Recommendations for Android wifi tablet?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 11:13:21AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> Agreed.

Openmoko looked really interesting.

> HP's WebOS is built on Linux.  Not sure if it is at all open -- I
> expect not.  It's not dead yet.

A proprietary user space running on a linux kernel is even worse than
android, which does occationally release sources to its proprietary
user space.

> Intel and Nokia have Meego which might be somewhat open.  As far as
> Nokia is concerned, it's a dead man walking.  Intel appears to hope it
> is alive.

Yeah good luck to intel on that.

> Nokia was supposed to deliver the N9 with Meego but they announced
> a day or two ago that it won't be released in UK or US.
>   <http://www.newsden.net/no-nokia-n9-with-meego-for-uk-and-us-9196/>
> I've heard some good things about the N9 -- perhaps that is bad for
> Nokia so they want to kill it.

Well Microsoft paid Nokia a bunch of money to go to WP7, so clearly they
are going that way now.  Not that Nokia seems to have done anything right
in the last few years.  WP7 will almost certainly not be an exception
to that.  Rather sad to see Nokia go, but I think that's what is
happening.

> Apparently there is a Ubuntu port for the Transformer.  I don't know
> if I trust this, but it is interesting.  It can be "native" or on top
> of the Android kernel.
>   <http://androlinux.com/>
>   <http://androlinux.com/android-ubuntu-development/native-ubuntu-on-eeepad-transformer/>
>   <http://androlinux.com/android-ubuntu-development/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-android/>
> It doesn't smell as if there is a lot of activity.

Nope, not really.

> There are a lot of competitors for that title.  Many of the embedded
> are horrible.  At least Google does code drops of the the GPLed parts.

Eventually.

> But their bad behaviour has the greatest impact because of their
> marketshare and mindshare.  They've fooled many into thinking it is
> open source thereby scorching the earth for real opensource.

Exactly.  And they are open source only by the loosest of definitions.
They certainly are not open source in development.  Good luck getting
anything into android.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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