Sorry guys, M$FT had you beat to market by about... what, four years?
> 16 GB internal memory
Come the fuck on, now. I don't want to deal with the atrocious read/write speeds of MicroSD. 16 GB internal memory hasn't been impressive since sometime around 2007.
This looks promising but it's definitely not for me. I hope someone uses it and likes it, but I think it still has a ways to go before it's more than a novelty.
Call it the "first open source convergent tablet" or "fist cheap convergent tablet" if it needs a first-something claim, but the "let's stick our heads in the sand and pretend nothing MS does exists" schtick doesn't make anybody look good.
This makes it all a little more usable in my opinion, since there is only 2Gigs RAM onboard ..
If they wanted to say "The first convergent tablet for 300 USD," then maybe they should have said that.
> And there's nothing convergent about the Surface. Without a keyboard what can you really do with it?
Netflix? Internet? Read emails? Write with its pretty fantastic handwriting recognition?
What can the Aquaris M10 do without a keyboard that the Surface Pro can't? Is it somehow "more convergent"?
You can also create such a chroot manually:
https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid
Or go slightly further:
I didn't get to play with their Ubuntu tablets, but their Android ones are well built, responsive, and have very clear screens.
This isn't going to replace your totally tricked-out MacBook - but as a portable web-browser / word processor / coding machine, I have high hopes for it.
I'm in favour of this arrangement, since I think it's the only way to get updates to work reliably, and I think that's essential. Android and iOS also do it this way, for example. But don't expect a traditional Linux-based desktop but on a tablet, since that's not what you'll get.
On the other hand, if you package up nginx, redis, Atom.io, postgres etc. via Ubuntu's app store, then sure.
Well, that's what I've been told - we'll see once they ship.
I don't care that much, but I guess a lot of people would be very happy if they could run Android applications using something like Alien Dalvik, like Jolla does. In the foreseeable future, I don't see many applications developed for other platforms apart from iOS and Android.
I'm not sure if I'm being naive, but it seems to me that for a decade, the laptop market has had a ridiculous hole. There is a market for something which is not windows, at a sub $500-$600 price that is good. Tablet UI, desktop, whatever. Something that can run skype, whatsapp, tinder and the other network-effect apps that can replace their 3 year old home laptop and be an improvement.
How is it possible that all the mobile stuff from the last decade has not opened up real and substantial competition to Windows in that bracket.
Anyway, this looks easily worth €259 if think you may want one.
Chrome OS feels really unpolished and a bit forgotten.
I'd pay more for a device that allows you to code, write a doc, do basic photo processing, etc. In my case, I wouldn't bring my 15" macbook pro when travelling or going a business meeting, but this could go anywhere
Tablets basically took that space, I think.
That said, it's been a while so I could be out of date: is the Linux desktop UI and apps used by the Ubuntu tablet touch focused?
Edit: Linux as in the common usage of 'Linux kernel, glibc, X', not Android. Which you knew.
But OS design-wise, this is absolutely not some kind of desktop UI squeezed into tablet form with a cranky layer of touch glued on top.
That's fine for email, youtube, streaming movies, listening to music, doing a bit of light word processing or spreadsheeting. It's great for social media and most website use.
And these machines are very cheap.
For the price (300eur) I'd actually be willing to try the HD 1920 x 1200 version, IF the HW and battery life turn out to be solid.
It is okay running android, a little under powered I think.
Only such a device would be really interesting for Linux developers and sys admins. 2 GB are good for basic things (surfing, emails, office) but compilation, simulation, testing etc. would be problematic. If such things are not possible then a notebook remains the better choice.
Can I install something like this on my Windows 10 tablet, and could it run jupyter/Python?
If your tablet is a PC (Intel/AMD/x86 etc) then turning off UEFI Secure Boot and booting from USB should let you run your own code.
Once you can run your own code you should be able to install Python/jupyter.
This concept in principle allows you to have a tablet, which is relatively cheap and can be used on the sofa and in bed, but retain the option of adding a keyboard, and/or using desktop applications on occasion, when you might need them. The drawback is that you lose access to Android/iOS native apps, and also that ARM processors are slow.
I would say it's not a million miles behind Chromebooks or Android tablets (given that Chromebooks are quite limited, and Android tablet apps don't have a great reputation). If ARM processors take a step forward over the next year or two, companies continue to develop for the mobile web rather than shift towards native apps, and Linux userspace software stacks (and developers) become more tolerant of touch, something like this could be a serious competitor.
Will this tablet do all that? The video part is what I'd be most worried about. Netflix will probably be there, but what about Hulu, HBO, and other popular services?
Someday soon there's going to be a generation of young programmers who are simply more at home on a touchscreen than a laptop. If the Linux world doesn't have devices and a usable UI for them, it might lose them altogether.
Why is the surface the only tablet to have a dedicated full sized USB port? It seems like one of the most important things to have in any tablet.
Maybe what we are both looking for is a tablet like the microsoft surface, but running essentially ubuntu.
For that matter, any tablet that can compete with the microsoft surface and run an operating system that is both great for developing and great for touch and mobility.
Apple is only a few steps away in my opinion. If only they would open up the iPad Pro so that developers could use if for development. It might even bring with it a new shift in UI for developers :)
http://www.osnews.com/story/29134/Today_s_Apple_event_spells...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mediatek-MT8165-Tablet-SoC.1484...
I've been interested in evaluating Mediatek processors for desktop usage for a while now. I think this tablet offers the best opportunity (and lowest friction) to do this due to who they're target this at: developers and open software folk (unlocked, open software).
Hopefully, this'll turn out a positive experience and more OEMs hop on board.
I am pretty excited, but it is Linux on a tablet, which is kinda the worst of the worst from a performance perspective. Hopefully this marks the beginning of an increasing trend of more open & capable Operating Systems on our mobile devices.
Ubuntu Desktop is really really memory hungry. It is currently using 8gb RAM on my Desktop which has been steadily increasing since last restart.
The only thing you can possibly do on this thing is use a not very power hungry text editor. No VMs, no machine learning, no data processing and no games. If they had maybe 8gb RAM, 128 gb storage with a faster CPU, it might have been interesting.
Double the price tho
I love Apple hardware, and OSX is much nicer to use as a polyglot developer than Windows. A workmate of mine runs linux on his macbook pro, and it's really a pain. Apple has put so many thousands of hours into getting the trackpad working smoothly, while the linux drivers seem to have been hacked together during a weekend and are truly awful. Things like ignoring thumb input, scroll speed and tracking speed are terrible, just to mention a few.
It would be nice to program in the park by just bringing the tablet and a keyboard. On the other hand the latency alone might distract me enough to just give up.
https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=openjdk-8&sui...
Plus imagine the cases where you don't have wifi (train commute, metro, lousy coffee shop etc.)
It's probably closed-source, but I use JuiceSSH and it is great. The Pro version has a cloud backup that makes SSH migration a breeze.
You may also need a busybox installer app to get things working.
Isn't there a nice way to have it both ways, i.e. automate all changes in a script, and roll it after each image update? Assuming most things that may need to be hacked away don't see breaking changes after each update?
How is Maemo unreliable in that respect? I was disappointed to find Touch doesn't work like it does.
> But don't expect a traditional Linux-based desktop but on a tablet, since that's not what you'll get.
I thought the whole point was that you can switch. That's what Canonical says, and what's demonstrated in some videos floating around.
My understanding is that apps will indeed seamlessly switch between the two modes - but only where they have specifically been adapted to do so. Apps not adapted will not run. Or am I mistaken?
Then how is it Google can update my chromebook while I keep running ubuntu with 100% of linux features? I've done this for a year with no hiccup and no linux upgrades.
You could do this on an Ubuntu phone or tablet I suppose, by for example running a secondary "traditional" Ubuntu system inside a container in a read-write directory on the read-only system. I don't know if this will be possible from day one, but it's certainly possible technically if someone implements it (like how someone has implemented Crouton). I doubt you'll see the same level of integration (for example with the tablet UI seamlessly moving over to your desktop) if you do it this way, however.
I also want to be able to configure my tablet from within my shell, and that means I'd have to be outside of the chroot.
I've heard juicessh is great, but I'm not going to use a closed-source app, especially to manage my ssh-keys. I have my own migration method (svn repo), that works great on laptops, it just sucks on android's shells.
