uhm tegra3 hasn’t video drivers for linux

@dcf5c7ecc388feb00249528d2f81c762:disqus “@fewt: I am sorry that you are an idiot. whenever somebody says “infinitely more usable” it means they know nothing about usability. It’s like saying “infinitely more beautiful” or “infinitely more artistic” . It’s really just a badge of moronic laziness about the concept being referenced.”

Hey, thanks for calling me an idiot. For your information, I know plenty about usability as I am the leader of a very successful Linux distribution and one of my areas of focus is on usability improvement.

“Why do people like @fewt always, and I mean always post to denigrate initiatives they don’t understand? I can’t be sure, but I have to guess that insecurity plays a role. After all, if they really thought these initiatives were useless, they would ignore them, right?”

I have to turn the “moronic laziness” and “initiatives they don’t understand” statements around and point them at you, what makes you qualified to argue that I’m not? Some evidence of your success in the area under discussion please.

Insecurity? Hardly. Just more pathetic drivel because I said your gods trash wasn’t a value on an Android slate. I’d argue it is your insecurity that demanded you respond with personal attacks.

“No offense @fewt. I don’t dislike you. it’s more that I feel sorry for you that you are threatened by what you don’t understand rather than wanting to learn. you could have asked why instead of whining.”

No offense, I don’t dislike you either but you seem to be spewing a ton of vitriol over my simple comment. Personal attack after personal attack because I said something you didn’t like. I think you are the one we should feel sorry for, I mean to spew this stuff out with such anger, you must be pretty lonely.

“Anyway, there are vastly many apps for Ubuntu that will never be available for android. that alone is reason to want it on a convenient platform like a tablet.”

Anyway, Ubuntu had its place and that wasn’t on a Tablet. It really won’t be either. Android owns the market, and the platform is for the most part FOSS. There just isn’t any need for anyone to want Ubuntu for these devices – except perhaps tinkerers. There just isn’t any value here. Just about anything you could want or need is available for Android and if it isn’t the SDK is free and open source.

“Another reason is that mini-Linux machines like the mk802 are inconvenient to use in many places where a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and power supply are not readily available. it would be convenient to have Linux in a self-contained package in many situations. For example, wireless LAN auditing.I’ve tried some of the Android packages that purport to replace common Linux tools and they are much more finicky and problematic with respect to updates than the tools they aspire to replace.”

I bet those Wireless LAN auditing problems you had were PEBKAC or ID10-T errors and not problems with the software, based on your comment here today.

By the way, thanks for the personal attacks they made me chuckle a little. Loser.

Ubuntu had its place and that wasn’t on…

Wow. Wowowow. Your bias is INCREDIBLE.

Why are you hating on developers that are actually doing something worthwhile?

Does a Fedora-fork with a OSX GUI slapped over top of it entitle you to badmouth Canonical?

You also have ZERO rebuttal. No substance, nothing quantifiable. You criticize someone about personal attacks and then launch into them yourself.

Your whole argument is: someone else already did it.

It’s absurd.

Sure I am a little biased. So are you. What makes you think it is worthwhile when they can’t even pay their bills without resorting to adware?

Read my first comment, I didn’t say anything bad about them. So I replied in kind to a personal attack, deal with it.

I see the Fuduntu apologists are out in force today.

My argument is that it is pointless, and that argument stands.

@Fewt: Your initial comment was unnecessarily troll-like, so it’s not surprise that someone rose to the bait, after which you responded in kind (and practically confirmed that your first comment was a troll).

“wow, what anger in all of these posts.”

Typical really. When anyone speaks poorly of Ubuntu at all they come out of the woodwork in defense, and by woodwork I mean their mothers basements and in defense I mean filling the discussions with herp derp. XD

I’m with you, it just isn’t a good fit for the footprint. It didn’t work when they tried to put netbook remix on netbooks (though that was actually OK) and it really doesn’t work when they try to bolt it on a tablet.

I’ve been in the space a long time, almost 17 years and had hands on with just about every platform imaginable. Android is better and it’s in the space today. It will be an uphill battle by a company already struggling to stay afloat, it doesn’t makes sense to try to compete here when they are already broke.

Your suggestion is a great one, using something like pocket cloud they can demo it so they can see for themselves that it doesn’t fit.

They won’t do that though, it’s easier to spew vitriol at those that actually do work in the space. XD

I don’t like Unity, since it’s per definition too “hungry” for it’s own good.
A tweaked XFCE like desktop with some compiz flair seems more like a decent compromise between snazzy looks and low resource functionality

It is sad but people defend what they want to believe and often over react and do the proverbial, “shoot the messenger” routine.

Though eventually there is likely to be a OS that will blur the lines between desktop and tablet. It’s just for now it’s more Jekyll and Hyde solutions as it’s no simple matter to just change how a OS is optimized to be used or how the apps that run on the OS are also optimized.

Though, they do need to start somewhere and a low cost tablet is not a terrible place to start… even if not optimal, but people should keep expectations low as this won’t happen overnight and we may still be years from a proper desktop Linux distro making it in the tablet market.

Especially, if they insist on using existing distros instead of starting fresh and build something actually designed for both usages from the ground up.

Sorry but desktop apps do need to be optimized for tablet usage if you want a proper porting.

You may get away with some things but desktop apps are optimized for desktop usage. They don’t scale well, they’re mainly optimized to be interacted with a keyboard and mouse, and they’re not made to be processor and energy efficient like mobile apps.

The two main things that have kept desktop OS from being successful on mobile devices is first required too much resources, only recently has the average mobile device gotten powerful enough to properly be able to run desktop software, and second is how they are optimized doesn’t work well with small screens and touch only UI,

Now I’ve used a Playbook too, along with other tablets, and despite your opinion it doesn’t change any of the above. The Playbook OS is like other mobile OS optimized for mobile tablet usage. Gesture controls, how apps are shown one at a time, etc.

The browser does handle pretty well but it doesn’t change the need for tablet optimization. If work around solutions like the zoom feature, many sites would be unusable for reasons like improper scaling, etc. for tablet usage.

While I also see nothing wrong with a 12″ tablet, other than being less portable, there are people who find that too small and there are people who also find it too large… It depends on what they intend to use it for and mobile usage pushes small, while desktop usage is for bigger.

“They don’t scale well, they’re mainly optimized to be interacted with a keyboard and mouse, and they’re not made to be processor and energy efficient like mobile apps.”

I’m with you on your second point in that sentence: desktop apps are usually optimized for keyboard and mouse input, *because this is what has defined the desktop environment since 1984*. I’m not entirely sold on the other two points, because those are tied to different design decisions, not simply the fact that an application is running on a desktop.

“I think we’ll see Windows 8 fail here also because it makes the same
mistake – it is a desktop OS with a touch menu, but under the hood it’s
still a desktop OS.”

It’s definitely a gamble, but it’s more complicated with Windows 8. Since the Modern UI is also different under the hood and is more literally a Jekyll & Hyde setup.

The modern UI is designed differently from the NT Kernel on up from traditional Windows. While also not really intended just for tablets, it is very well optimized for tablet usage.

It’s just the the Traditional desktop is still there for legacy support and to deal with usages that the Modern UI isn’t yet optimized to handle as well. Since MS traditional user base won’t be giving up their old desktops any time soon.

Something like having Ubuntu work as the desktop mode for Android would be a similar comparison and is something Google/Canonical are working on. Since the re-merged Kernel makes it technically possible, though of course still easier said than done.

Such schizoid solutions aren’t very ideal but they’re workable and that’s at least a bit more than present attempts to directly turn any OS into a all in one.

1. A stylus pen will solve you any mouse problem.
2. Virtual keyboard can easily replace a hardware keyboard.

Of course it is much easier to use a regular mouse/keyboard when you need a long session will of work. But then again nothing prevents you from using a keyboard/mouse with your tablet.

As for optimizing applications for tablets then:

1. Almost no tablet application use any kind of measure to reduce power consumption. Most applications are interactive which means you have to respond immediately to requests but most of the time you are idle (and don’t consume much resources anyway – even not on a desktop).

2. Setting a process into an idle state when it’s not in focus is currently an unneeded feature of ios and android. It is simply not a big issue if processes keep on running even if they are out of focus – how do I know that? I’m running my Playbook using settings which keep all processes running even when they are not in focus – in reality the battery penalty is not a big deal. The truth is that tablets have big enough batteries. Power consumption is mostly an issue of phones and new models of phones are considerably better in this respect.

Good news!

“1. Almost no tablet application use any kind of measure to reduce power consumption. Most applications are interactive which means you have to respond immediately to requests but most of the time you are idle (and don’t consume much resources anyway – even not on a desktop).”

This is completely untrue. Only bad applications written by amateur developers behave this way. Most applications are designed to idle on wait so they aren’t absorbing more processing resources than absolutely necessary. They also perform garbage collection to ensure they aren’t using more memory than required during execution.

“2. Setting a process into an idle state when it’s not in focus is currently an unneeded feature of ios and android. It is simply not a big issue if processes keep on running even if they are out of focus – how do I know that? I’m running my Playbook using settings which keep all processes running even when they are not in focus – in reality the battery penalty is not a big deal. The truth is that tablets have big enough batteries.”

There is a BIG difference between a process running and going idle and a process no longer running at all. If all processes acted the way you described those big batteries wouldn’t last more than an hour or two at best.

What I was objecting to (and not terribly strenuously either, if you re-read my original reply) was your characterization that these are fundamental characteristics of desktop *apps*. In your reply, you mix app and OS in order to justify those points. My point is that design for keyboard and mouse is definitely baked into most apps — that is, the *application code* assumes these inputs (or their equivalents). The other two things are far more controlled by the UI toolkit and the OS. If Canonical (or anyone else) provided binary-compatible versions of popular UI toolkits that properly handled scaling, as well as underlying OS pieces that better handle P-states and scheduling for a tablet environment, many desktop apps would be fine on a tablet except for the question of expecting keyboard and mouse input.

As for scaling in particular, I think it’s necessary to mention the iOS strategy before calling out “desktop apps” as being scaling offenders. When the newest iPad came out there were only a handful of applications that could immediately make use of the higher pixel density on the new screen. Why? Because Apple’s UI toolkit doesn’t do the scaling for you. Apple’s solution (as I understand it, and perhaps I’m mistaken) has been to require developers to provide UI variants for each and every screen size and aspect ratio supported by iOS. That turns out to be a small set, so there haven’t been howls of discontent. Contrast that to the Android world in which there are dozens of screen sizes and aspect ratios. Some UI toolkits do a good job with scaling. Qt comes to mind. Most don’t, and that includes many used to build mobile apps.

“The other two things are far more controlled by the UI toolkit and the OS.”

No, you’re not getting the point. Sure, most of the power consumption is handled by the OS/System. However, the OS can only control so much but unless the apps work with it then it will always be handicapped!

Desktop apps aren’t designed to be aware of power consumption like mobile apps. Take a photo app with geo tagging for example, when power gets low it will either offer or automatically switch off the GPS to conserve power.

For desktop apps there’s usually no direct APIs available to give that functionality.

Features like always connected standby are generally not what desktop apps are designed to work with for example. So you either save power and have little to nothing running or keep the system working and consuming power.

This is why apps power optimization is also important, otherwise the OS will be handicapped by how much it can do. Mind also that one size fits all generic power state responses isn’t always ideal for how all apps operate.

Even mobile apps don’t do this perfectly and they’re actually designed for this type of usage.

Mind also that the battery capacity in these mobile devices are typically much smaller than you’d find in laptops. So if they have to work harder to run desktop OS and apps then the run times are going to get significantly shorter.

For scaling, issues include no consistent scaling of apps and tons of legacy apps that scale according to resolution instead of screen size.

You could customize to an extent but many desktop apps aren’t that customizable.

You’re points on Apple are true but the situation for desktop on mobile devices is they will be put on pretty much the same devices as Android is now.

Even for Android, the hardware fragmentation often requires the OS to be optimized for a given device and not all devices are that friendly to Open Source or even provide the level of performance and standards support to allow running of desktop apps.

All of which is harder to support with desktop OS.

Mind also both the desktop OS and desktop apps are usually much larger than mobile apps. So you have to factor taking up more space and memory resources on average.

I understand why you think the other factors aren’t too much of a concern but even small problems can become compounded and add to each other, which is the primary point I’m making.

Link or GTFO.

Plasma has pretty good support for a tablet friendly Linux experience. It is one of the packages available on the PengPod Linux tablets. Taking pre-orders now through http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod