Pyra the successor to the OpenPandora device is now available to pre-order and it certainly sounds interesting.
I've never really looked into it before or heard much about it until multiple people emailed it in, so I am happy to cover it in case anyone else missed it too.
No, this isn't some Linux smartphone or tablet, but a full mini-computer that runs a proper Debian Linux distribution.
It might be an interesting low-end gaming device as it has shoulder buttons, little pads and ABXY buttons too.
You can see a preview of the device below:
The case uses simple screws, so you are able to freely open it open and tinker and swap things out if you fancy modding it. They say that you will be able to swap-out the initial CPU-board with new ones when they become available, so it does have the ability to be upgraded.
The included 6000mAh battery is pretty good for such a unit, certainly longer-lasting than what comes with most laptops, but as always it will depend on use.
One thing that I find really awesome if that it has fully configurable RGB-LEDs for notifications!
It even has a backlit keyboard, very slick.
My only issue with it, is that it's a little on the ugly side don't you think?
Find out more on the official Pyra website. You can pre-order one here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I've never really looked into it before or heard much about it until multiple people emailed it in, so I am happy to cover it in case anyone else missed it too.
No, this isn't some Linux smartphone or tablet, but a full mini-computer that runs a proper Debian Linux distribution.
It might be an interesting low-end gaming device as it has shoulder buttons, little pads and ABXY buttons too.
You can see a preview of the device below:
The case uses simple screws, so you are able to freely open it open and tinker and swap things out if you fancy modding it. They say that you will be able to swap-out the initial CPU-board with new ones when they become available, so it does have the ability to be upgraded.
The included 6000mAh battery is pretty good for such a unit, certainly longer-lasting than what comes with most laptops, but as always it will depend on use.
One thing that I find really awesome if that it has fully configurable RGB-LEDs for notifications!
It even has a backlit keyboard, very slick.
My only issue with it, is that it's a little on the ugly side don't you think?
Find out more on the official Pyra website. You can pre-order one here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: LinasEven if it powerful enough to run games, what exactly could you run on it? A few open-source games maybe. Gaming on ARM CPU on Linux is so niche that it's not even quantifiable. A low power i386 CPU would have made this way more useful.Linux on ARM isn't so bad, The prior Pandora is pretty capable and that is capable of playing native Linux games that are open sourced, such as the Quake 3 era (Quake3, Jedi Knight II/Acadamy, RTCW). Homeworld, recently even Serious Sam First and Second Encounter. The Pyra will have a considerable more amount of CPU horsepower over the Pandora with it's old cortex-A8. The Pandora community has a robust and thriving arm development community. such project like a static recompiled ARM version of Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo II executables have been ported to the Pandora, I guess that may be a bit of a grey area, but I believe it falls under the derived works category. another developer in our community put out a Nintendo DS emulator (Drastic) you may know on Android, it was first developed on the Pandora and offered for free. For the Pyra things like Doom3 which wasn't quite playable on the Pandora, may be promising on the Pyra.
Using x86 emulation via exagear desktop, I've had some promising results with games like Never Winters Nights things generally in the early 2000s and that was with x86 emulation and WINE. Performance with the native Linux client would be a bit better. With that emulation I've fired up x86 Linux steam, while most games outside of light ones like World of Goo were a bit sluggish there may be hope for in house streaming to work.
There is no question this is an expensive Niche device, designed on community feedback and one passionate German linux handheld enthusiast (EvilDragon) who does all of this outside of his normal day job and a metric ton of coffee. The cost is because of the small quantity of the runs, only several thousand will most likely be made unless interest picks up. The Pandora community while it has it's share of people that just like it for it's ability to play games and emulators, many see it as a platform to develop their own games or get involved with porting onto the ARM platform, people who want to flex their software development skills and figure out how to optimize code on limited CPU power. I personally love the Pandora, soon Pyra for it's utility. I can carry around one device I can have a ton of games on with built in game controls, but have a keyboard, write code on the device itself and compile it with all the tools you need. It's also a great for remote administration, ssh/vnc etc.
What most articles seem to miss is the module design. the CPU, memory and eMMC storage are on a modular CPU board. Down the road, it will be possible to replace the CPU with an entirely different one. potentially even x86, however how Intel nixed the atom line who knows.
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Quoting: ElectricPrismSo a "gaming device" that showcases LibreOffice, Terminal and GIMP - someone needs to talk to their marketing person about proper marketing.Even the prior Pandora could handle all of those emulators minus gamecube. The Pyra will be much more capable. Honestly The Pyra and prior Pandora is not really marketed period, nor is it expected to be massively profitable, it is just what it is, built on community interest in a device that is a handheld computer that just happens to have gaming controls. Some see the merit in the unique features it has, most see it as a joke, most of us don't care what the masses think.
So about ~$700 for a device which probably plays little more than NES, SNES, N64, PSX and maybe one or two GameCube roms.
The practicality and logic of creating this device completely baffles me.
3 Likes, Who?
If you advertise games console emulation by way of showing off commercial games, while (done right) legal, it will make payment processors regard it as a potentially infringing device. There is obviously an illegal way to do it, and the distinction between bundling every popular console game under the sun, and advertising the ability to play them as legal copies, isn't made.
While I agree advertising could be done, and better. Emulation alone would also be selling it short, the Pandora was an emulation device, wanting to be a laptop. The Pyra meets the bar on the power and screen real-estate required for regular desktop use.
Even before the introduction of keyboards, for the devices the community made their own, there were games aplenty. Homebrew galore, capturing the feeling of the Amiga days. There is a lot of ingenuity in getting things to run, and the types of games that do, ties in nicely with being a handheld. New games are largely best enjoyed mouse and keyboard, on hardware more powerful than a similarly modern handheld could ever be, regardless of architecture.
So if you go one step beyond laptop, and add cellular services, its all of a sudden the only device needed for
listening to music, browsing the web, phoning, sending email, playing games, GPS-ing etc.
It cant, (for reasons physics don't allow) be a good camera, so the community said no to that. It is however a good asset for a real camera, having the two SD-card slots in the front.
I regard typing on my (s3) Android device a non-starter, and dragging around a laptop that I need a table or in the very least to sit down to use, just makes it the wrong tool for a job that I want to get done, there and then.
Sure my Thinkpad has Libreboot and my phone has Replicant, because I care about secure hardware, and am willing to put a lot of effort in it. Doesn't mean I want to.
In acquiring mobile hardware that isn't known to be bad alone, that narrows it down really fast, there are those options, the novena laptop, the GTA04 and neo900 cellphone.
The Pyra does away with a lot of manual and technically advanced set-up and maintenance. I know how to do it, its fun in its own right, but when you want to get things done, its a hassle. Besides, I no longer want to support the key-boardless spyware-laden broken hardware that is glued together and not repairable, made to break and extending humanity only as far as to prevent the people who made it from killing themselves in desperation. That is sick.
I know a lot of things are like that, which I think is more of a bad thing, not something to blame the times we are in for.
The Pyra comes ready to use, is fabricated and designed in Germany, with a case from Greece, its safe, stays updated, can be upgraded, doesn't track the user, and it has a real OS. And while the small team is putting in insane hours, they have a sense of honour in what they do, and how they do it.
Vastly different, in a world where most mobile things are hostile towards user and environment alike. :D
Last edited by kingu on 26 May 2016 at 1:23 am UTC
While I agree advertising could be done, and better. Emulation alone would also be selling it short, the Pandora was an emulation device, wanting to be a laptop. The Pyra meets the bar on the power and screen real-estate required for regular desktop use.
Even before the introduction of keyboards, for the devices the community made their own, there were games aplenty. Homebrew galore, capturing the feeling of the Amiga days. There is a lot of ingenuity in getting things to run, and the types of games that do, ties in nicely with being a handheld. New games are largely best enjoyed mouse and keyboard, on hardware more powerful than a similarly modern handheld could ever be, regardless of architecture.
So if you go one step beyond laptop, and add cellular services, its all of a sudden the only device needed for
listening to music, browsing the web, phoning, sending email, playing games, GPS-ing etc.
It cant, (for reasons physics don't allow) be a good camera, so the community said no to that. It is however a good asset for a real camera, having the two SD-card slots in the front.
I regard typing on my (s3) Android device a non-starter, and dragging around a laptop that I need a table or in the very least to sit down to use, just makes it the wrong tool for a job that I want to get done, there and then.
Sure my Thinkpad has Libreboot and my phone has Replicant, because I care about secure hardware, and am willing to put a lot of effort in it. Doesn't mean I want to.
In acquiring mobile hardware that isn't known to be bad alone, that narrows it down really fast, there are those options, the novena laptop, the GTA04 and neo900 cellphone.
The Pyra does away with a lot of manual and technically advanced set-up and maintenance. I know how to do it, its fun in its own right, but when you want to get things done, its a hassle. Besides, I no longer want to support the key-boardless spyware-laden broken hardware that is glued together and not repairable, made to break and extending humanity only as far as to prevent the people who made it from killing themselves in desperation. That is sick.
I know a lot of things are like that, which I think is more of a bad thing, not something to blame the times we are in for.
The Pyra comes ready to use, is fabricated and designed in Germany, with a case from Greece, its safe, stays updated, can be upgraded, doesn't track the user, and it has a real OS. And while the small team is putting in insane hours, they have a sense of honour in what they do, and how they do it.
Vastly different, in a world where most mobile things are hostile towards user and environment alike. :D
Last edited by kingu on 26 May 2016 at 1:23 am UTC
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Quoting: LinasEven if it powerful enough to run games, what exactly could you run on it? A few open-source games maybe. Gaming on ARM CPU on Linux is so niche that it's not even quantifiable. A low power i386 CPU would have made this way more useful.
I suppose you can play games that have open source engines. That includes anything playable in ScummVM, AGS adventure games (there are quite a bit of recent ones), and various open engines reimplementations. So it's not nothing. I wonder how playable is Full Throttle or Loom on such device with its controls.
Last edited by Shmerl on 26 May 2016 at 3:35 am UTC
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Mountain Man May 26, 2016
Since when do geeks care about things like practicality when you have something this cool? I mean come on, a fully functional computer that you can fit in your pants pocket? How is that not awesome? I'd love to get one just to have because I think it's neat, but the price is well outside of my budget/comfort zone.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 26 May 2016 at 3:34 am UTC
Last edited by Mountain Man on 26 May 2016 at 3:34 am UTC
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You can find cheaper computers with keyboards which you can fit in your pocket that can also run proper glibc Linux :) For example Sony Ericsson XPERIA Pro (you can run Nemo / Sailfish / Plasma Mobile on it)
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Huh, seems like this could be interesting to use.
Last edited by Aimela on 26 May 2016 at 3:54 am UTC
Last edited by Aimela on 26 May 2016 at 3:54 am UTC
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ElectricPrism May 26, 2016
Quoting: Mountain ManSince when do geeks care about things like practicality when you have something this cool?
I think it starts to get sticky when you require your gamers to also be geeks.
Quoting: TrashyMGQuoting: ElectricPrismSo a "gaming device" that showcases LibreOffice, Terminal and GIMP - someone needs to talk to their marketing person about proper marketing.Even the prior Pandora could handle all of those emulators minus gamecube. The Pyra will be much more capable. Honestly The Pyra and prior Pandora is not really marketed period, nor is it expected to be massively profitable, it is just what it is, built on community interest in a device that is a handheld computer that just happens to have gaming controls. Some see the merit in the unique features it has, most see it as a joke, most of us don't care what the masses think.
So about ~$700 for a device which probably plays little more than NES, SNES, N64, PSX and maybe one or two GameCube roms.
The practicality and logic of creating this device completely baffles me.
Thank you for adding to my understanding as to what the creators were thinking when they made this. It's a fascinating device that's for sure, and I'm sure the passion of the creators persuring it's maximum utility will give birth to some really fascinating game ports as @TrashyMG pointed out suchas StarCraft, Diablo and Diablo II ARM.
Quoting: kinguIf you advertise games console emulation by way of showing off commercial games, while (done right) legal, it will make payment processors regard it as a potentially infringing device. There is obviously an illegal way to do it, and the distinction between bundling every popular console game under the sun, and advertising the ability to play them as legal copies, isn't made.
While I agree advertising could be done, and better. Emulation alone would also be selling it short, the Pandora was an emulation device, wanting to be a laptop. The Pyra meets the bar on the power and screen real-estate required for regular desktop use.
Even before the introduction of keyboards, for the devices the community made their own, there were games aplenty. Homebrew galore, capturing the feeling of the Amiga days. There is a lot of ingenuity in getting things to run, and the types of games that do, ties in nicely with being a handheld. New games are largely best enjoyed mouse and keyboard, on hardware more powerful than a similarly modern handheld could ever be, regardless of architecture.
So if you go one step beyond laptop, and add cellular services, its all of a sudden the only device needed for
listening to music, browsing the web, phoning, sending email, playing games, GPS-ing etc.
It cant, (for reasons physics don't allow) be a good camera, so the community said no to that. It is however a good asset for a real camera, having the two SD-card slots in the front.
I regard typing on my (s3) Android device a non-starter, and dragging around a laptop that I need a table or in the very least to sit down to use, just makes it the wrong tool for a job that I want to get done, there and then.
Sure my Thinkpad has Libreboot and my phone has Replicant, because I care about secure hardware, and am willing to put a lot of effort in it. Doesn't mean I want to.
In acquiring mobile hardware that isn't known to be bad alone, that narrows it down really fast, there are those options, the novena laptop, the GTA04 and neo900 cellphone.
The Pyra does away with a lot of manual and technically advanced set-up and maintenance. I know how to do it, its fun in its own right, but when you want to get things done, its a hassle. Besides, I no longer want to support the key-boardless spyware-laden broken hardware that is glued together and not repairable, made to break and extending humanity only as far as to prevent the people who made it from killing themselves in desperation. That is sick.
I know a lot of things are like that, which I think is more of a bad thing, not something to blame the times we are in for.
The Pyra comes ready to use, is fabricated and designed in Germany, with a case from Greece, its safe, stays updated, can be upgraded, doesn't track the user, and it has a real OS. And while the small team is putting in insane hours, they have a sense of honour in what they do, and how they do it.
Vastly different, in a world where most mobile things are hostile towards user and environment alike. :D
I think it would be safe to advertise the device using pictures of open source games like Red Eclipse, SuperTuxKart, WarSow and even fan made ROMS for the SNES that showcase SNES like graphics.
Not to mention showcasing PC games suchas on Steam shouldn't create any friction between any legitimate Gaming Device Manufacturer as PC manufactures have no connection to lock-in contracts with game developers.
The Niche market is fascinating. For me personally I would begin to show interest had the device been physically larger, but then again I don't expect to be the demographic.
To me it makes more sense to buy a high end Tablet, install Ubuntu Touch and get a Bluetooth Keyboard with trackpad and or mouse. And even connect a Bluetooth Controller suchas the PS3 or PS4 controller without any addition dongles.
I praise the modular design, and if they can significantly improve the CPU power or display size I may show interest, I know I'm not the demographic and I root them on, so good luck too bad it's not made for me.
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ElectricPrism May 26, 2016
Oh one other thing
Why in the fsck doesn't this have a IPS display? I realize it would increase power output but theres no way you could play on this thing in the car or anywhere outdoors without IPS brightness.
This is what I envision all over again.
Last edited by ElectricPrism on 26 May 2016 at 5:42 am UTC
Quote720p 5" LCD with resistive touchscreen
Why in the fsck doesn't this have a IPS display? I realize it would increase power output but theres no way you could play on this thing in the car or anywhere outdoors without IPS brightness.
This is what I envision all over again.
Last edited by ElectricPrism on 26 May 2016 at 5:42 am UTC
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