Yes, that is Plasma Active, and yes I am the fresh owner of that tablet. Don’t ask about the hole in my pocket. It’s a Viewsonic Viewpad 10 that came with Android and Windows 7. Well, it runs Android and Plasma Active (on OpenSUSE) now ;)
Also I just enrolled for this AI class. Coolbeans.
A little swamped right now, and as is often the case during times when I am swamped, lots of interesting things are going on and I’m itching to write stuff. Time however, is scarce :( We’ll see what happens.
(Linux + Touch = <3 <3 <3)
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dai1313
Let me guess, you got a tablet just so you could try plasma active.
How does it run? I am curious.
Jason "moofang"
Heh, well not just plasma active, planning to try gnome 3 and such on it as well. But mostly plasma active xD
It’s about what you’d expect from pre-beta software. Out-the-box functionality is pretty decent. Some things are really nice, but some other fairly basic things are missing. For example I just finished manually getting screen-rotation to work by binding shortcuts to xrandr scripts – and even then the shell itself doesn’t rotate well.
Still, I’m digging how it’s working on my tablet so far. I’m steadily getting it to do everything I’d like a tablet to be able to do. Most existing KDE apps, the non-“activated” ones, are also remarkably usable via touch. Basically it’s already good enough that I’m more than happy to stick on it and carry it around without booting into android. It’s also a bonus that since it’s OpenSUSE underneath it’s basically a full fledged linux, with all the power that entails.
dai1313
Oh, Enlightenment has had a tablet friendly interface for years and years. That might also be worth giving a shot. I would describe it as fast+simple+annoying_to_set_up.
Also, I don’t know if on screen keyboard works in gnome 3 yet. I have seen videos where it works but I can’t seem to get the damn thing to start on my computer. I have not tried very hard though as I have never needed it.
Also I was reading another blog. http://rubenerd.com/kde-shirt/ This guy found a place to get good quality KDE shirts – I thought you might be interested.
MaTachi
That’s so cool! I didn’t even it was possible to run Linux in a good way on tablets. :P ^^ Is it just as easy to install Linux on a tablet as it’s on a normal PC?
Jason "moofang"
Hey guys sorry for the late replies
@dai1313 I just went and did some searching and I’m quite impressed by what i see (e17 touch interface that is). I remember being somewhat impressed by an early beta of e17 some time ago and used to carry around a live slax distro running it in my pocket. Makes me wonder how is e17 staying so fringe-world after all this time. But yeah, for now I’m sticking on Plasma Active for daily use, since it’s all set up now and works awesome. When I can next spare time for some happy hacking I’ll try and get me e17 on my baby too ^^ ah all the fun things I’d do if I had infinite time.
Also thanks for the link on KDE shirts. Never quite thought of getting me some Linux swag before but you got me thinking now :P
@MaTachi Well right now it still depends quite abit on your definition of “good way” :P Plasma Active is still on beta, though first release is scheduled next month I think. Easiness of install – well, I think it’s tablet dependant. I deliberately bought an x86 tablet and checked beforehand that it had a bios that let me boot from USB – so if you’re careful to pick tablets with these parameters, it’s basically identical to a normal PC – just have a usb keyboard/mouse handy in case you need them. Also, depending on your hardware, you may need higher kernel versions than some distros provide to have proper touch support – my tablet runs OpenSUSE tumbleweed to get a later kernel version.
MaTachi
Ah, sounds interesting.
And I think it’s really nice to see that there are open alternatives to iPad and Android. :)
Jason "moofang"
Yeah :) Things are at least going fairly well for free software on the tablet form factor. The phone side of things on the other hand is a depressing story :(
https://englandderbyshire.co.uk/
That is a seriously cool setup for 2011! Running Plasma Active on a Viewsonic tablet sounds like a fun project, and it’s always satisfying to get Linux running smoothly on touch hardware. I recently saw a tech retrospective on https://englandderbyshire.co.uk/ that highlighted how much these early experimental builds influenced the mobile interfaces we use today. Good luck with the AI class too—definitely sounds like “coolbeans.” Looking forward to hearing more when you have a spare moment to breathe!