Project To Build Dual-Booting Linux, Android Tablet For $100

A reader 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.'"

Re:They lost me when they mentioned KDE...

[JazzVoid]

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).

Re:They lost me when they mentioned KDE...

[gmuslera]

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)

Re:They lost me when they mentioned KDE...

[chmod a+x mojo]

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.

 

Re:Hopefully not just a repackaged Maylong 150....

[drachensun]

For $100, i really hope its not based on the Maylong 150 [arstechnica.com]....

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.

Re:They lost me when they mentioned KDE...

[Teun]

First it's you making a wholly disingenuous remark about the memory use of a KDE desktop and then some dim moderator with an agenda sees it as insightful, what has come of this place?

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.

Re:They lost me when they mentioned KDE...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when will this FUD end?! Oi!
Plasma Active is not Plasma Desktop a.k.a. KDE4 Desktop shell. They share code but they are two different projects so it's not one size fit all, it's the exact opposite where there's one framework with multiple but independant graphical shell implementations.