Re: [PLUG] Linux friendly tablet?

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 1:16 AM, JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org> wrote:

As many of you know I'm more of a tool guy (e.g. swiss army knife) than gadget guy, but it seems like it might finally be time for a tablet.

I refuse to have any iDevices in the house, so that basically leaves Android, AFAIK. While in theory devices build on top of Linux should be Linux friendly, not everything is (see TomTom).

So what is a good, inexpensive Linux friendly tablet? Use cases as follows:

* Stay-at-home Mom, for email, web surfing, simple apps, etc. (WiFi only is fine, we're not doing any kind of data plan, if that even applies to tablets)
* Kid friendly (6 & 8), preferably edutainment-type stuff
* Angry Birds is apparently a requirement (hey, that teaches ballistics, right?)
* Cut the rope, ditto

Related, recommended apps?

* Astronomy, ideally including satellite info
* Video creator (hate to admit it, but iMovie is pretty awesome)
* eBook reader (but won't work well in direct sun, right?)
* Movie player
* Netflix? (Optional, we have the DVD-only plan now)
* What else don't I know about?

Thanks,
JP

Android isn't Linux friendly either if it comes from a carrier. Having root access voids all warranties and you basically have zero rights with modifying your device. Unless you give up all hope of warranties. The Android builds shipped by carriers are proprietary and sometimes come with apps installed which can't be removed such as the BlockBuster App, CityID, and many others. This is my experience with Android thus far. So as far as I'm concerned whether you're going with iDevice or Android you're still locked in to a proprietary Linux unfriendly environment. And they're both Unix based.

I mostly know "grown-up" apps.

Recommended apps for Android:
* Google Sky Maps
* Intelliremote - control keyboard and mouse on a computer. basically use tablet as remote control
* FlightAware
* VLC for Android - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-android.html

There's other good ones but alas I'll leave you with that.

SAM