The link makes it seem like crap hardware, and sure 4gb of ram is really crappy. But how does this compare with one of my kid’s Fire tablets? Does anyone have opinions on that?
I’m considering it, but I’m leery of a pre-order from China.
I would use it primarily as an e-reader and a chat client. I use a desktop for my heavy duty computing.
I mean, everything comes from China. But you mean the processor could be doing nepharious things under the hood to steal data from us and give it to China?
Personally, I do not like the fact that the money they make from the device will end up as a portion of taxes going to the CCP. Plus all the card/address info being sent there too.
It doesn’t bother me that it’s made in China, it bothers me that it’s shipping from China.
I’m careful to check now, but in the past I’ve accidentally ordered products through Amazon that were actually third-party China-based corporations. More often than not I didn’t get the product and had to jump through hoops to get a refund.
Good luck trying to run anything on risc-v (ik box64 and box86 exists)
Linux is not replacing Android tablets any time soon for casual use by non-techies. Especially on RISC-V, where not much software has been packaged to that architecture. Even ARM or X86 tablets don’t have much tablet-oriented software available. Most DEs are pretty shit at tablet style navigation.
It will gather dust, I guarantee it. Maybe someday Linux will be there, but it won’t be soon. And I’ve tried several times with several devices to make that happen.
DEs need to embrace tiling functionality and transparent windows (eg. playing a YT video under your LibreOffice window). It’s the only proper way to use a tablet. Obviously KDE’s Windows-like taskbar is a nightmare for tablets but even Android’s “deck of window cards” is crappy for anything that you couldn’t just as well do on a smartphone.
Sure, it’s not perfect, but there is still probably use cases there. For me personally, I prefer using roll20 to store my character sheets for D&D, and my peace of shit 15 year old laptop just isn’t cutting it anymore. I don’t think this is a $150 use case, but if the price of this tablet were to come down I’d have second thoughts.
You could get a decent lightweight netbook type machine that’s maybe under a decade old and only have to shell out like $30 and you could Linux it just fine. Until not long ago I was using a 13 year old Toshiba laptop and it was kicking ass. I only replaced it because for sheer cpu power I just needed something faster for certain things.
If I could get a 7" RISC-V tablet that only ran FBReader or some other calibre-compatible reader, and had wifi, I would be very happy. I would even pay $150. But I’m not holding my breath.
Linux is not replacing Android tablets any time soon for casual use by non-techies.
Meanwhile PineTab 2 is used nearly daily here, at home and while traveling, by non-techies.
I’m not saying anybody is fine with a Linux tablet… but if the applications (not “apps”) one actually uses function properly on it, no reason that it would gather dust.
PS: tinkered with a Banana Pi BPI-F3 with SpacemiT K1 8 core RISC-V and for that architecture specifically I would wait just a bit more, also why I didn’t get a PineTab V RISC.
I also have a Pinetab 2 and now after a year I’d say it’s in a pretty good state.
However, if you just want a tablet, a similarly priced Android tablet will run circles around it in responsiveness and feel. (I have a Xiaoxin Pad pro 2022/Lenovo Pad M10 3rd gen)
Re RISC-V: AFAIK the new SpacemiT chips are the first actually usulable ones. The older and more common JH7110 has half the cores and way lower feature level. Like, no floating points and other extensions that are essential for modern computing.
I had Ubuntu on two of my ASUS transformer pads and I finally caved and went back to Android-x86 on the one that I use as a tablet more frequently. I really wish someone would make a proper full fledged touch distro for tablets, and at the same time I totally get why nobody has gone to the effort yet. Android kinda has it covered enough. I tried Bliss but some elements of the OS just would not play nice.
I think if any DE is close enough to what a tablet should have it’s Unity, and I don’t see anyone trying to bring that up to speed with Wayland etc. but it seems to be the best candidate short of making a DE from scratch - which might just be the best idea when all is said and done.
Mobian as developed for PostmarketOS and Pinephone is about the best you can find today. I’ve never tried it on a tablet, just phones, so YMMV.
Mobian developed for PostmarketOS? I feel like you are mixing something up here, as those are both distros. Maybe you mean Phosh?
The ram options available for this tablet are better than what the iPad had when it first came out, and are pretty on par with more modern versions. Source
The idea of using a tablet as a computer is not exactly a selling point for me. What id love to see is an app market space for tablets like this. Something that competes with Apple and Google; especially if it had a focus on home automation and security. Gaming would be a close second.
Sure, but I thought apt was just that. Anyone can make a repository or app store and give you access to apps thru apt-get install app. You could also run ducker to run virtual apps.
I would want to run gimp, krita, scribus inkscape, blender (maybe), Joplin, python/notebook, Spyder, libre office, etc. I think that would be a great list of apps that already one can easily install via app. I don’t want a store like apple or google and for sure I don’t want black box stuff that will run in the background consuming battery and stealing my data. I’ll go check the review to see if the “it’s not there yet” refers to functionality where these apps will keep crashing vs functionality meaning my mom can pick it up and use it like toddlers do. Big difference for me.
