Maybe this was already answered somewhere but I couldn't find it. Does the Karma run Linux under the hood like the Empeg does? Or is Karma a more strict embedded system with no multi-purpose capabilities- like every other portable player.

Maybe this was already answered somewhere but I couldn't find it. Does the Karma run Linux under the hood like the Empeg does? Or is Karma a more strict embedded system with no multi-purpose capabilities- like every other portable player.

Definitely the latter. You're unlikely to find a WMA DRM-capable player that has multi-purpose capabilities.

Peter

That's a shame- but expected considered the tigher pricing and design specs for a portable player.

a WMA DRM-capable player

{May be about to expose my ignorance, but}
so you can transfer to Karma and play the WM9 Series DRM stuff? Or just stuff with the v6/v7 flavor of DRM? Or the player firmware just doesn't care at all?

I think they just got fed up making Linux work in a realtime enviroment. The guys did a great job with the empeg, but it's not as if Linux was ever designed to run something like the empeg/Karma. It is a miracle they managed as good a jobs as they did with empeg/Linux.

With the Karma they are using ecos, which was designed from the start to be a realtime OS.

I am not certain it was the real time nature as the embedded systems environment. Don't forget, the empeg is not as power limited as a portable player would be.

>I think they just got fed up making Linux work in a realtime enviroment.

Actually, I did ask Hugo and Rob about that when I was visiting, and they basically said they'd love to have used Linux, but due to the MS DRM constraints they couldn't open source it. So they had to find a different OS platform to use, and Hugo said he'd really have prefered Linux over that one (for various reasons).

So it's not a lack of Linux capability at all here, just DRM concerns.

Rob & Hugo are welcome to correct me if I've misunderstood any of that.

Cheers

i dont understand what the problem could be... the player from my understanding is from the same tree as v3 on the empeg, which if i recall correctly, is going to be module based, right? so shouldnt that mean that while the player/kernel/os is open source on the karma, the modules that have DRM could stay closed.

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice if MS let you do that.

happens all the time, in principle at least. MS hasn't gone ahead and restricted wine/winex use of their dll libraries. No permission required, on the assumption that you really own the license for the windows product.

I believe there's good concern that someone like me might hack a backdoor into a driver to extract PCM audio samples as DRM content is played back.

Not that audiograbber doesn't already do that on Windows!

Cheers

So it's not a lack of Linux capability at all here, just DRM concerns.

Well, that and the fact there's no MMU so speak of!

Rob

That's why ucLinux exists!

That's why ucLinux exists!

I was actually going to ask about ucLinux in Amersfoort. Decided to leave the question until later, over a few drinks. Unfortunately Alzheimers set in...