New Spark Tablet To Come Loaded With KDE's Active Plasma Interface

mpol writes "KDE's Plasma Active introduced last Saturday its own 7" tablet. According to Aaron J. Seigo, 'It's the first tablet computer that comes with Plasma Active pre-installed.' The Spark, with its 7" screen, is built around a Cortex A9 with a Mali-400-gpu, 512MB RAM and an SD-card slot. It will have a 800x480 screen resolution and will cost around 200 Euro. It is actually a rebrand of the Zenithink ZT-180 C71, which comes with Android by default. On a personal note, Aaron J. Seigo will no longer be sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks to work on Qt and KDE. He will, however, stay involved with KDE and Free Software, he says."

Comments

Spark != SPARC

[LoRdTAW]

I just woke up and decided to read ./. And to my surprise someone was making a SPARC based tablet running KDE, AWESOME! Then I read the summary. Gets Coffee...

Re:Spark != SPARC

[oodaloop]

Yeah and I thought it read Gnu Spork Table Too Comb Lauded Wit KFC's Archive Palm Intertubes. Seriously, I don't want to see everyon's spelling/reading comprehension problems on slashdot.

Re:Spark != SPARC

[machine321]

To be fair, I can see the editors confusing SPARC and spark.

Android needs some competition

[visualight]

And this is a start. The recent story around the Asus Prime indicates that Google Video may be the reason that non-phone wifi only tablets have locked boot loaders, so I'm not seeing Android as "open" anymore. Really hope this is good.

Re:Android needs some competition

[hitmark]

Media sales via the Android Market in general, more like it.

And it echoes a statement made by Nokia regarding Maemo/Meego, where they said the then upcoming phone would have a dual mode boot loader. One mode would check signatures on vital OS components, but would allow media purchases via the Nokia Ovi store. The other mode would allow people to tinker with the OS internals, but would lock them out of the mentioned store and any media bought from there.

I wonder if this is why we see the hoopla about UEFI cryptographic boot in Win8, because MS is trying to set up a Window online store themselves and big media is demanding "trusted computing" before they put anything into the store.

To bad the specs once again suck donkey balls

[SmallFurryCreature]

There have been a few other linux tablets and so far they just don't compete on specs. They seem to think that going linux means going budget but I am a Linux user and have no interest whatsoever in going budget.

This thing seems to have a single core CPU... the new asus tablet transformer prime has 4.

A 800x480 resolution, my 2 year old MP3 player has that, on a far smaller screen. The tablet after the prime, the TF700T, will have a 1920x1200 resolution.

Yes, these are larger devices and cost three times as much but geez whiz, where are you more likely to find people who will appreciate having a full OS at their disposal with real desktop quality applications instead of fart apps, at the bottom budget market or at the high end cutting edge?

MS must be loving this, there tablets are not going to be underpowered rebrands of yesterday model, so if an average consumer is browsing for a tablet, they will see highend sexy devices as being Android/iOS/Windows8 and Linux in the bargain bin... and gosh, wanna bet that people who bargain hunt will still want Android/iOS/Windows8 and just get an older device?

Evidence? The total and complete failure of previous linux tablets that pulled such braindead stunts as using a resistive screen... Save a few pennies and make your device basically unsellable.

It is basic economy, niche markets exist at the high end not the bottom end. You can't sell handmade fiat panda's.

Re:To bad the specs once again suck donkey balls

[hitmark]

1. this is a enthusiast project and so is likely bootstrapped on a shoestring budget.

2. they are trying to get all drivers into the kernel proper, no blobs and similar. This means finding a supplier that can go along with that.

Android have none of these issues, and so can get the latest and greatest.

In the end one have to decide what is more important, principles or instant gratification.

why the premium price ?

[Coeurderoy]

Since the KDE plasma tablet is the zenithink c71, why should the price be 200€ when the android version is 139 ?
Does Google sponsors the Android tablets that much ?

I do understand that the developpers expect to make some revenue for their work, but at this price it just kills the device...
A typical software licence in this domain is less than 20€ for the OS and 15€ for the codecs (and this would be for very small quantities....)
So the price should not be more than 175, and even then it should be marketed as "dual boot" Android and Linux (since you'd pay for Android anyway)

So it seems that the distribution channel is not under control, and most probably it will die just like other great technical ideas not correctly implemented
Sad ...

Bad tablet

[dmesg0]

ZT-180 C71 has a slow single core AML8726-M CPU (despite being based on ARM A9 which is usually found in dual or quad core configurations), low resolution screen and just 512M of RAM. It costs 120$-130$ including international shipping.

There are much better Chinese tablets now (with higher resolution, 1GB ram, IPS screens. Even dual core cpus, though not as good as branded offerings).

Re:KDE on 512MB RAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE can very well run on 512mb of ram. KDE 4 has a smaller memory usage then KDE 3.5 which runs decently with 512mb of ram. Early version of KDE 4 used a bit too much CPU, however, though this may have changed. I'm also sure this has been carefully customized so the QT framework is the only framework. Now it will slow down to a crawl if used for heavy multitasking (apps that don't rely on the framework much) but single tasking or light multitasking usage, which is more tablet like anyways, will be perfectly fine.

KDE has always been large because of it's large library. That means that more functions are shared across programs. Basically a large base footprint with smaller program footprints. The KDE still fits well within 512mb.

Proof:
http://blogs.kde.org/node/3138
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?22401-KDE4-memory-usage-vs-KDE3-gt-benchmark
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/414533-memory-usage-11-1-kde4.html
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_desktop_vitals&num=1 (this uses ubuntu which which also includes the gtk framework hence the higher memory usage)

and many others online.

Re:KDE on 512MB RAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have slackware 13.0 with KDE on my laptop (which I use more than my desktop). It's a 1.4Ghz Pentium M with 512MB of RAM and Nvidia 5200Go gfx.
And it runs great....

Reality is a bitch

[YA_Python_dev]

Funny how the phones designed directly by Google or in strict collaboration with Google (the Nexus series) all have an unlockable booloader and support Google Videos.

Re:And it will suck

[SomeKDEUser]

Plasma active _is_ a tablet-specific UI. The whole point of plasma as a foundation for the KDE desktop was that you got a generic library for making interfaces.

They have a desktop interface, but the also have a netbook interface. Active is their tablet interface. I have played around with it on an asus T91MT, and it works quite well. In fact, it is perhaps the only tablet interface which does multitasking in a clever way.

And yes the on-screen keyboard pops up when you touch a text entry field. And they also provide touch-friendly interfaces for common apps.

It may suck, but ...

[eyegone]

At least the KDE guys aren't trying to shove one uber-interface to rule them all down our throats.

A similar announcement from GNOME would have included a list of all the functionality that was removed from the desktop interface to make it tablet-friendly.