> Is it because of how light they are? They still use the essential free > programs and libraries, that are part of your average GNU > system. Isn't it technically feasible to install a GNU system on a > device with such hardware capabilities, but with a lighter desktop > environment more suitable for touch screens and small keyboards?
I use an Android tablet with a Debian chroot on a microSD card to run Emacs and Mercurial (no free distro supports it yet). Except for bad external keyboard layout support (e.g. no alt as meta) and the very slow microSD card it works ok. X-based systems also have better support for graphics without 3d acceleration (this was a significant problem for Replicant). (I think my Loongson 2F laptop has a slower single CPU core than the two ones in my tablet and phone, although I haven't compared them; just comparing CPU frequency between ARM and MIPS might not be ok.) > I've used Android on another person's computers (I would not use such > system on my computer). The system seems badly designed and > written. Even simple things, like writing and saving a plain text file > seems very inconvenient. This probably isn't a common and simple thing for most people. > For example, with the default text editor, it's hard to highlight > text, you can't change the font to a monospaced one, you can easily > loose your progress because of a single simple misclick (happens > constantly), can't change the encoding or EOL style and can't choose a > place where to save the file. Also, it isn't obvious where files are > even saved, so you can easily copy them, archive them, upload them or > make a backup. These are very basic things, that even the most simple > of text editors on GNU can do. Even Notepad can do those. Didn't know that there is a default text editor, there are free ones available that are better. > You first minimise the current application, then open another > application from it's shortcut for which you must browse trough all > running and not running applications. It's hard to see which > applications are running. You can't even run several instances of a > single application. If you want to edit several text files, you must > use the awkward interface specific to the editor, if it has such > interface. There is a list of recently used applications. I agree that it's a problem with knowing what applications are running, especially since some don't save their state well and provide no option to close them. > As I understand, even simple things like connecting a USB keyboard are > needlessly complicated. It just works with my tablet, although I haven't found free software for changing its layout. > I know how to use GNU. I don't want to learn the specifics of another > system, which is obviously inferior in most aspects. GNU has a huge > library of well written, well designed, well tested, stable and > convenient free applications. And most importantly, the whole system > is already free as in freedom. This is a reason for companies to reimplement inferior systems instead of using GNU.
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