Re: Low-Cost Tablet PC suitable for Debian
On Wed, 12 Dec 2018 12:03:25 +0100
Hans <hans.ullrich@loop.de> wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 12. Dezember 2018, 11:39:39 CET schrieb Michelle Konzack:
> Must it be a tablet? Same size are netbooks (like my EEEPC), with
> complete support of debian, a real keyboard and a light weight.
>
> Do not expect a tablet running debian as fast as Android, as Android
> is very special software with very, very special code for the
> hardware.
>
> Lots of functions are done by the hardware itself (I mean, the
> computing does the hardware itself) and not down by Android, where in
> debian this is all missing.
>
> Tablets are just gadgets (IMHO) and not be usable for real work.
> However, if your work is "surfing, mailing, WhatsApp and playing
> multimedia", then tablets are fine. If you need more, IMHO a netbook
> is more senseful.
>
> Just my opinion.....
Me too. But I think netbooks are a thing of the past, at least at low
cost, the tablets have displaced them. I've been looking for a
replacement for my Acer Aspire One for some years. I'm a difficult
customer in that I want at least two real USB ports and if at all
possible, wired Ethernet. I need a computer: if I wanted a toy, I'd buy
a smartphone.
I've just bought the nearest thing I could find, which is significantly
bigger but still much smaller than a 'real' laptop. Acer again, 11.6"
screen instead of 9" (I think the 9" displays all go into tablets) and
with a couple of USB ports AND wired Ethernet. Win10, but that's no
problem. The Aspire came with Linpus, which was a cut-down version of
Fedora. It was missing iptables kernel modules, and I didn't fancy
compiling a kernel for exotic hardware, but I found Ubuntu Remix would
work. Eventually I lost patience with that and tried straight Debian,
which pretty well worked, which I hadn't expected.
I have played with a pocket-sized tablet, which does an excellent job
of replacing an old out-of-support sat-nav. But though I can install
MariaDB and a web server with PHP, they won't run for more than a few
minutes. It's probably easily fixable, but there's no supported way to
get any real control of the thing. I would have to use some random
hacker's malware to do that, which I don't find acceptable. I don't
feel that the thing actually belongs to me, I'm just renting it from
Google, and doing with it whatever Google generously permits me to do.
--
Joe
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