Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#1

Post by wozname » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

I just discovered this system today, looks really cool.

Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.
openpandora.org

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#2

Post by jonprins » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:45 PM UTC

Neat project... except for the 8 games available on it. Why develop for something with 20 users when you can develop for a (more powerful) mobile phone with several orders of magnitude more potential customers?

Pretty cool that it's open and finally (after what.. three years or so?) shipping units, but I doubt it'll ever gain steam.

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#3

Post by ZeroGravitas » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:03 PM UTC

It's not actually "open source hardware" in the sense that you can build your own. They were a bit paranoid that it would get ripped off to the detriment of the project if they did that. But it is very community driven and based on a lot of open source software.

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#4

Post by wozname » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:07 PM UTC

jonprins wrote: post #2

Neat project... except for the 8 games available on it. Why develop for something with 20 users when you can develop for a (more powerful) mobile phone with several orders of magnitude more potential customers? Pretty cool that it's open and finally (after what.. three years or so?) shipping units, but I doubt it'll ever gain steam.

Yeah, I don't think you'd be targeting your latest masterpiece at this. Probably it will receive mostly ports of existing software.

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#5

Post by hvs » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

jonprins wrote: post #2

Neat project... except for the 8 games available on it. Why develop for something with 20 users when you can develop for a (more powerful) mobile phone with several orders of magnitude more potential customers? Pretty cool that it's open and finally (after what.. three years or so?) shipping units, but I doubt it'll ever gain steam.

It will also support a lot of retrogaming.

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#6

Post by wozname » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:09 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #3

It's not actually "open source hardware" in the sense that you can build your own. They were a bit paranoid that it would get ripped off to the detriment of the project if they did that. But it is very community driven and based on a lot of open source software.

Gutted, I thought it was open source. That would have been cool but I'm still impressed they managed to ship anything at all.

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#7

Post by ZeroGravitas » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:10 PM UTC

jonprins wrote: post #2

Neat project... except for the 8 games available on it. Why develop for something with 20 users when you can develop for a (more powerful) mobile phone with several orders of magnitude more potential customers? Pretty cool that it's open and finally (after what.. three years or so?) shipping units, but I doubt it'll ever gain steam.

It came out of the retro emulation community, so it has a couple of magnitudes more games available than that. Whether those old games appeal to you is a very good indicator for whether or not the Pandora is for you.

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#8

Post by Geee » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:20 PM UTC

jonprins wrote: post #2

Neat project... except for the 8 games available on it. Why develop for something with 20 users when you can develop for a (more powerful) mobile phone with several orders of magnitude more potential customers? Pretty cool that it's open and finally (after what.. three years or so?) shipping units, but I doubt it'll ever gain steam.

The specs (SoC, display) are almost identical to N900 and Palm Pre, so you can play games made for those. Palm Pre games run already on the N900. You could also put some other flavor of Linux on there such as Maemo or MeeGo when it comes out.

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#9

Post by momotomo » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:44 PM UTC

Surprised it's not android based given that it has an app store and some reasonably popular games already. Anything that would stop them moving in that direction?

Re: Pandora: Community driven linux based hardware project, actually shipping units.

#10

Post by jonprins » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:46 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #7

jonprins wrote: post #2

Neat project... except for the 8 games available on it. Why develop for something with 20 users when you can develop for a (more powerful) mobile phone with several orders of magnitude more potential customers? Pretty cool that it's open and finally (after what.. three years or so?) shipping units, but I doubt it'll ever gain steam.

It came out of the retro emulation community, so it has a couple of magnitudes more games available than that. Whether those old games appeal to you is a very good indicator for whether or not the Pandora is for you.

I spent about twenty minutes googling around trying to find a central repository/library/listing of games available/ported to it... with no luck. That would probably be important for gaining traction.