Re: [tlug] shopping for a 7" tablet; non-Android linux on tablets...

["Nikolay Elenkov" <nick@example.com>]

2013年 6月 7日（金）12:41 am に Kalin KOZHUHAROV さんは書きました：

>
> The other day I won iPad mini out of the blue which was properly
> bought with a gift receipt and so I dully returned it to the other
> church (they call it the Apple store) and got money back after some
> "work".
>

Well, Windows Surface Pro just launched in Japan, so it's not like there
is no alternative :)

> I think that a 1280x800 7" display will do it (while waiting for A3
> size / 4K to be available).
> And the obvious choice is Nexus 7. Actually there seems to be a better
> choice: iRiver ITQ701 (has uSD card slot). Anything else?
>

What do you want to use it for? If you don't care for Google services
(Play Store, Gmail sync etc.) almost any cheap tablet will probably do.
The advantage of the Nexus 7 is that (almost) all of the OS is open source
and drivers and firmware blobs are available. Those are notoriously hard
to come by and if you want to get 'vanilla' Linux or anything else running
you will need to know how they are wired together (without having to
reverse the whole thing). Usual suspects: HW-accelerated video, GPS, WiFi,
NFC.

I'd say your best bet is to stay with Android, root it and install
whatever you need. There are even some project that let you run X server
on top of the surface flinger so you can get some regular X apps too. This
might also be helpful:

http://www.slideshare.net/opersys/leveraging-linux-heritage-at-andevcon3


There is always Ubuntu, but it's not quite usable yet. They do have
support for the Nexus 7 and 10:

http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install