KDE's Plasma Active Ported To Nexus 7 55
sfcrazy writes "KDE developers have succeeded in running the touch-optimized Plasma Active Linux Distribution on Nexus 7. Earlier Ubuntu developers managed to create a installer for Nexus 7, but those builds also showed that Unity, in its current form, is not ready for touch-based devices. KDE has an edge here as they have optimized versions for netbooks, desktops and touch-based devices so a user doesn't have to make any compromises as one has to do with other DEs or shells which are focusing more in touch-based devices only." Here are detailed instructions on how to install it.
Unity, in its current form, is not ready for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it isn't ready for desktops either! :D
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At least unlike Gnome3 or, Cthulhu save us, Metro, no one seriously tries to put Unity on touch-based devices.
Re:Unity, in its current form, is not ready for... (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried it with ubuntu on an archos G9 101 and touch orientated devices need a different interface to a desktop. Scroll bars are very tricky selecting a tool from the toolbox in the gimp for example too small to be usable. Now if you plug in a mouse and keyboard its pretty much the same as a 10 inch netbook. Theres a good number of gui's for linux but maybe kde plasma might be the only workable one. Theres a few things that need rethinking such as arranging text boxes to be visible when you bring up a keyboard even bringing up a keyboard when it is needed also needed.
In theory it should be possible to get tools such as gtk and qt to respond in a touch friendly way on a touch friendly device but there is a long way to go before you can just run what you want on a touch screen.
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KDE have worked a lot already splitting application core and UI in many components and thanks to Nokia's past ownership Qt turned into a first grade mobile framework with technologies like QtQuick. With QtQuick it's even possible to write adaptive UIs rather easily: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2MjFw_Pewg [youtube.com]
Complete desktop support for QtQuick will still take a while (Qt 5.1 or 5.2, depending on progress) but with the modifications KDE already made throughout their stack one QtQuick-based UI for mobiles and
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Well, Windows 8 sucks even more on desktops and... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Well, it isn't ready for desktops either! :D"
Well, Windows 8 sucks even more on desktops. The ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS that...
KDE is cool with touch-based devices, not perfect, yet better than Win 8! :)
KDE is probably the best option for anyone using mouse and keyboard.
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> KDE is probably the best option for anyone using mouse and keyboard.
Ford is the best option for anyone needing transportation for use on the road.
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Well, Windows 8 sucks even more on desktops. The ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS that...
I don't know that.
I am sixty five years old. living quietly in a small town in upstate New York. Geeks are thin on the ground here and I have never seen one in the wild. That is what attracted me to Slashdot.
I was almost fifty when I was gifted with a hand-me-down P75 Packard Bell and went online with Win 95, a 14K modem and dial-up AOL.
I completed the upgrade-in-place thing to Win 8 Pro on the desktop late last Sunday night.
I have since been moving freely and comfortably between Metro, Media Center, the
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I would guess that the underlying graphics support is not using hardware acceleration. It's certainly not optimized for the device and the KDE desktop in general is far more full featured than any of the tablet OSes. It's going to take both to be usable on that hardware.
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This isn't desktop KDE, it's software specifically designed for touch screens.
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Why would you want to port an inferior desktop (KDE) to a Nexus 7
Perhaps because it doesn't have Google's pawprints all over it?
Does it work on Debian?! (Score:2)
If not, forget it as a temporary workaround.
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Theoretically, yes. There are plasma-active packages in the ubuntu repositories and ubuntu is targetting (Unity) the Nexus 7 for 13.04
So provided anyone from debian wants to upstream the builds...
Full GNU/Linux distro (Score:5, Informative)
Just a FYI: this is not like the other "Ubuntu on Android" solutions that exist. Android is actually wiped out of this tablet and replaced with Mer (formally MeeGo) with KDE Plasma running on top. You also get "real" multi-tasking with this distro.
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I curious as to what you define a "real" multi-tasking, such that it needs mentioning in this case
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As opposed to Android (which requires you to save your state when your app is backgrounded), you don't need to write any code to make your app a "multi-tasking" app. Also, you can do things like view 2+ apps that are running at the same time.
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I'd put KDE in the same category. Maybe E17 does it better ... I don't know, I haven't tried it, but I will.
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Well E17 is designed for desktops, no? This is KDE re-designed specifically for a touchscreen interface.
The chief of enlightenment is working on Tizen if you want a tablet interface based on the same libraries.
Maybe I should try this. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been a KDE fan for a long time (sans the brief periods of horror, but the KDE guys at least can learn from their mistakes). The thing is, the user experience on the Nexus 7 is already downright decadent out of the box. If I install Plasma (which I have seen earlier), my Nexus 7 will be brain-meltingly awesome.
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I like Okular as a PDF viewer on the desktop more than Acrobat Reader, Sumatra, evince etc. A touchscreen version on a tablet would rock.
Calligra, the kde office suite has also been reskinned for a touch interface.
More or less the same kde apps, specifically reworked for finger input. With usb OTG plug your tablet into a powered USB 2.0 hub and your tablet interface could immediately switch seamlessly to a desktop interface. Allowing you to finish that letter you'd been writing on the bus or continue readin
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Kontact. Admittedly, Kmail's interface is a bit lacking compared to Thunderbird, but Kontact's killer feature is that it has email, an address book, personal organizer, and RSS reader, all of which you can sync across multiple devices if you run Kolab on a server. If you want access to all that information across multiple devices, you either have to put your data in the cloud, use a commercial solution, or use a varied collection of different programs.
on an android tablet... (Score:2, Insightful)
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On a gerneral purpose computing device in a tablet form factor all I want to run is whatever I bloody choose, on the hardware. Not what others choose for me, not in a VM bubble, not attached to either a walled garden of some other wet dream of a business model where they try to farm me like some ant stroking an aphids back. The very last thing I want to run is 'apps', whatever they are.
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Re:on an android tablet... (Score:5, Informative)
on an android tablet... ... all I want to run is Android.
Why?
Isn't that like saying "On a Windows PC all I want to run is Windows"? By that logic there would be almost no Linux PCs since most of them come with Windows pre-installed.
Dual booting [xda-developers.com] Android and a full Linux dist seems like a pretty nice feature on a tablet.
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Since modular tablets like the Asus Transformer are taking over the niche Netbooks filled a few years ago (portable computers for situations that don't require the power of a full-fledged laptop), it doesn't hurt to have more options in that segment.
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Asus Transformers cost £470, they are not going to be a replacement for a Netbook in my world. That's about twice what I'd want to pay for a Netbook.
The Netbook niche is "so cheap that I don't mind throwing it in my rucksack and using it in public without fear of it being stolen/broken/lost". More than £400 is way too much for that niche.
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America always gets things cheaper:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=asus+transformer&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aasus+transformer [amazon.co.uk]
But it's all relative, as your proper Netbooks are cheaper too. You can't get a decent Netbook in the UK for less than £200. I expect sub-$200 Netbooks are common enough in the US.
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Unortunately multiboot does not (yet) work with this.
(Posted from Ubuntu on Nexus 7)