Ubuntu Now Available On the Nexus 7 87
An anonymous reader writes "Ubuntu for the Nexus 7 was released today and Ubuntu Member Benjamin Kerensa has provided photos and video of it in action." I wish the Nexus 7 had what most Android tablets lack: a full-size USB port (or SD card slot) to make such OS experimenting easier.
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I couldn't get through the video due to the gay music.
USB OTG (Score:1)
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Re:USB OTG (Score:5, Informative)
While for some fucking reason they used a micro B connector instead of a micro AB the port DOES support host mode with the right adapter (which was easy enough to find on amazon).
The biggest annoyances are
1: AFAICT there is no easy way to charge the device and put the port in host mode at the same time. The USB battery charging spec lays out a way to do it but it's tricky to acheive physically (you need to find a cable to cut up that allows you access to the ID line) and I don't know if the nexus will actually support it when you try.
2: You need to root to mount USB drives (though if you are running ubuntu you are presumablly at that point already)
Interestingly with the adaptor I tried Ethernet over USB worked out of the box with no need to root.
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> why would you want ethernet over USB?
It's much faster.
Wireless sucks. Poor performance is just one of the many reasons.
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802.11N is faster than ANY USB ethernet adapter.
Re:USB OTG (Score:5, Interesting)
Only if you don't have spectrum congestion and are willing to deal with the security hassle.
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I could be wrong but shouldn't USB Super Speed (5 Gbit/s) theoretically support gigabit ethernet?
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No tablet made has USB super speed, Hell you are lucky to get USB 2.0 on one.
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Ask the Raspberry Pi Foundation. USB is the only high speed interface on or off of that chip.
Re:USB OTG (Score:5, Interesting)
why would you want ethernet over USB?
The more options you have, the more options you have.
Don't think of the tablet as only a consumer device, and only for media consumption. Think of the tablet as a laptop replacement for network troubleshooting purposes. Reconfiguring wireless routers that puke their configs, etc. A tablet would be much lighter to walk around with in a PoP/IEP/data center, especially since you could hold it with one hand and type with the other. And when you're done, (at least if you're a big guy like me) just drop it back in your coat pocket, no need to repack a laptop bag.
Also, I know an internet cafe that sometimes has problems with both of its wireless networks such that nobody can log on... but most of their tables upstairs are also wired, and those ports are always open.
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Though for network troubleshooting you probablly would want to root as the provided settings app didn't seem to have any idea what ethernet was. So while the OS was happy to grab and IP over DHCP and use the connection there didn't seem to be any way to configure it to a static IP (which you are likely to want to do on a network troubleshooting device).
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It enables you to use netbooting to install software.
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Disclaimer, I don't have a nexus 7 myself, the one I set up belongs to my mum.
My parents have been worried about the security implications of wireless (and I don't blame them, it seems the wireless guys have finally got it mostly right but it took more than a few attempts) so don't have wireless in their home network. To initially set the device up (it won't let you get past the initial power on screen without setting up a wifi network :( ) we resorted to using a cellphone with wifi tethering but that is no
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There's at least one app out there that give you read access to USB drives without rooting. It's called Nexus Media Importer and runs $3. Obviously it doesn't apply to anyone installing Ubuntu, but for those who want to stick with Android & don't want to root their device, it can take care of simple use cases like loading photos from a camera, pulling audio files from a thumb drive, etc.
OTG is magic! (Score:1)
Any time people talk about a problem with USB, somebody says "Just use USB OTG!" as if it were a magic fix for everything. In this case, the complaint is that the tablet has a tiny usb port. How on earth does that relate to OTG?
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Because it's as easy as having the right cable [amazon.com]
Now you have a full-sized USB port. :-p
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"How on earth does that relate to OTG?"
Because you can connect an SD card reader, an USB memory or an USB hard drive for that matter, neatly resolving the original complaint which was about access to external storage: " (or SD card slot) ".
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And exactly how does that give the tablet "a full-size USB port"? But I guess that's Sloppy Editor for "USB A port", OTG is indeed a good substitute for. Dumb of me not to see that.
Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't by a tablet unless it has a USB host and an SD slot. My $100 android phone has OTG and microSD, why can't they put those features in all tablets? It's not a cost issue, most ARM SoC have built in usb host and sd slots are as cheap as a 0.10 connector and a few PCB traces.
Those designers should feel shame
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Nonsense. If this were cameras we were talking about, the upgradeable storage would not even be an issue. It would be considered a bare necessity standard feature for anything short of some Disney themed toy marketed for small children.
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My Viewsonic G-Tablet is still a pretty nice piece of hardware.
Unfortunately, my Vegan-TAB ROM doesn't have the loopback device module, so I can't run "Complete Linux Installer" on it to chroot to Debian like I can on my myTouch 3G Slide runing CM7.1
Also pissed off that my new myTouch 4G Slide running CM9.1 also doesn't have a loopback device :/
Almost pissed enough to compile my own? Someday...
Re:Useless (Score:5, Interesting)
They do, you are just too much of a cheap bastard to buy one that does. ASUS and Fujitsu both make an X86 tablet that will run linux for you right now with no hacks that has USB host and SD card slots.
They are $600-$900 and have been available for a long time now.
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
A good platform for Unity.
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I was just thinking it would be nice to see something other than Ubuntu ported to various Android and other devices for a change. Like Mint or Debian. But your post gave me a chuckle, Unity really does make some sense on an N7. It was funny to see the author surprised at the Amazon home page in Firefox though.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
If Ubuntu works then virtually anything else will. All that matters at the lowest level is the kernel.
The hard part is getting video to not suck as most of the GPUs have userspace blobs that only work with Android's libc. There's a means of making them work with X.org and glibc (libhybris) but I doubt many people will work on packaging them together.
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Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it work without mouseover now?
I can't imagine using the menus at all on a tablet.
contrary to popular opinion, unity is not a tablet interface, and requires a mouse. It didn't even allow access to the launcher without a mouse for a little bit.
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Actually, yes it is. In 12.10, the default is for the panel to stay open.
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So, you're saying, that because 1.5 years (3 releases) after becoming the default desktop, it defaults to being tablet usable for the launcher it is a tablet interface?
that wasn't even an option in the early (default) unity desktop (as in you couldn't have the launcher/switcher behave for a tablet even if you wanted it too.
unity may be a terrible interface (i actually thing It's as good as any excepting windows 7, or maybe a highly configured kde as long as you only have 1 monitor), but is NOT designed for
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"A core goal for Ubuntu 13.04 is to get Ubuntu running on a Nexus 7 tablet. To be clear, this is not going to be a tablet Unity interface running on the 8/16GB Nexus 7, but instead will focus on getting the current Ubuntu Desktop running on the Nexus so that we can ensure pieces such as the kernel, power management and other related areas are working effectively on a tablet device.
Topics such as battery life, memory footprint, and support for sensors are all areas in which needs and expectations vary widely
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So they finally took that part from Gnome-shell ( who does it since the start ).
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Is the menu keyboard accessible?
Are keyboard shortcuts (with modifier keys) tablet friendly?
I think It's a decent ish single monitor interface (could be great with a couple stupid decisions fixed), but it is not any good at all for tablets. Which is fine, they never said it was.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
A desktop shell is a very small part of the experience. Try sending an email using Thunderbird via a tablet, and you'll quickly see the problems... What Ubuntu needs in order to be a good tablet OS is an application ecosystem, at the very least the basic stuff.
Thing is, having a relatively cheap reference platform (mature distro on an ARM tablet) will allow a lot of devs an opportunity to make touch-friendly version of their apps. And, a few years from now, we might have a smoother experience between desktops/tablets/phones.
The advantages of having a single platform for all are mostly for the devs; but when devs are happy, the benefits trickle down to users, too, who have a much more vibrant ecosystem. This is exactly what MS is doing with Win 8/RT.
Would also be great to see Ubuntu support running Android apps! Lets have the best of both worlds!
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Because keeping 2 code bases was too expensive for them, I guess ( less expensive than using Red Hat sponsored work on llvmpipe ). Now, the question is if they dropped the good version or not. Using Qt for everything would not have been bad, since QT is IMHO more often used for embedded. But in the end, this is purely a resource issue, ie they may not had the time to redo everything in QT and to hire enough QT developers ( especially in the light of the kubuntu sponsorship having ended ).
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My brother did a bit of hacking to put Debian on a Psion. I was pretty proud of him at the time!
Debian on Psion [ajwells.net]
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It's not actually meant to be used as a proper tablet OS, it's mainly just for testing.
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I'm not an ubuntu user, but Its pretty close to what I want. Android is also a Linux distro. I like the idea of having the choice of different WM/GUI configurations which will allow for more experimentation and innovation than the closed development model of android allows.
I'd love to get Plasma Active on it. http://plasma-active.org/ [plasma-active.org]
You can do SD & USB (Score:5, Informative)
Pick up a usb SD reader (I bought one a couple of years ago for under 10 euro)
Root your device, and you have anything you want on your Nexus 7. I have tried USB stick, SD card, USB keyboard and mouse, and charging my phone. It al works.
The most difficult part is keeping your nerve while rooting. The process itself is easy, but still, your glad when you're finished and you have not bricked your device.
Re:You can do SD & USB (Score:5, Interesting)
do these $3 OTG cables enable charging at the same time as acting as a host?
i.e. the single micro usb port typically plugs into a mains outlet to charge. Is it possible to plug your mains adapter into a 'powered' usb hub, then plug your phone via an OTG cable into that hub? Both drawing power and accessing usb devices such as keyboards, mice, sd cards?
phone [hub powering 3 or so usb devices]----------------- mains power
i.e. I wouldn't want to run an Ubuntu system that only ran for 90 minutes because one had to connect one's charger!
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Root your device, and you have anything you want on your Nexus 7.
Why should I have to?
All this talk of Android being "open" and giving the user "freedom" and then you admit in the next sentence that rooting is a risk to the device.
No-one has ever clearly stated why these devices are so locked-down out of the factory. Why is it? Why?
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No-one has ever clearly stated why these devices are so locked-down out of the factory. Why is it? Why?
1: Brand protection. Especially true for telephony devices which are typically re-branded by an operator who wants some guarantees that the end user cannot easily undo the operator's tweaking. Also true if you buy an Android device straight from the manufacturer since they invest in their own extra features to differentiate and build brand.
2: Predictable support requirements. It is just not feasible to build support centers that can help users with any kind of technical request. If the user has to explicitl
Re:You can do SD & USB (Score:4, Interesting)
Because control over a device means it is you, and not the manufacturer or the carrier or the os maker, that decides when it's getting obsolete.
This is the first reason for google, apple, microsoft, to do the same "mistakes" at the same time, forfeiting an established base of pc users.
The subtle reason is that under the labels "mobile" and "cloud" there is a movement to end the personal computing era, and return to a client/server model. I don't think the reasons for that are exclusively commercial. Think about 1984, with the added bonus that even the proles buy portable telescreens for themselves and are proud to show off the more capable models.
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No-one has ever clearly stated why these devices are so locked-down out of the factory. Why is it? Why?
Well, the Nexus 7 (which is what TFA is about) isn't locked down at all, and neither is any other Nexus-banded hardware. Unlocking is simply a matter of attaching the device to the computer and typing "fastboot oem unlock", at which point the device will prompt you with a screen asking you to confirm. It really is as simple and as easy as that.
It's 100% safe as it's functionality that's intentionally built into the device -- being able to unlock and root is one of the selling points of the Nexus line, and
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You actually don't need to root the Nexus to do this. The Nexus bootloader is easily unlocked by connecting via USB and typing "fastboot oem unlock". Hope that helped.
Touch input (Score:2)
Does this special version of Ubuntu have non-crap touch input?
I've loaded 12.04 and 12.10 on my Iconia W500 and it's never worked right. From the launcher breaking and never appearing again once the screen is touched to the Onscreen keyboard not actually supporting multitouch, as much as people claim that Unity is for tablets it doesn't work very well.
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They are not caring for Unity right now, it's not a touch UI. They ported it to work on fundamentals first, like power consumption. Touch interface is a topic for later. http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/10/26/ubuntu-core-on-the-nexus-7/ [jonobacon.org]
The Bizarre Submitter Comment Award goes to... (Score:2, Insightful)
> I wish the Nexus 7 had what most Android tablets lack: a full-size USB port (or SD card slot) to make such OS experimenting easier.
*Sigh*. Really? *Really?* You want to ruin the design by putting an oversized USB socket just because it would save 1 person in hundreds of thousands from having to buy an adapter? Which you probably own anyway?
Re:The Bizarre Submitter Comment Award goes to... (Score:5, Informative)
That was added by timothy, not the anonymous submitter [slashdot.org].
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Personally, I don't care about the USB port, but I do care about the SD card slot. I bought one anyway, and I don't really need the storage right now ... but still, I suspect that I will eventually need it and it wouldn't have been a problem with an SD card slot. Google clearly realises that storage is important to people, too, since they're about to double the storage on the Nexus 7 this Monday (unfortunately, I bought mine a month too early!)
Wish Android was on desktop not Ubuntu on mobile. (Score:1)
Re:Wish Android was on desktop not Ubuntu on mobil (Score:4, Interesting)
Efforts to port Qt and Wayland to Android are progressing.
As I understand, this is hampered by Google creating its own libc implementation to provide just enough support to run dalvik on top of it for an under-resourced phone platform in 2007.
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Exactly right. Bionic is the single worst technical decision in Android, from a free/open source interoperability perspective. It should be a priority to replace it with glibc so that the full ecosystem of desktop and server applications can be brought over.
I think it would be pretty cool to have a .deb or .rpm based tablet that runs Android apps in their own windows on a regular X11 desktop, has a WCDMA or LTE modem built in and supports Bluetooth headsets, mouses and keyboards.
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At last! (Score:5, Funny)
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I often miss the option to mod something "Sad but true". ;)
Funny I guess is the closest option.
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This year.. (Score:2)
Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 700T (Score:2)