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I think FOSS had the most early success with older hardware that was relatively inexpensive and still fit for its purpose. They often made excellent developer m
by jsight 9y ago
I think FOSS had the most early success with older hardware that was relatively inexpensive and still fit for its purpose. They often made excellent developer machines for people who wanted to try a Unix-like system for the first time.
Tablets, OTOH, have been becoming obsolete within a year or so of use and don't seem to have much value after that. This might change now that the pace of change has started to stabilize and there are more tablet Chromebooks starting to make it onto the market. I wouldn't be surprised if a good FOSS solution starts to emerge once tablet-like Chromebooks start to gain momentum.
For an alternative way of thinking, maybe there already are some decent FOSS solutions for tablets. There are a lot of actively developed third party Android distributions for tablets and ChromiumOS is pretty powerful.
- majewsky 9y ago> Tablets, OTOH, have been becoming obsolete within a year or so of use and don't seem to have much value after that. Huh? A persistent problem of all tablet manufacturers was that tablets change so little over the years, that people are perfectly content with continuing to use their 4-year-old iPad.
- cwyers 9y agoThat's at the high end. The low end of the market is pretty much beset by churn. Even if people aren't replacing older models, the older models are quickly being retired so porting an OS is a moving target.
- jsight 9y agoYes, that is true for iPads, but those are really hard to unlock and are unlikely to see FOSS development. "High-end" Android tablets from four years ago haven't held up nearly as well.