On 21/03/12 00:00, Russell Coker wrote:
I am after a Tablet device that runs Free Software. It is to be used for web
browsing, reading ebooks, and probably some games (as with all computers).
For the games side of it I'm not too fussy as to the platform, Debian and
Android both have enough games to satisfy - I have other devices for my
favourite Debian and Android games.
Everything can do web browsing and reading ebooks. So I really don't have a
great preference of Debian or Android in that regard, it seems that they can
both be made to work.
I'm not going to use a locked down device, so most Android tablets are
unsuitable due to being locked down or the fact that they simply lack a build
of CyanogenMod or similar. I don't have time to compile everything myself but
I am prepared to do a little development. As an aside it would be nice if I
could just use some of my computers and not end up getting dragged into
hacking on some software for every one of my devices.
I'm guessing that touch support in Debian is a little lacking due to the fact
that almost no-one uses it. Does anyone have any experience of tablets
running Debian with touch screens? But the upside would be good support for a
variety of other devices, so one of the netbooks with a detachable keyboard
would be a good option.
With Android there's all the pain of rooting it, modding it, trying not to
brick it, and then not being able to upgrade just one part of the OS at a
time. Really it's pretty poor that Android doesn't have a proper package
management system. A decade ago I was running Familiar on iPaQ systems with
64M of RAM and 32M of storage and I could upgrade the OS one package at a
time. There's no technical reason why an Android phone with 16G of storage
and 512M of RAM can't run dpkg or similar. The most capable phones on the
market now have more storage and RAM than the vast majority of Debian servers
that I have ever run. In fact a good portion of the VPS instances I run now
have no more storage or RAM than a high-end phone!
How about the Spark tablet?
http://www.slashgear.com/spark-linux-tablet-given-video-rundown-10213078/
http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/spark-linux-tablet-now-available-to-pre-order-20120217/
_______________________________________________
Free-software-melb mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
