4 ms·

To the risk of sounding completely insensitive, I honestly don't understand why they did not invest $5k in a good Kickstarter video and campaign. This is exactl

by rburhum 12y ago

To the risk of sounding completely insensitive, I honestly don't understand why they did not invest $5k in a good Kickstarter video and campaign. This is exactly the kind of project that has people automatically drop money on for two factors: 1) geek factor and 2) philosophical factor. It is a no-brainer.

rasz_pl 12y ago
Your takeaway from a failed hardware project is that authors should sucker a ton of people out of money using crowd funding in order to not be in debt when project inevitably fails? Brilliant! You want a thermal camera with that (muoptics)? or maybe a smart watch (ostro)? or a magic nano ultra capacitor AA batteries? Main problem was economies of scale, no experience with manufacturing, NIH syndrome, and no market. 1 NOBODY wants a tablet with 2 year old specs. 2 almost nobody wants a KDE/gnome/firefox tablet. There was nothing stopping them from simply ordering 1000 (pretty standard moq for crazy low prices in $30-50 range) already shipping tablets, and porting their code over.
- zanny 12y ago
  > porting their code over. They have been stuck with x86 based hardware since the ARM GPU drivers are a collective wreck and they use X, so the shitty Android blobs aren't even close to being an option. I think it was just premature. We need Lima / Freedreno / that open Tegra project to mature into their own, so we can have first class Mesa GPU acceleration on ARM systems, before we can try bringing desktop Linux to said devices. It is the same mistake Canonical made with Mir, and I think it is a mistake with Wayland - the Android GPU stack is a lost cause, and trying to work around it and have the tumor of Qualcomms / ARMs shitty blobs is doomed from the start.
- rburhum 12y ago
  nobody said sucker anybody from money. When undertaking a project of this kind, you will need capital. It is clear from this post, the they ran out of personal (?!?) money. Heck, to even "save" money, the manufacturing was taken to a UK company (?!?!?). Not manufacturing hardware of this kind in China is a really really bad idea for several reasons. > 1) NOBODY wants a tablet with 2 year old specs. You are mistaken. the low cost tablet market exists. I would rephrase that to most people do not want a slow / unresponsive tablet. those are two very different things. > 2 almost nobody wants a KDE/gnome/Firefox tablet. How can you even make that statement when you don't even know what that would be like? People want a tablet that responds well, to browse the web, send email and check their Facebook acct. For some segments of the world population the ecosystem of 3rd party apps is irrelevant since they never ever download an app.

by rburhum 12y ago

rasz_pl 12y ago

Your takeaway from a failed hardware project is that authors should sucker a ton of people out of money using crowd funding in order to not be in debt when project inevitably fails? Brilliant! You want a thermal camera with that (muoptics)? or maybe a smart watch (ostro)? or a magic nano ultra capacitor AA batteries? Main problem was economies of scale, no experience with manufacturing, NIH syndrome, and no market. 1 NOBODY wants a tablet with 2 year old specs. 2 almost nobody wants a KDE/gnome/firefox tablet. There was nothing stopping them from simply ordering 1000 (pretty standard moq for crazy low prices in $30-50 range) already shipping tablets, and porting their code over.

zanny 12y ago
> porting their code over. They have been stuck with x86 based hardware since the ARM GPU drivers are a collective wreck and they use X, so the shitty Android blobs aren't even close to being an option. I think it was just premature. We need Lima / Freedreno / that open Tegra project to mature into their own, so we can have first class Mesa GPU acceleration on ARM systems, before we can try bringing desktop Linux to said devices. It is the same mistake Canonical made with Mir, and I think it is a mistake with Wayland - the Android GPU stack is a lost cause, and trying to work around it and have the tumor of Qualcomms / ARMs shitty blobs is doomed from the start.
rburhum 12y ago
nobody said sucker anybody from money. When undertaking a project of this kind, you will need capital. It is clear from this post, the they ran out of personal (?!?) money. Heck, to even "save" money, the manufacturing was taken to a UK company (?!?!?). Not manufacturing hardware of this kind in China is a really really bad idea for several reasons. > 1) NOBODY wants a tablet with 2 year old specs. You are mistaken. the low cost tablet market exists. I would rephrase that to most people do not want a slow / unresponsive tablet. those are two very different things. > 2 almost nobody wants a KDE/gnome/Firefox tablet. How can you even make that statement when you don't even know what that would be like? People want a tablet that responds well, to browse the web, send email and check their Facebook acct. For some segments of the world population the ecosystem of 3rd party apps is irrelevant since they never ever download an app.