iPhones/iPads xPhones/xPads - Puppy and other OSes on them

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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gcmartin

iPhones/iPads xPhones/xPads - Puppy and other OSes on them

#1 Post by gcmartin »

Contrasting Puppy linux with iOS/Android/WebOS and the platforms they run on.

Puppy (and most all other Linux) is designed to run on a Motherboard (MB). The MB is designed with a BIOS which inventories the MB at boot-time and present the MB peripheral status in a standard way for the OS to manage.

The MB as we have come to know it is a board where RAM for the OS to use can be installed by the PC user.

When Puppy boots, for those who may not have reviewed this, the distro's ISO may be, say for example, 500MB in size. But, the actual RAM used by Puppy for its system operations runs (for most of us) in the 100MB to 256MB range for most of what we do at any given time.

This means that once booted, the amount of RAM in use to support your operations is smaller than the overall size of all the files that is contained in the distro.

So in essence for MOST of us, system operations includes RAM and it also includes your HDD (or USB, etc).

In summary, now, you have RAM and you have places where data is stored (HDD/USB) via the Puppy filesystem(s).

WHY IS THIS INFORMATION BEING SHARED IN THIS THREAD?

Well, as I have pointed out in the past, distro size has little to no bearing on the system operations, RAM in use, or its performance. Some have problems accepting this. But, this thread intends to try to direct focus on xPhones and xPad technologies using our Puppy as a reference.

Some have already noticed the "MB" terminology of the xPhones and xPads. They are quoted as 256/512/1/2GB AND 4/8/16/32/64GB. The "AND" in the prior statement is very important. Those numbers are a correlation to what you have with traditional PCs where you are sold a traditional PC with, for example, 8GB RAM "AND" 2TB HDD.

The idea here is that you have an area for system operations "AND" you also have an area for data-programs storage over and above the running system's needs.

This is synonymous with what I share earlier about how Puppy uses your PC.

There is a major difference between a PC and xPads-xPhones; namely your ability to add RAM to the system, should you want to control system performance.

Let me step a little further. If I found that I was paging or swapping in a Windows/linux OS because of all the things I would be using simultaneously, I can FIX that by easily adding RAM to the PC MB.

But, you (or I) cannot do this for an xPhone/xPad. In fact, in some phone/pads, you can add an SDcard of some sort(s), but, this is NOT ADDING TO THE SYSTEM RAM where programs are run.

So, as the technologies move forward, we, the owners of the xPhone-xPad technologies are severely controlled/limited by this fact.

Advantage: If a Touchscreen traditional MB PC is used, a WebOS/Android/iOS type of screen desktop can be deployed which allows you to run a Puppy distro designed as such to check-in, or check-out applications from a "store-house" in a similar fashion as is seen in those OSes. Thus, given a proper Window Manager setup along with Puppy on a Touch PC would exceed what is current with the handhelds of today. Further, it would position Puppy for what (I think) is going to occur in the xPhone-xPad industry in the future, particularly with Microsoft's (and Apple's) needs of the future after MS's initial release.

(I going to go out on a limb and suggest, that Google Techs when proposing and given the green light to build Android, was foreseeing an OS that would not be limited to the xPhone/xPad platforms of today. Instead, they saw an OS which would break out of that platform mold to a platform which would run on those platforms AND also run on a traditional PC MB as well. Thus Google's Android must be the scariest of all xPad/xPhone models of today. Its Linux approach has an almost boundless directional offering.)

Yes, Puppy is approaching a cross-road as traditional PC use will diminish and touch-screen use continues to increase. The technology industry is moving more and more to an interactive approach. Even my TV that I just purchased responds to my shouting instructions to it....WOW

What will Puppy of tomorrow progress to... yes ... evolution occurs in the technology industry too. This is synonymous with the transportation industry's move from drawn-wagons to mobiles.

I think this community either has and with some slight evolutionary changes, it will attract additional and necessary talents to carry us forward. But, we will need to see the benefits we can derive approaching the cross-road. Will it be off to a dead-end, or will it be adding an additional lane in our growth?

Can you contribute to this understanding?

gcmartin

#2 Post by gcmartin »

Sony (and others) is introducing s line of touch PCs which is poised to provide a PC that Puppy "could" exploit. The benefit is that PUPPY's method of using RAM and embracing it into the Puppy Linux filesystem can provide an tremendously practical 'touch" experience.

Please remember, though, that the desktop experience is going to be viewed as a step backward as Windows8 on their desktop is a xPad/xPhone swipe kind of experience while Puppy's currently is a "mousie" experience.

But, for those who would find a "mousing" experience of a easy to carry or easy to Place (on a wall for example), this Hardware can be useful.

I would not expect a large community, here, to want to switch the OS that is shipped with those PCs because it is matching what we have on our xPads/xPhones. But, this announcement by Sony spells what 90% of all PCs, both touch and non-touch, will be purchased with over teh next year.

Expect a huge jump in "touch" offerings on PCs as the MS marketplace begins to migrate users into the new fold to match Apple-Google advancements of what we see in our hands.

Here to help

gcmartin

#3 Post by gcmartin »

Next week we will get a huge blast of Touch stuff when the covers of Window8 comes off.

Here's another device that Puppy could exploit. But, many will not be so anxious to displace Windows8 on this platform with a Pup (except for test or running in as a VM client for test)

Stay tuned for "Surface".

Eyes wide open: Look for signs of how we make PUPs much much more attractive on these kinds of touch-swipe devices.

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