Dingoonity.org

Legacy has no actual technical advantages. The only reason some applications work in legacy and don't in OD is because of bad programming habits like static-linking or directly accessing the filesystem pathes for various hardware (overclock, volume, tv-out), which ultimately makes the given software work only on a particular version of the system and makes it incompatible with os updates that introduce changes in that matter. I'm personally guilty of such practices - some of my very old ports were static linked against ancient libraries.

FTFY. I'm sorry if that comes off harsh, it's not my intention at all, but if you have like 1/3 to 1/2 of apps/games/emulators that work on legacy not working on OD, then I can't see any advantage at all on that from an end-user standpoint. Last I've seen, there are a few emulators (mainly for arcade) still not ported over to OD (usually because there's no source for them and the original contributors have left the scene), and a lot of games/engines haven't been ported too - I'm specifically looking at Ur-Quan Masters, OpenTyrian and OpenBor, and last I've looked, games based on the Doom Engine (Doom 1/2, Heretic, Hexen, etc.) also didn't work. I may be outdated though, so corrections are welcome. The wiki is offline, so it's even harder to keep track of things now.

And related, do you even ever boot in Native anymore? Of just always in Dingux?

I do boot into native very often, with a bit of disgust I might add, for a single reason: NES emulator. Unfortunately, even at this day and age, there are still no good NES emulators for either Legacy Dingux or Opendingux. The ones that do exist for Legacy Dingux are no good at all - they mostly suffer from stuttering or horrible sound lags.

Well, I'll go back and duck in my corner now, waiting for the flames... :-)

There's a simple rule what doesn't work:
1) it's statically linked against old libs
2) it accesses cpu overclock, tv-out or other hardware directly via built-in menus rather than gmenu2x

#1 is mainly the oldest game ports
#2 is pretty much limited to certain emulators

There's really just a few apps that don't work in OD, unfortunatelly for some it's popular emulators

FTFY. I'm sorry if that comes off harsh, it's not my intention at all, but if you have like 1/3 to 1/2 of apps/games/emulators that work on legacy not working on OD, then I can't see any advantage at all on that from an end-user standpoint. Last I've seen, there are a few emulators (mainly for arcade) still not ported over to OD (usually because there's no source for them and the original contributors have left the scene), and a lot of games/engines haven't been ported too - I'm specifically looking at Ur-Quan Masters, OpenTyrian and OpenBor, and last I've looked, games based on the Doom Engine (Doom 1/2, Heretic, Hexen, etc.) also didn't work. I may be outdated though, so corrections are welcome. The wiki is offline, so it's even harder to keep track of things now.

There's another side of it. If legacy was left as a standard, you'd complain about the difficulty of the installation and handling of it. When there's finally people improving the alternative firmware for Dingoo A320, there's complaints about compatibility which in no way originates from OpenDingux, but rather the unability to recompile certain apps due to the lack of their source code. I understand that for some people OpenDingux is not yet usable because they miss their favourite emulators, but on the other hand the completely rewritten drivers and support for hardware surface should ultimately boost the speed of emulation, as soon as the emulators in question get an OpenDingux port.

As for the doom engine games, they all work fine. There's even a new port of Heretic & Hexen that makes them 100% playable (as opposed to the older ports which had no way to cycle items/weapons or look up/down)

@coccijoe & @zear:
I stand corrected regarding Doom engine games and others. Still hoping for a port of Ur-Quan though :-)

And yes, I get that sticking with legacy means supporting a broken platform - I'm a software developer myself (though not focused on embedded platforms at the moment), and I understand the burden it is and that many problems on legacy platforms can be fixed only by rewriting everything from scratch. I also understand the chicken and egg problem that brings, and that you mention: the newer platform may not necessarily support the older stuff, but it fixes long standing problems on the legacy platform.

I think part of the problem could be mitigated by dropping the "pre-release" status on OD already - from the looks of it, it seems to be at least as stable and functional (barring userspace incompatibilities) as legacy dingux. I think that would raise the mindshare on OD and maybe attract more developers to develop for it. I say this because I've seen a couple of emu/app releases lately that apparently still targeted legacy.

While being a software dev, I use the dingoo primarily as an end-user, so I also understand where the frustration from creatica comes from: The Dingoo / Dingux is supposed to be primarily a platform for emulation fans, and yet, the emulation part of it still lacks in many aspects. Case in point, the NES emulator I mentioned previously. I could go on about how SNES emu is also still so-so, despite the source being available. I mean, for a platform that's supposed to be for emulation, the most popular emulation platforms (NES, SNES, Genesis, etc.) have sub-par support, and instead we get emulation for completely obscure or niche platforms like Atari Lynx, and Vectrex (seriously?). The gist of my point is, it seems we have a lot of talented developers working on the core platform and/or on their own pet projects, but there doesn't seem to exist as much interest on the part that really matters: userspace, and the more popular stuff. And that's frustrating.

Look, I'm not demanding anything, I know you guys are just scratching your own itch and just happen to share it with everyone else, which is all well and good. In fact, I don't mind the core platform (OD) getting more attention so much as I mind so much talent being wasted in useless (to most people) userspace stuff (meaning emulators/games) like I mentioned previously.

But I digress. Yes, I wish I had the time to spend on scratching those itches of mine too, but between a wife, two kids and already getting paid to work on software dev, there's not too much time or energy left to do anything else but play around :-P

Personally, I am grateful for all Dingoo enthusiasts that make games and emulators I enjoy hours with and I don?t mind registering here just to say thank you to them

Well, after a personal hotline, all is in order! Great thanks to Ayla, Zear and Surkow for (1) convincing me to go OD, (2) peptalks and instructions and (3) an enjoyable evening with oldskool irc.

Thanks!