Slashdot Mirror
Details Emerge About Spark Linux-Based Tablet
MojoKid writes "There's a new tablet in town called the Spark. The Linux-driven tablet, based on the Zenithink C71 and KDE was unveiled by developer Aaron Seigo recently. The tablet will be available for pre-order this week and will start shipping worldwide in May. In terms of specifications, the 7-inch (800x480) multi-touch slate will run a 1GHz AMLogic ARM processor and Mali-400 GPU, sport 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage (with a microSD slot for expandability), 802/11b/g WiFi, a pair of USB ports, a front-facing 1.3MP webcam, and an audio jack. The UI of choice is Plasma Active and there will apparently be a content store where developers can peddle their wares and users can snag software."
'....... where users can SNAG software ......' really. this wordage makes it sound as if the store will operate as charity and not with profit oriented sales. makes it sound as if we arent going to pay anything.
'oh, we can just SNAG software eh ?' ..........
why not directly use 'buy'.
Read radical news here
And I thought Unity was the way to go for tablets... I don't know what to think anymore ;-)
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I am interested in this tablet, not because it is best / most up to date, but it pushes Linux. What I mean is, it's not relying on a locked down version that the likes of Google pretend is Linux. It's not just a question of free as in no cost OS, but freedom to do what you like... which is not the same as installing re-engineered OS versions but might brick your device as that's how the hardware was designed.
To that end, I'd love to see a 100% Linux phone, nothing relying on Google with it's bits locked down or tracking
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I wonder what framework it will use for multi-touch and how well the installed applications are optimized for touch input. Actually, (formerly) Nokia's QT was starting to get good touch support, might be a reason why they went with KDE?
This "preorder" business sounds fishy.
Anyone remembers the "CherryPal Africa" $99 laptops ? I preordered two. And almost 3 months after the date they were supposed to be shipping i got the money back by filling a complaint with my bank. Some of the people who preordered used Western Union or simmilar money transfer services and they never got their money back OR the laptop.
Be carefull if preordering vapourware from unknown companies.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
To that end, I'd love to see a 100% Linux phone, nothing relying on Google with it's bits locked down or tracking
MeeGo Harmattan close enough for you?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
even for someone who wants a full Linux stack, is: 'Can I play Angry Birds on it?'
2012 - year of the linux tablet!
Sent from my Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2).
To me, this look's like cheap Chinese tablet, with plastic screen and low specs. With 260 dollars you can have WeTab with 10" 1366x768, 3G, GPS, 32G SSD and Intel Atom. I'm not sure why WeTab pretty much failed, custom WeTab UI is pretty good and tablet runs unmodified Debian and Ubuntu if you wish. However, i'm happy to see something like this appearing and it could be useful if it would only cost around 150 dollars.
I have used 2 different zenithink tablets (7 and 10 inches) before and they are rubish. Both of them provide less than 2 hours of battery, the WiFi does not work at even 6 meters distance, display quality is rubbish and tablet back becomes hot (specially the WiFi section). Wife reception becomes even worse if you "do not hold it right", i.e. put your hand on the antenna section.
No GPS! One of the great advantages of tablets over smart phones is the bigger screen, and GPS/Maps display. Sorry but No GPS, No Go.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Where the Tablet edition of KDE does not pop up the keyboard for Chrome or Firefox text input boxes?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"The vision of Plasma Active is to create an innovative and fresh data-centric UI which is not concerned with applications but rather offers a user oriented interface with logically combined items through activities, which reflect the workflow and usage of the device by the user".
Didn't understand a word? Me neither. And this is from a commercial company trying to sell the thing. No more luck with the promotional video, which only shows some loading times for some unexplained tasks for which the benefit is not clear.
Until they hire some marketing people able to explain why consumers should buy the thing, and some UX people making the users feel at home when using it, nobody -not even geeks- will want to buy one.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I would know. In this case "snag" means to acquire through purchase or through gift - to achieve ownership without theft.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm tempted to twist a line from "Finding Nemo" here: Just keep waiting, just keep waiting...
I've got a lot of wants too on my list. But until they let me back into the labs where we invent this shit I gotta take what's on the retail counter.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Have a tablet running Android 2.3 (version 4 isn't available for it yet, still waiting)
Need to know what's the difference between a tablet running Linux and Android ?
Will Android apps work in the Linux tablets, and vice versa?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I hate to sound like someone else when I say "developers, developers, developers" but if this thing shipped with Angry Birds on it, people would buy it and keep using it. Combine that with some really good navigation, and that would keep people from playing with it and dropping it in a drawer later.
The Linux and Android mob really need to standardise the packaging connector location and shape. Let alone too many variants of OSes.
Can it run Flash in a browser?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
cheap Chinese tablet, with plastic screen and low specs
why that fixation to have hard, heavy metal casings on handheld devices ? isnt it stupid to haul around something heavy ? or, 'shiny' is more important than 'light' for you ?
Read radical news here
...but does it run Gentoo?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
A single-core 1GHz Cortex A9 and 512MB RAM isn't cutting edge these days, but the price is low. I guess it's in the Kindle Fire bracket, and judging by that device's success, that might be no bad thing - if it's well-promoted and has a strong selection of software easily available. It could fall down on both of those counts, though... we'll see!
Actually, slashdot IS their target customer. I've been following it for a month or so, and it's aimed at developers/linux junkies/free software advocates.
Do people really name tablets after the processors?
Possibly not, but it could be a generically used term, like people say "arm tablet", or more unusually "atom tablet".
Go to 2:06 of the video and freeze it - you'll see that the demo is completely fake - that is NOT a 7" screen.
So, what you see is NOT what you'll get. It's not running on the same hardware, it's not anywhere near the same resolution - and yet nowhere is this mentioned.
The idea that this is ever going to sell is insane. Then again, the guy's in Calgary - perhaps he's experiencing a brain freeze?
So, you have a choice - order this PoS for $260 this summer, or order a quad-core with better battery life and more features for the same price. Gee, that's a no-brainer.
What next, som idiot installing freeDOS on a tablet and asking for 3x the price (a freeDOS tablet for $100 would actually make more sense, because there IS a market for people who would like to be able to play those old games in a convenient form factor).
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
The price of the tablet itself is what holds me back. $265 USD seems pricey with a 1 ghz CPU, only 500 meg of ram, and only 4 Gb of internal storage and no keyboard. That's ten bucks more than an Acer Aspire One that has almost twice the CPU speed, twice the memory, and sixty two times the drive space. Oh, and the Acer has one more USB port, a network port, a monitor port, and not only audio output like the tablet but input as well. What makes the touchscreen so damned expensive? This thing should be at least a hundred bucks cheaper.
I'd buy one if I didn't think I was being robbed.
Free Martian Whores!
I see devices like this as a way for those who say they value the philosophy Linux represents to put their money where their mouth is. I'm pretty OS agnostic but I'm going to buy one. I like the idea of having a little self-contained Linux box that I can hack -- and via the USB ports and hopefully some internal TTL-level serial port - turn into all manner of cool controller and interface. It seems like a great tool for a hacker.
Large chunks of X11 do nothing at all in a modern desktop. Most apps are drawing directly into surfaces managed by a compositor so the main purpose X11 serves is to listen for mouse and keyboard input and call extensions when the screen needs to be recomposited. It's more of an impediment and a bottleneck these days causing extra context switches and hoops to jump through which is why there is major interest in dumping it altogether for Wayland.
Isn't angry birds available as an app on Chrome? I haven't installed it myself but don't see why that wouldn't work.
I've tried to run recent versions of Linux on comparably powered and configured Intel hardware.
The experience SUCKS. You can't play video without it going choppy (especially not full-screen Flash videos or YouTube content.) The UI takes a quarter to half second to respond if you've got anything USEFUL running on the system. You can hear the hard drive grinding away as the system swaps and thrashes trying to do anything with a mere 512MB of RAM to play with.
Piece of crap, in my books, and late to market. You can already buy more powerful tablets that have better brand recognition and market share.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I had the same idea at first :D
Yeah, if it was a SPARC tablet, I might actually buy it. I miss my old SPARCstation... /sniff
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
But can I get one with the software I want on it? No. They all run Android or iOS. And more than a few of them come locked down from the start.
What's the point of having software choice when I already know the thing is too underpowered to be useful to me?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
And aside from that, installing Linux on a laptop is a breeze. I can't think of any reason most tablets shouldn't be as easy to install, if there are any standards for touch screens, that is.
Besides, ever hear of "jailbreaking"? You know, the way that MOST techies get around the BS software install locks on systems so they can get rid of the crapware and install useful stuff instead?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'd wait until Medfield tablets come out. Those should be easy to get whatever Linux distro you want running on them, powerful enough, yet with decent battery life.
If anybody's working on a Gnome 3 tablet, /. should be their target customer. But not this one. It's done a fine job, and as some people noted above, they do need better marketing, as well as some content tie-ups so that they can also be a good tablet for books, among other things.
If what you want to run is Emacs, why use tablets in the first place? Just go w/ netbooks.
As for input events hacks have to be employed there too. X11 sees the world as a series of 2D bounding boxes and conveys messages relative to those boxes. Which isn't a whole lot of good in a compositing desktop where windows might scaled, thumbnailed, even rotated or tilted. All that stuff in X11 related to fonts, drawing, damage is obsolete in a modern desktop.
So it's a bottleneck. An arcane set of APIs running in their own process space representing an extra context when most of the actual work is then done in other processes. Cutting it out of the loop completely would make the desktop experience a lot smoother and responsive than it is right now. It also doesn't stop X11 running on top of something like Wayland and it could probably done transparently too with X11 being loaded up when something hits the local display device.
The Article says the tablet will be about $265 with Linux but you can buy the same tablet right now for $138.89. Why not just save half the $$$ and install Linux yourself on it?
It has not always been like that. For many years installing Linux on a laptop was painfull because laptops used a lot of non-standard hardware. Right now tablets are in the same boat. There are many suppliers and manufacturers take all kinds of shortcuts, using anything they can get away with. As they have total control over both hardware and software there is no incentive to use standards. That will come in a few years when the current startups realize they need to support and maintain their old hardware.