Here at Android Headlines, I’m the resident crazy Linux guy – okay so I might not be crazy but I run Linux wherever and whenever I can. I’ve been doing so since I was 15 or so and while that seems a little geeky, I was basically looking for something different, and I certainly got it. I’m more than happy with my use of Linux – Ubuntu and OpenSUSE atm if anyone’s interested – and when it comes to tablets, I’ve always wondered about Linux running on them. I’ve been crazy enough to try Ubuntu on my HP TouchPad but it wasn’t all that pretty.
With a new tablet hitting shelves soon – for $100 – you’ll be able to play around with Linux on tablets and still have your faithful friend, Android, come along for the ride. It’s not all fun though as that $100 price tag comes with some trade offs and you’ll certainly see them in the specs below:
- 7″ LCD 800 x 480
- 1GB RAM
- Single-core 1.2 Ghz Cortex A8 CPU
- 8GB of Storage
- SD Card Slot
- USB OTG
- WiFI
- 1.3MP front-facing camera
- 3300 mAh battery
So, as you can see – it’s not all that rosy and your dream of a stunning Linux tablet is still far off. The two systems are configured to have Android on the internal memory and the Linux side of things will boot from an SD Card. Perhaps that opens it up for some tinkery, who knows? It’s packing Android 4.0 and the Linux build has the KDE Plasma interface on top which is a lot more touch friendly than other desktop UIs on Linux. It’s been a long time since I used KDE but, if you like eye-candy, it’s got all you could want and it’s not too dissimilar from how the Android launchers have worked on tablets since Honeycomb.
It’s interesting to see something commercial coming from Linux on tablets – after all if it weren’t for Linux we wouldn’t have Android – even if it is a little bare and lacking on specs. Hopefully, this is the first many of these tablets a dual-core A15 version is to come soon, the A15 is said to run Ubuntu really quite nicely and I imagine with some tweaking these could become really great machines, even if they aren’t going to replace your Nexus 7 any time soon.
[Source: Talk Android]