Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition, Maemo or Moblin on a Pandora?

Today I was poking around with the idea of installing something other than Ångström on an OpenPandora. There are a few nice candidates I ran across:

• Maemo - This was one a lot of people over at the OpenPandora Forums post talking about Maemo on the pandora. Seems the discussion came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be worthwhile to try very hard to port Maemo over to work on the pandora, even though there is a new version of Maemo coming out soon, which will use much less closed-source applications and will support ARM architechture as well as OMAP3 (which OpenPandora uses)... All in all, it's by far the closest match.
  
  
• Ubuntu MID Edition - This one had me a little bit excited at first, but then I realised it was designed for x86 architechture so it wouldn't work on a pandora. BUT! I love the fact that it's made by the people who make Ubuntu. They have released Ubuntu 9.04, which supports the ARM CPU, so that gives me hope when it comes to them porting MID Edition over to the ARM architechture... Anyway, this would be my dream OS for a pandora, for a couple reasons:
  1. It supports Adobe Flash.
  (But I know it can't be supported even if ported to ARM because the Adobe Flash package isn't open source, so it wouldn't be able to be ported over itself) But you know what that means, Alternativa-made games would work on it. :D
  2. It supports Java.
  Not just JavaScript, but actual Sun Microsystems Java. That is something Maemo doesn't have, AFAIK.
  3. It's Ubuntu.
  So you get all the support and applications that Ubuntu does, because of the large repositories. You also get the steady updates and the friendly community forums they have.
  In my personal opinion, if I flipped open any screen and saw that desktop glowing back at me, that would just be the icing on the cake. Even though, I'm only listing ALL of the OSs I would want to see on a UMPC, this one has got to be, by far, my favorite so far.
• Moblin - This one is actually being developed by Intel, but it's open-source, which is kind of surprising. Sadly, it only supports Intel ATOM CPUs (obviously, since Intel is making it) which means not ARM or others.
  Here is an intro video they made talking about it's features... Looks really sleek and comfortable to use. Well, that's about all for today. See you tomorrow!
  

OpenPandora May Release Very Soon

Today I would like to talk about my most awaited upcoming device, OpenPandora. Above is a video from Craigix giving a demo of the completed keymats and showing progress on the device.
You might compare this to other handheld gaming devices, but also to PDAs...
For example, PSP or a Netbook.

Now, let's get down to business.


Here are the specs:

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
• 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
• PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• 800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
• Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
• Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
• Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• Around 10+ Hours battery life

Compared to other handheld gaming devices currently in production, OpenPandora has the most RAM and the fastest CPU I've seen. From my experiences playing hacked PSPs, the limitations of them, and what people wish they could do, OpenPandora is like a dream come true.

First of all, it has TWO analog nubs, which makes playing First Person Shooters the way it was meant to be on a console. The hassles of playing an FPS with only 1 analog nub made the games unplayable. But, with 2 analog nubs, you can actually use the right nub to control your look, and the left nub to control your movement and strafing (Like anyone who plays an FPS should recognize).

Now, when it comes to trying to enter console commands, or anything besides just simply playing the game, the full QWERTY keyboard is a life saver. For example, if you have had any experience with playing Quake on PSP, you feel the pain. Now if you play it on a Pandora, you can simply press the tilde key "~" to bring down the console, and just basicly type in your command and push enter. It's like a miracle.

Other hassles you may experience, such as on mobile phones or other handheld devices with internet connectivity, the screen size and web browser support is very limited and painful to navigate. But the Pandora's screen resolution is 800 pixels wide by 480 pixels tall. Along with touch-screen capability you can easily click and drag elements in web pages. Not to mention the Pandora runs Linux and uses Firefox as the web browser, so you shouldn't have any problems with javascript or flash objects on web pages.

Personally, I'm buying one as soon as it's available. There is no "set in stone" release date yet, but the development process is in it's final phases at this time and it shouldn't be too much longer now.