[Arm-netbook] Operating Systems, CPU Cards, EOMA68

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Miguel Garcia <gacuest at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2014-09-10 10:54 GMT+02:00 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net>:
>> this is triggered mainly by the discussion last month from manuel, i
>> had a bit of time to think and i came up with an idea.
>>
>> if you recall, manuel asked "would it be ok to buy a specific model of
>> CPU card, install an OS that only works with the Games Console?" and
>> the answer was "yes... but you could not call it EOMA68 compliant"
>>
>> so anyway i thought about this a bit and i figured that it makes a lot
>> of sense to have the OS (which really has nothing to do with the CPU
>> Card per se) basically adjust so that it works with whatever it
>> detects...
>>
>> ... in other words, from an end-user perspective, you would buy a
>> Gaming *Card*, or an Work *Card*, or an Android *Card*, or a
>> Photo/Camera *Card* that would have an OS preinstalled which adapts to
>> the base units it's plugged into.
>>
>> i'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on this.
>
> I think it is best to do EOMA-68 compatible with all devices. Those
> devices that need special software, which also are compatible with
> EOMA-68 and with own cards (a renamed EOMA-68).
>
> The other way, you have to define the standard controls for all
> consoles compatible with the Gaming *Card*.

 taking the Gaming "Card" as a very good example: yes.  exactly.  ok,
that's one possibility.  it would help if the Gaming "OS" (or the game
itself) detected the various different capabilities of the base
unit(s) it was plugged into.

 just as with existing linux games where you install a game and you go
in and reconfigure the controls to your preferences, i see no reason
to consider this to be any different from that scenario _except_ that:

 a) swapping the entire computer between base units might be made
easier if the controls preferences were either saved on a
per-base-unit per-game basis or

 b) a reasonable set of defaults (keys, mouse, touch, joystick) was
set up which would reasonably be expected to work across a large
number of base units and

 c) there are going to be some games that simply cannot be played well
(or at all) on certain base units (games designed to be used
exclusively with touch panels) and well... being philosophical about
that, they should unplug the CPU Card and plug it into a base in which
that game _will_ work.

just out of curiosity, are you intending to write games from scratch
for this unit or to use pre-existing games software and install that?

l.