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Linux On Your Tablet PC
tyman writes "Michael Rolig has created a Debian-based linux package for your Tablet PC. The support for various tablet features is limited by the features on the tablet Rolig owns, such as the "half-working" pen button features. One important missing feature is the screen-swivel buttons common with most tablets. However this is a good start for the development of linux for Tablet PCs."
I have a TC1000 and it crawls with WinXP. I'm going to try this and hopefully get a bit more oomph out of it. Debian's my favourite distro anyway.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I love my Tablet PC (a Gateway M275), and have eagerly been awaiting better Linux implementation.
Most of the time I use it as a Notebook. However, it es excellent for reading and marking up PDF files, or for doing art and drawing. Basically, the Tablet mode is a much better form factor than a Notebook for these activities.
The question should be, why NOT own a Tablet PC?
Some anti-Tablet comments remind me of those IBM-PC users back in the 80's, who used to make fun of Apple and their mice......who needs a mouse?
Sadly, I was one of those people. This time I'm trying not to be so dense.
I think, therefore I thought.
1. Xrandr rotate extension does not work on Linux.
:P
2. Not all video adapter drivers support rotation.
3. Of some that support some do it on software and it makes screen handling extremely slow.
4. Framebuffer drivers exist only for couple adapters.
5. Vesafb works, 1280x1024 screen rotated CCW takes approx. 2-3 seconds to redraw completely on slower cards. (Like my i865G) on the super fast cards it's only like 1s.
6. With all solutions you have to restart atm the X when you want to rotate your screen.
There are exceptions to these rules but practically it goes like this. Linux has an extremely bad support for rotating X screens. I know this, bought a HIGH end tft panel with pivot and researched on the matter.
(7. The same i865G that takes 2-3 seconds for a complete screen refresh when rotated does the same instantly on Windows. The X's architecture simply isn't upto par.)
Got to suck having bought a tablet pc and finding this out..
Does anyone know of work towards a totally stylus based GUI? Right now everything in the GUI world seems based around pointing and clicking. However, gestures seem a natural for a transfer to a pen-based GUI.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
i have an acer TM c100. 256mb ram, 800mhz processor, 40gb hard drive, full size keyboard, 1024x768 tft screen and ONLY 1.4kg. for £850 + VAT last year.
hardware it has PXE boot (so you can get it started without needing to go through USB floppy or USB cd-rom) wireless and 10/100 hardwire, and firewire and usb-2, i810 ac97 sound, IR port, a tracker-pad (with all 6 buttons recognised by linux) and the full screen is ESD-touch-sensitive.
all other laptops you are bloody stupid to have bought, if you ask me: buy one of these and strap some bricks on the back if it makes you feel any better.
me? i would be better off if i stuck with a 2.4 kernel or a debian/stable system because there are binary drivers available for the Wacom touchscreen chipset.
the incompatibility between the drivers and X is due to the drivers (available on sf.net) being compiled for only 19200 and 38400 baud, but the wacom device's baud rate defaults to 115200.
so i had to patch and recompile the X driver to cope with 115200 baud. i only managed this once - and then upgraded and lost it!
the only other thing is that ACPI is not properly recognised (every single linux kernel presently available goes "invalid ACPI checksum, squawk!")
as a consequence of this, you must select which of the networking devices you wish to see on your PCI bus at boot time - the RTL 8139, or the extra Texas Instruments 3.3V PCMCIA slot with a built-in orinico-compatible 802.11b wireless device.
if you press the "flip" button, forget it - reboot time to get networking back.
what else... oh yes. after a year of virtually constant use, i've cracked the screen "side" catches (but they still work) the "middle" catch broke last week (but the one on the other side for locking the screen into tablet mode is still there) i've worn writing off of S, C and the left shift and ctrl, scored _lines_ in the left shift key with my nails, but other than that, it's still serviceable, and i love it.
oh. and the hard drive has about one head-crash per three months and wipes bits of my ext3 partitions out...
Because walking around and using a tablet at the same time is easy. You look weird doing the same thing with a laptop.
I've had my Toshiba Portege 3500 running Gentoo for a long time now. As far as I know everything is supported except for IR and some software configuration (sleep modes, etc). The digitizer works wonderfully with the beta drivers. Support may have moved into the stable driver by now. For help setting it up, I found this page: http://rekl.no-ip.org/3500/ which covers about everything. The only problem I had was that PCMCIA CDROM support is sketchy. For installation I found that Mandrake 9 (or was it 10 beta) worked but I couldn't find any other distro that detected the drive. At one point I may have had it working in Gentoo but I don't recall. There's two reasons I still have Windows on the tablet as well... first, the Toshiba BIOS is very difficult to access and the Windows tools to change bios settings are much easier. Second, I just haven't found any good inking programs for linux. I bought this for school and use ink all the time in taking class notes, it's very useful. The digitizer works great for gimp (pressure sensitivity works very well) but that's about it. Any ideas for linux inking programs that would work well for taking and organizing notes?
Their solution to this is that the pressure reqired to activate the touch screen is above that which resting your hand requires. Although it can be activated by any object, it takes quite a lot of force unless you use something pointy like a stylus. I have no problem resting my hand while writing on it.
I don't understand where you make this distinction - You're drawing a line between OS'es and hardware based on what? Capabilities? Fortunately (for those interested in putting alternative software on their mobile devices) the line between desktop and handheld is becoming increasingly thinner...
"In a world without walls or fences, who needs Windows or Gates?"