Status of Linux on the Latest Tablet PCs?

AmbushBug asks: "The new Tablet PCs have been out for a while now and I was wondering if anyone has had any luck running GNU/Linux on them? I've found that its running on the Pacebooks and there seems to be some success with the Compaq TC1000. Has anyone tried running it on the Motion Computing, Toshiba, Gateway, or others?"

Not yet..

[PeekabooCaribou]

But I'll happily accept donation machines to get the ball rolling. ;)

Runs great

[PD]

It runs well and does everything a tablet PC is supposed to. One small hitch: you need to have a keyboard hooked up to it.

Re:Runs great

[eht]

how the cheese is this insightful?

at least 75% of the point of a tablet pc is not dragging around a keyboard

this machine therefore doesn't do anywhere nearly enough to qualify for "does everything a tablet PC is supposed to."

Re:Runs great

[MonMotha]

Looks to me like all the hardware is supported. This means that you don't really need a keyboard attached, but you need one if you want a decent input method.

Here's the problem. Good handwriting recognition isn't easy to code. There's some projects, like xstroke (which is what is commonly used on ipaqs and other Pocket PCs running Linux with X11, not QTopia), but that's just a single stroke recognizer. It recognizes things very similar to Palm's Graffiti.

Basically, what he was trying to say was that it works great save the textual input functionality, which is still pretty much limited to external keyboard (you could also use an on screen keyboard, but then you give up valuable screen realestate).

Re:Runs great

[PD]

Actually, I was just making a joke and not even trying to troll. I'm as mystified by the +1 mod as the other guy is, since a table computer that needs a keyboard is just goofy.

Re:Runs great

[mrolig]

I'm on a TC1000 right now, and xstroke works great, better than M$'s graffiti.

Re:Runs great

[drewbradford]

I have a Frontpath Progear (now owned by Sonic Blue [sonicblue.com]). It uses a 400MHz Crusoe processor. They haven't made them in the last year or two, but you can still pick them up for a few hundred dollars on Ebay (I paid a little under $400 for mine about a year ago). Many of them came preinstalled with Slackware, so getting Linux to run on them isn't an issue.

Re:Why run GNU/Linux?

[Cokelee]

A successful and profitable Linux software company comes around that actually has a financial statement that doesn't make them look like a lemonade stand and Slashdot commenters repeatedly bash them. I don't understand it. Does Computer Science and Economics just not mix well in this crowd. Is everyone secretly against Linux being deployed?

Re:Why run GNU/Linux?

[g4dget]

It's nice when companies happen to be successful with Linux-based products or GNU-based products. But commercial success (or even widespread acceptance in the marketplace) have little relevance to the central goals of free software. So, basically, to many open source software developers, it basically doesn't matter whether Linux companies are profitable or not.

Linux on the Acer TravelMate C100

[bassomatic]

I've had pretty good sucess installing Debianon the Acer TravelMate C100. I've put up a page here [mit.edu]. You'll find there a quick and dirty touch screen driver that I wrote. There's also the linux wacom page [sourceforge.net] which hopefully be the final home for the touchscreen driver.

Are tablet PCs hard to swallow?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard of a little camera pill like that, but why a PC?

Re:Are tablet PCs hard to swallow?

[dacarr]

Well, it's certainly easier than swallowing your Palm.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[schon]

The new Tablet PCs have been out for a while now

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if they've been out for awhile, wouldn't that make them "the old" tablet PCs?