgraded to have h.264 support and apt-pinning of repositories setup.

14

Asus Eee PC / Any Eee Pc Owners Here?

« on: March 04, 2008, 02:51:18 pm »

I'm waiting for ASUS to add an internal 20+GB HD and slightly higher res screen.

2GB internal storage on a laptop does not make sense to me, but it is just a matter of time before ASUS reel out the "enhanced versions" of the EEE PC. So just have to wait a little longer

You could always get an 8G model and add in a 16GB SDHC (~$70 now) to get 20GB of free space.

Of course, with the new models announced, I'm guessing you're going to continue to wait.

15

Asus Eee PC / Fff Pc Is Getting Real!

« on: March 03, 2008, 05:12:43 pm »

I'm looking forward to the announcement. The main gripe I have with the EEE 701 is it's screen. Of course, I'm a bit spoiled since my last ultraportable subnotebook  before the EEE had an 8.9" touchscreen. Depending on when this goes on sale, I might sell my EEE PC 701 to my roommate and grab this new one.

The speakers look to be on the bottom. I wonder how they'll perform compared to the speakers on the sides of the screen of the current models. As long as you're not in a loud environment, the current speakers do pretty good.