7 ms·

$270 Spark Linux tablet is powered by KDE Active Plasma

108 points by 11031a 15y ago

trotsky 15y ago
Based on the performance shown in the videos I have some serious reservations about an X/KDE tablet with only 512MB.
- bri3d 15y ago
  I think the fragmentation of X11 video acceleration is partially responsible, as well - it's really hard to write a reasonable driver for every X acceleration technology (which is in good part why Intel keept pushing for MeeGo to use Wayland instead).
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    The lead developer of Wayland works for Intel.
    - seabee 15y ago
      And why do you think he's the lead developer? :) Not out of the goodness of his heart, I should imagine.
  - shmerl 15y ago
    Mer can run on Wayland as well, as soon as there will be drivers for the given GPU.
- lunarscape 15y ago
  The videos are far from indicative of the performance of the device that'll be shipped because it's totally different hardware. The tablet in the video is an x86 Atom based device and the one they'll ship will be an ARM tablet. I really hope that'll be better cause the tablet shown actually has 1GB RAM.
  - raphman 15y ago
    Additionally, it looks like the ARM Mali-400 GPU in the Spark tablet will get an open source 3D driver soon: https://gitorious.org/lima https://gitorious.org/lima
    - lunarscape 15y ago
      Cool. I thought this wouldn't be out til FOSDEM.
waitwhat 15y ago
That. tablet. has. really. jerky. performance.
- ahel 15y ago
  I don't think that tablet is Spark. I suppose it is the WeTab.
wavephorm 15y ago
This looks great, and now all the people complaining about Microsoft's locked firmware have a place to take their wallets.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
empire29 15y ago
The performance seemed lacking, but more importantly, while watching the demo the concept of an "activity" confused me -- I assume its similar to the notion of an app, but it was hard to tell as the "activity" was represented as a desktop -- overall fairly confusing. It doesnt look ready for prime time but its exciting to see the FOSS community working on it; who knows, in a few years it might be able to garner the same eminence as xbmc has in the htpc space.
- trotsky 15y ago
  Activities in KDE are workspaces more or less, a combination of applications and data that you use for a specific set of tasks. They were introduced on the desktop in KDE 4, but (imho) they still feel rather awkward. You'll be seeing a lot more tablet focused rollouts in X over the next 6 months to a year, as XInput 2.2 that has support for multitouch in a standard way was recently merged. Fedora 17 and Ubuntu 12.04 both plan to include it, and Ubuntu has a fairly developed touch and gesture recognition infrastructure. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAzMjQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAzM...
- kijin 15y ago
  The whole "activity" thing tends to get confusing, even in desktop KDE. It's a nice concept on paper, but badly in need of intuitive appeal.
  - ahel 15y ago
    http://blip.tv/file/get/Chani-activities46160.ogv http://blip.tv/file/get/Chani-activities46160.ogv That video may help you, like had helped me.
    - agumonkey 15y ago
      There was a lot of nice things there, but .. I'm still confused :D
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
jiggy2011 15y ago
I see they've changed the UI but it still mostly looks like a desktop interface shoehorned onto a tablet. Beyond basic stuff like a web-browser I'm not sure what other software you could run on here.
- DrCatbox 15y ago
  Apache/Nginx, python and all those programs and emacs. What more do you need? ;)
  - fab13n 15y ago
    > What more do you need? Not a tablet anyway, it seems. Kidding aside, I believe you've nailed the problem with this tablet's UI: it seems designed by people who don't see the point of a tablet. They understand it as "a laptop without a keyboard". We've seen that before with Windows CE, designed by people who saw smartphones as underpowered, keyboard-less computers, with a stylus as a poor substitute for a mouse (they even had a right-click button on some styluses IIRC). They "adapted" the Windows UX into a phone as an accessibility issue, although it was to support challenged hardware rather than challenged users. And indeed, Windows CE felt as compelling as Windows with sticky keys, high contrast, big fonts and a Braille reader. I'm afraid this tablet's UI deserves the same success against iOS devices as Windows CE experienced.
    - DrCatbox 15y ago
      Good analogies are rarely seen as this one. All this just goes to show that for most products there is room for improvement in UX.
aiscott 15y ago
I like the idea and the hardware, but the article was really offensive to me. I design hardware for a living. To rephrase, I design hardware for money, aka PROFIT. So when I read something like "at the end of the day you are just passing along profit to the device makers." like that is somehow a bad thing, I'm not only irritated, I'm mystified. I've been in the market for a tablet, but it won't be this one.
- abecedarius 15y ago
  That annoyed me too, but why punish the maker for the reviewer's sins?
- jsight 15y ago
  The actual quote is: "Android tablet options abound, and Google’s operating system is as open as you’re going to find on a retail shelf. At the end of the day, though, you’re passing profit along to the Android device makers." Isn't that more of a swipe at Google/Android than at device makers in particular? Ie, presumably he feels that Android and their makers don't contribute back to the software community, whereas this device does? (Personally, I think he's wrong in that assertion, but I still don't think this is a swipe at hardware guys at all)
  - MaysonL 15y ago
    Are any Android tablet manufacturers selling enough to make a profit on the tablets?
    - jsight 15y ago
      The Asus transformer has done pretty well, and is almost certainly profitable (cf, http://www.pcworld.com/article/235925/asus_transformer_tablet_surprising_second_best_in_sales_after_apple_ipad.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/235925/asus_transformer_table... though I suspect those numbers are a bit high). I don't know how many of the other models would have to sell to reach profitability, but I'd be shocked if the cheap shenzen tablets were unprofitable (why would they keep going if they weren't?). Not to mention the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. The others don't seem to be selling as well, but that has to do with a very poor quality->price ratio (cf, any Acer tablet). Anyway, I think the argument that Android tablets aren't selling has been vastly overstated. There was a huge line for these things on Black Friday in the US for example.
mindcrime 15y ago
That is really freaking cool. And it might be the thing that spurs me to switch to KDE across the board. I run Gnome on my F12 desktop now, but have been reluctant to upgrade to Gnome3... KDE, OTOH, I've always liked, but I shied away from it in the past since there were some bits of software I used that didn't have native KDE support (purportedly because of the KDE libs being GPL'd). Now, KDE is under the LGPL, this tablet looks pretty cool... and I'm thinking that it might be a good time to go head, bite the bullet, and make KDE my standard environment. I really need to upgrade the OS on this laptop anyway, since F12 is like a bazillion years old now.
shmerl 15y ago
It's running on the Mer Core http://merproject.org http://merproject.org and I wonder why developers aren't given credit for in in the article.
kzrdude 15y ago
I'd like to see a Meego tablet instead! It's probably more mature too..
- moondowner 15y ago
  MeeGo is dead. This runs on Mer[1] which is a continuation of MeeGo, combined with Plasma Active[2], the KDE Tablet UI and apps. [1] http://merproject.org/ http://merproject.org/ [2] http://plasma-active.org/ http://plasma-active.org/
gcb 15y ago
like what we need is yet another convoluted home screen shenanigans. just focus on getting regular gnome/kde/whateverwm on those things and be done with it. most devices lack drivers even when proprietary. the touchpad has a chip for hdmi from the usb port that webos doesn't have code to use
chj 15y ago
i might be interested in this if it is $27.0
bitcracker 15y ago
This is very good news. We desperately need an open source alternative to the closed platforms which play along the DRM censorship technology. My dream Pad would support "dual view" modes in the sense that it could be used as a Pad and as a classic PC as well. Which means: Put the Pad on a table, connect a keyboard and mouse and use it as a classic PC for Software development and Office. The first mode would require the touch GUI (KDE Active Plasma) while the second mode would be best supported by the classic KDE desktop. Wouldn't that be nice to have?

108 points by 11031a 15y ago

trotsky 15y ago

Based on the performance shown in the videos I have some serious reservations about an X/KDE tablet with only 512MB.

bri3d 15y ago
I think the fragmentation of X11 video acceleration is partially responsible, as well - it's really hard to write a reasonable driver for every X acceleration technology (which is in good part why Intel keept pushing for MeeGo to use Wayland instead).
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  The lead developer of Wayland works for Intel.
  - seabee 15y ago
    And why do you think he's the lead developer? :) Not out of the goodness of his heart, I should imagine.
- shmerl 15y ago
  Mer can run on Wayland as well, as soon as there will be drivers for the given GPU.
lunarscape 15y ago
The videos are far from indicative of the performance of the device that'll be shipped because it's totally different hardware. The tablet in the video is an x86 Atom based device and the one they'll ship will be an ARM tablet. I really hope that'll be better cause the tablet shown actually has 1GB RAM.
- raphman 15y ago
  Additionally, it looks like the ARM Mali-400 GPU in the Spark tablet will get an open source 3D driver soon: https://gitorious.org/lima https://gitorious.org/lima
  - lunarscape 15y ago
    Cool. I thought this wouldn't be out til FOSDEM.

waitwhat 15y ago

That. tablet. has. really. jerky. performance.

ahel 15y ago
I don't think that tablet is Spark. I suppose it is the WeTab.

wavephorm 15y ago

This looks great, and now all the people complaining about Microsoft's locked firmware have a place to take their wallets.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

empire29 15y ago

The performance seemed lacking, but more importantly, while watching the demo the concept of an "activity" confused me -- I assume its similar to the notion of an app, but it was hard to tell as the "activity" was represented as a desktop -- overall fairly confusing. It doesnt look ready for prime time but its exciting to see the FOSS community working on it; who knows, in a few years it might be able to garner the same eminence as xbmc has in the htpc space.

trotsky 15y ago
Activities in KDE are workspaces more or less, a combination of applications and data that you use for a specific set of tasks. They were introduced on the desktop in KDE 4, but (imho) they still feel rather awkward. You'll be seeing a lot more tablet focused rollouts in X over the next 6 months to a year, as XInput 2.2 that has support for multitouch in a standard way was recently merged. Fedora 17 and Ubuntu 12.04 both plan to include it, and Ubuntu has a fairly developed touch and gesture recognition infrastructure. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAzMjQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAzM...
kijin 15y ago
The whole "activity" thing tends to get confusing, even in desktop KDE. It's a nice concept on paper, but badly in need of intuitive appeal.
- ahel 15y ago
  http://blip.tv/file/get/Chani-activities46160.ogv http://blip.tv/file/get/Chani-activities46160.ogv That video may help you, like had helped me.
  - agumonkey 15y ago
    There was a lot of nice things there, but .. I'm still confused :D
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

jiggy2011 15y ago

I see they've changed the UI but it still mostly looks like a desktop interface shoehorned onto a tablet. Beyond basic stuff like a web-browser I'm not sure what other software you could run on here.

DrCatbox 15y ago
Apache/Nginx, python and all those programs and emacs. What more do you need? ;)
- fab13n 15y ago
  > What more do you need? Not a tablet anyway, it seems. Kidding aside, I believe you've nailed the problem with this tablet's UI: it seems designed by people who don't see the point of a tablet. They understand it as "a laptop without a keyboard". We've seen that before with Windows CE, designed by people who saw smartphones as underpowered, keyboard-less computers, with a stylus as a poor substitute for a mouse (they even had a right-click button on some styluses IIRC). They "adapted" the Windows UX into a phone as an accessibility issue, although it was to support challenged hardware rather than challenged users. And indeed, Windows CE felt as compelling as Windows with sticky keys, high contrast, big fonts and a Braille reader. I'm afraid this tablet's UI deserves the same success against iOS devices as Windows CE experienced.
  - DrCatbox 15y ago
    Good analogies are rarely seen as this one. All this just goes to show that for most products there is room for improvement in UX.

aiscott 15y ago

I like the idea and the hardware, but the article was really offensive to me. I design hardware for a living. To rephrase, I design hardware for money, aka PROFIT. So when I read something like "at the end of the day you are just passing along profit to the device makers." like that is somehow a bad thing, I'm not only irritated, I'm mystified. I've been in the market for a tablet, but it won't be this one.

abecedarius 15y ago
That annoyed me too, but why punish the maker for the reviewer's sins?
jsight 15y ago
The actual quote is: "Android tablet options abound, and Google’s operating system is as open as you’re going to find on a retail shelf. At the end of the day, though, you’re passing profit along to the Android device makers." Isn't that more of a swipe at Google/Android than at device makers in particular? Ie, presumably he feels that Android and their makers don't contribute back to the software community, whereas this device does? (Personally, I think he's wrong in that assertion, but I still don't think this is a swipe at hardware guys at all)
- MaysonL 15y ago
  Are any Android tablet manufacturers selling enough to make a profit on the tablets?
  - jsight 15y ago
    The Asus transformer has done pretty well, and is almost certainly profitable (cf, http://www.pcworld.com/article/235925/asus_transformer_tablet_surprising_second_best_in_sales_after_apple_ipad.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/235925/asus_transformer_table... though I suspect those numbers are a bit high). I don't know how many of the other models would have to sell to reach profitability, but I'd be shocked if the cheap shenzen tablets were unprofitable (why would they keep going if they weren't?). Not to mention the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. The others don't seem to be selling as well, but that has to do with a very poor quality->price ratio (cf, any Acer tablet). Anyway, I think the argument that Android tablets aren't selling has been vastly overstated. There was a huge line for these things on Black Friday in the US for example.

mindcrime 15y ago

That is really freaking cool. And it might be the thing that spurs me to switch to KDE across the board. I run Gnome on my F12 desktop now, but have been reluctant to upgrade to Gnome3... KDE, OTOH, I've always liked, but I shied away from it in the past since there were some bits of software I used that didn't have native KDE support (purportedly because of the KDE libs being GPL'd). Now, KDE is under the LGPL, this tablet looks pretty cool... and I'm thinking that it might be a good time to go head, bite the bullet, and make KDE my standard environment. I really need to upgrade the OS on this laptop anyway, since F12 is like a bazillion years old now.

shmerl 15y ago

It's running on the Mer Core http://merproject.org http://merproject.org and I wonder why developers aren't given credit for in in the article.

kzrdude 15y ago

I'd like to see a Meego tablet instead! It's probably more mature too..

moondowner 15y ago
MeeGo is dead. This runs on Mer[1] which is a continuation of MeeGo, combined with Plasma Active[2], the KDE Tablet UI and apps. [1] http://merproject.org/ http://merproject.org/ [2] http://plasma-active.org/ http://plasma-active.org/

gcb 15y ago

like what we need is yet another convoluted home screen shenanigans. just focus on getting regular gnome/kde/whateverwm on those things and be done with it. most devices lack drivers even when proprietary. the touchpad has a chip for hdmi from the usb port that webos doesn't have code to use

chj 15y ago

i might be interested in this if it is $27.0

bitcracker 15y ago

This is very good news. We desperately need an open source alternative to the closed platforms which play along the DRM censorship technology. My dream Pad would support "dual view" modes in the sense that it could be used as a Pad and as a classic PC as well. Which means: Put the Pad on a table, connect a keyboard and mouse and use it as a classic PC for Software development and Office. The first mode would require the touch GUI (KDE Active Plasma) while the second mode would be best supported by the classic KDE desktop. Wouldn't that be nice to have?