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Project To Build Dual-Booting Linux, Android Tablet For $100
SternisheFan sends this quote from Ars:
"It likely won’t be as sleek or fast as a Nexus 7 or Nexus 10, but a new tablet running both Android and Linux is in the works for open source enthusiasts and lovers of low-budget devices. PengPod tablets, made by a company called Peacock Imports, will dual-boot Android 4.0 and a version of Linux with the KDE Plasma Active interface for touch screens. But in order to reserve a tablet for yourself, you'll have to contribute to the company's crowdfunding project on Indiegogo and hope enough money is raised to begin production. 'Our goal is to build a powerful, True Linux Tablet, one free of Google and Android's restrictions, at a reasonable price,' the PengPod IndieGogo page says. 'If you're a Linux fanatic you probably ended up getting an Android phone. Hey, it's Linux right? It'll be open, run all the programs I'm familiar with and let me hack around and have some fun right? Too often, this is not so. That is why we set out to find a way to run real Linux and all the software you really want.'"
One Linux Per Contributor?
--- Mercutio was right.
KDE4 runs just fine with 512MB RAM and modern Android devices have even more. If you'll read the thread you've linked, you'll see that it's an openSuSE issue which has a lot of pre-enabled KDE components that are not needed on a tabled (like semantic desktop).
Why dual boot when you can run both simultaneously since both run on the same Linux kernel? Kind of how Windows 8 runs both WinRT apps(for tablet use) and desktop apps simultaneously. Best of both worlds, use the Android apps when you want to use a tablet, and then switch to KDE apps for real work, all without messy rebooting.
This space for rent.
Comparing the desktop KDE with the meant-for-tablets plasma active is not exactly fair. Can't assure for KDE plasma active (not tried it yet), but pure linux running tablet interfaces (maemo, meego, webos) in the past had good user experience (at least for me), specially with up to date hardware. And you don't have so far away the rest that comes with linux, from the system or shell to compiling or adapting for it things for other devices or environments, or, well, have plenty of user interfaces to play with if you don't like one in particular (even Sugar could be a valid one)
the only problem with XFCE4 / LXDE is that they are not designed with touch input in mind. KDE4's Plasma Active is designed for smaller screens and touch input, and generally the smaller screen devices it is designed to run on don't have quite as much RAM so a lot of the more memory intensive eye candy and other goofy crap is turned off by default while retaining the KDE power utilities - Konq / Dolphin spank the pants off Thunar / LxFM in terms of features. Thunar still hasn't gotten the "Open Terminal here" working to actually open the terminal in the directory it was selected from as of the last time I tried it ( ~2-3 months ago) it opens the terminal in your home dir.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
I always thought the same. Switching between OSes should be more simple, it just need a better boot management: How about a function built in both OS, that saves the memory just like as it was hibernate and switch by memory content? A modern firmware/BIOS should offer this possibility.
The people on the forum are trying to use the classic Linux excuses and make the user feel stupid and blame him for Linux shortcomings.
No, the people in this forum are using a classic FUD technique of finding one nasty datum and pretending it's the whole world.
They're also lying about KDE, and being deceptive about the DE which will be used on this tablet. If you're genuinely interested in the system and have read past the mess of disinformation and proprietary propaganda that is today's Slashdot, go to the KDE Plasma-active site and test it yourself for free.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Some people get very confused about the kernel vs. user space applications. RMS said it best:
“Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel. People who erroneously think “Linux” refers to the entire GNU/Linux combination get tied in knots by these facts, and make paradoxical statements such as “Android contains Linux, but it isn’t Linux”. If we avoid starting from the confusion, the situation is simple: Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different.“
For $100, i really hope its not based on the Maylong 150....
Its not, the maylong had a via 8650 processor with no coprocessing and a 400 mhz main processor, overclocked to the 533, 600 or even 800 claimed by sellers. The PengPods all have A10 1-1.2 GHZ processors with a 4 core mali coprocessor and the cedarx video coprocessor. Typically the system gets unstable after 1.2 Ghz but it can be taken up to 1.5, we are hoping the improvements in the boot software will eventually make that possible. Note that not all the source is available for the video processors but there has been a lot of work to make the closed libraries work well. Full disclosure: Im part of the project.
I'm right now on an HP-mini running KDE-Plasma on 2 Gb of RAM with 6 tabs open in Firefox and looking at the system monitor less than 400 Mb of RAM is in use.
When on a bare desktop with a couple of widgets running it's below 300 Mb, and yes that's of course without the indexing service running.
Would you take the tablet version of KDE you'd get even better results.
Stop trolling in a place with Real Users.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."