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posted by n1 on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the liberating-hardware-from-the-evil-empires dept.

I am getting fed up with all those app stores that just sell apps, but never give the source code. I used to fix in the source code the things that annoyed me. In the case of app stores, I just get generic (and very kind) replies from authors. Apart from those replies they never improve their apps, just collect more money from people who purchased (and can't get money back if not satisfied).

I have decided to install Debian on a tablet but I need some really nice hardware first that I can use for that. I would prefer a bigger screen, but in fact if you know any tablet that will run nicely with Debian or Ubuntu please tell!

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by metamonkey on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:54AM

    by metamonkey (3174) on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:54AM (#25601)

    I have a Lenovo Yoga 11s [lenovo.com], which is a convertible ultrabook. You can flip the display completely around and use it as a tablet. I dual boot OpenSUSE 13.1 and Windows 8 on it.

    The problems are that there are not a lot of touch-aware linux apps nor have I hacked together something to use the rotation sensor to tell KDE to automatically rotate the screen. It works well as a Windows 8 tablet and a linux ultrabook, but not necessarily a linux tablet.

    To be honest, I don't really know what would work as a linux tablet due to the lack of touch-aware apps.

    --
    Left a beta website for an alpha website.
    • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:08AM

      by NCommander (2) <mcasadevall@dev.soylentnews.org> on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:08AM (#25615) Homepage Journal

      I have a Yoga Pro 2 myself, love the hardware (though mine has a faulty wireless card that has proven problematic to replace), and found that there's really not a lot of good ways to be touch friendly. I might try using Ubuntu for Tablets on it at some point, but I'm just not sure there's a good non-AOSP) solution. I'd love to hear feedback myself.

      --
      Still always moving ...
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Marneus68 on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:33AM

      by Marneus68 (3572) on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:33AM (#25635)

      >lack of touch-aware apps
      >apps
      That word...

      Anyway, Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell are really touch friendly these days, that's probably the only thing Gnome is doing right. There's even a usable virtual keyboard that pops up when you need it.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by zizban on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:55AM

    by zizban (3765) on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:55AM (#25603)

    These folks sell tablets with Ubuntu pre-installed. Not quite what you want but close: http://emperorlinux.com/systems/tablet/ [emperorlinux.com]

  • (Score: 1) by gishzida on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:16AM

    by gishzida (2870) on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:16AM (#25624) Journal

    Not cheap but Bunnie Huang's new Novena [bunniestudios.com] comes with debian... not quite a tablet but it is fully hackable.

  • (Score: 2) by Marneus68 on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:22AM

    by Marneus68 (3572) on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:22AM (#25629)

    The ExoPC slate ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExoPC [wikipedia.org] ) is what you're after. It's an x86 tablet, with touch enable BIOS (no weird UEFI crap) that has several USB ports, an SD card slot and can be expanded too.

    I got this baby for free from Intel when they ware still working on MeeGo. Now it's mainly used by my dad who installed Fedora on it and uses it as a way to conveniently read his guitar tabs and controlling his backing tracks with a custom made USB footswitch.

  • (Score: 2) by akinliat on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:33AM

    by akinliat (1898) <{akinliat} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:33AM (#25672)

    I personally run Debian on an HP Touchpad that I picked up in the fire sale. It's old -- the default distro on the setup is squeeze rather than wheezy, and I haven't tried a dist-upgrade. Also, the X server is fairly primitive, and won't resize for the onscreen keyboard, so if you want to use the native keyboard, you have to give up some permanent screen real estate. Alternatively, you can use a software keyboard in the Debian install. I generally just use it with an external keyboard.

    Other than that, it works fairly well, and Touchpads are still pretty easy to find on ebay for reasonable prices.