I have poked around in google and have seen a number of youtube videos, but my question is whether anyone really has linux running on any kind of tablet or tablet PC device in such a way that the touch screen can be used productively and it won't take a month to get it running? Initially the two applications that are of most interest to me would be a good web browser (maybe chromium) and thunderbird. I would also like to have a decent on screen keyboard which could be used to ssh to servers in an emergency.
I've seen instructions for booting linux on various devices, but many people doing this are using keyboards and not touchscreens.
Do applications like thunderbird have to be modified in order to work well with a touch screen or is just getting a working driver for the touchpad sufficient?
If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate knowing what hardware your running on and what linux distro/desktop environment you use. I've been interested in devices like the ASUS EP121 which is a dual core I5, so it wouldn't be necessary to have an ARM distribution. Also the newest Asus transformer prime (arm) which I think is about 2 months away sounds interesting.
Nataraj
--- On Fri, 2012/3/30, Nataraj incoming-centos@rjl.com wrote:
I have poked around in google and have seen a number of youtube videos, but my question is whether anyone really has linux running on any kind of tablet or tablet PC device in such a way that the touch screen can be used productively and it won't take a month to get it running? Initially the two applications that are of most interest to me would be a good web browser (maybe chromium) and thunderbird. I would also like to have a decent on screen keyboard which could be used to ssh to servers in an emergency.
I've seen instructions for booting linux on various devices, but many people doing this are using keyboards and not touchscreens.
Do applications like thunderbird have to be modified in order to work well with a touch screen or is just getting a working driver for the touchpad sufficient?
If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate knowing what hardware your running on and what linux distro/desktop environment you use. I've been interested in devices like the ASUS EP121 which is a dual core I5, so it wouldn't be necessary to have an ARM distribution. Also the newest Asus transformer prime (arm) which I think is about 2 months away sounds interesting.
Lots of people do this and lots of (most?) commercial tablet/smartphone systems are based on Linux or a close cousin (Android and iOS come to mind...).
As far as non-commercial DIY tablet distros, there are distros and special interest groups within larger distros that focus on this type of deployment.
But none of them are CentOS, so I'm not sure why you pinged this mailinglist -- though I think you'd probably find that CentOS installs just fine in most cases, just remember to build whatever graphcs driver you need or your experience might not be good.
Go ask over at Fedora, Ubuntu and maybe Mint. Also check out MeeGo and whatnot.
As a side note, there is nothing magical about a touchscreen. Touchscreens are just pointing devices like mice and touchpads as far as Linux is concerned, but in this case it is a touchpad that you can see through to a screen on the other side (there is a special case of location logic, of course, so the pointer doesn't continue from last location, but this is a normal case handled by X). So nothing special happens in an application to make it "work with a touchscreen" because a touchscreen is just creating mouse events the same way your normal mouse would do. The only problem with touchscreens is that small icons are smaller than your finger (well, mine anyway) and so you have to make the desktop a little cartoony to make things work right. Gnome Shell in Fedora is actually not too bad to use with a touchscreen, though it sucks horribly with a mouse IMO, and KDE with large widgets is pretty easy as well.
-IY
check out http://www.redsleeve.org/
RHEL 6 for ARM
Op 30-03-12 07:51, 夜神 岩男 schreef:
--- On Fri, 2012/3/30, Nataraj incoming-centos@rjl.com wrote:
I have poked around in google and have seen a number of youtube videos, but my question is whether anyone really has linux running on any kind of tablet or tablet PC device in such a way that the touch screen can be used productively and it won't take a month to get it running? Initially the two applications that are of most interest to me would be a good web browser (maybe chromium) and thunderbird. I would also like to have a decent on screen keyboard which could be used to ssh to servers in an emergency.
I've seen instructions for booting linux on various devices, but many people doing this are using keyboards and not touchscreens.
Do applications like thunderbird have to be modified in order to work well with a touch screen or is just getting a working driver for the touchpad sufficient?
If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate knowing what hardware your running on and what linux distro/desktop environment you use. I've been interested in devices like the ASUS EP121 which is a dual core I5, so it wouldn't be necessary to have an ARM distribution. Also the newest Asus transformer prime (arm) which I think is about 2 months away sounds interesting.
Lots of people do this and lots of (most?) commercial tablet/smartphone systems are based on Linux or a close cousin (Android and iOS come to mind...).
As far as non-commercial DIY tablet distros, there are distros and special interest groups within larger distros that focus on this type of deployment.
But none of them are CentOS, so I'm not sure why you pinged this mailinglist -- though I think you'd probably find that CentOS installs just fine in most cases, just remember to build whatever graphcs driver you need or your experience might not be good.
Go ask over at Fedora, Ubuntu and maybe Mint. Also check out MeeGo and whatnot.
As a side note, there is nothing magical about a touchscreen. Touchscreens are just pointing devices like mice and touchpads as far as Linux is concerned, but in this case it is a touchpad that you can see through to a screen on the other side (there is a special case of location logic, of course, so the pointer doesn't continue from last location, but this is a normal case handled by X). So nothing special happens in an application to make it "work with a touchscreen" because a touchscreen is just creating mouse events the same way your normal mouse would do. The only problem with touchscreens is that small icons are smaller than your finger (well, mine anyway) and so you have to make the desktop a little cartoony to make things work right. Gnome Shell in Fedora is actually not too bad to use with a touchscreen, though it sucks horribly with a mouse IMO, and KDE with large widgets is pretty easy as well.
-IY _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 03/29/2012 11:04 PM, Michel Daggelinckx wrote:
check out http://www.redsleeve.org/
RHEL 6 for ARM
I did notice your previous post. I'm aware that people do get these linux ports up and running on arm devices, but essentially what I am asking here is if I went out and bought any particular arm device, Asus transformer prime, galaxy etc, what's the likelyhood that your port includes a device driver that will work well with the touch screen? I looked at your website a few days ago and saw the low power arm appliance devices, but didn't see anything about supported touch screen devices.
nataraj
On 03/29/2012 10:51 PM, 夜神 岩男 wrote:
--- On Fri, 2012/3/30, Nataraj incoming-centos@rjl.com wrote:
I have poked around in google and have seen a number of youtube videos, but my question is whether anyone really has linux running on any kind of tablet or tablet PC device in such a way that the touch screen can be used productively and it won't take a month to get it running? Initially the two applications that are of most interest to me would be a good web browser (maybe chromium) and thunderbird. I would also like to have a decent on screen keyboard which could be used to ssh to servers in an emergency.
I've seen instructions for booting linux on various devices, but many people doing this are using keyboards and not touchscreens.
Do applications like thunderbird have to be modified in order to work well with a touch screen or is just getting a working driver for the touchpad sufficient?
If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate knowing what hardware your running on and what linux distro/desktop environment you use. I've been interested in devices like the ASUS EP121 which is a dual core I5, so it wouldn't be necessary to have an ARM distribution. Also the newest Asus transformer prime (arm) which I think is about 2 months away sounds interesting.
Lots of people do this and lots of (most?) commercial tablet/smartphone systems are based on Linux or a close cousin (Android and iOS come to mind...).
Thank you. I am aware of android, but my understanding is that the libraries are changed enough that it's not that easy to build random linux software that hasn't been ported. My interests in running linux on a tablet is influenced by:
- ability to eventually run wide range of open source linux software, scripting languages like perl, python - privacy issues, prefer not to run software that forces you to allow companies to track keystrokes/location - ability to implement and verify my own security, i.e. my own iptables rules - ability to integrate well into my existing linux based network, i.e. ipad doesn't do this so well
As far as non-commercial DIY tablet distros, there are distros and special interest groups within larger distros that focus on this type of deployment.
But none of them are CentOS, so I'm not sure why you pinged this mailinglist -- though I think you'd probably find that CentOS installs just fine in most cases, just remember to build whatever graphcs driver you need or your experience might not be good.
I pinged this list because I find there is alot of diversity on list and I value the experience that people share here. I am not attached to CentOS and I do run several distros myself. I've seen some threads where people went out and bought devices and never got the touchpad working. In some cases some people got things working and then the manufacturer changed the firmware in later versions and suddenly people that bought them couldn't get them to work.
Go ask over at Fedora, Ubuntu and maybe Mint. Also check out MeeGo and whatnot.
As a side note, there is nothing magical about a touchscreen. Touchscreens are just pointing devices like mice and touchpads as far as Linux is concerned, but in this case it is a touchpad that you can see through to a screen on the other side (there is a special case of location logic, of course, so the pointer doesn't continue from last location, but this is a normal case handled by X). So nothing special happens in an application to make it "work with a touchscreen" because a touchscreen is just creating mouse events the same way your normal mouse would do. The only problem with touchscreens is that small icons are smaller than your finger (well, mine anyway) and so you have to make the desktop a little cartoony to make things work right. Gnome Shell in Fedora is actually not too bad to use with a touchscreen, though it sucks horribly with a mouse IMO, and KDE with large widgets is pretty easy as well.
That makes sense. I can see though where some desktops/user interfaces will provide a very different user experience than others on a touchpad and similarly for a desktop. I tried unity about 1.5 yrs ago and was very unimpressed using it on a desktop, but it might be good on a tablet.
Thank You, Nataraj
On 03/29/2012 07:56 PM, Nataraj wrote:
I have poked around in google and have seen a number of youtube videos, but my question is whether anyone really has linux running on any kind of tablet or tablet PC device in such a way that the touch screen can be used productively and it won't take a month to get it running? Initially the two applications that are of most interest to me would be a good web browser (maybe chromium) and thunderbird. I would also like to have a decent on screen keyboard which could be used to ssh to servers in an emergency.
I've seen instructions for booting linux on various devices, but many people doing this are using keyboards and not touchscreens.
Do applications like thunderbird have to be modified in order to work well with a touch screen or is just getting a working driver for the touchpad sufficient?
If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate knowing what hardware your running on and what linux distro/desktop environment you use. I've been interested in devices like the ASUS EP121 which is a dual core I5, so it wouldn't be necessary to have an ARM distribution. Also the newest Asus transformer prime (arm) which I think is about 2 months away sounds interesting.
The CentOS Project would LOVE to obtain a Hardware Donation from one (or more) of the companies who have x86, x86_64, or ARM tablets available. We would make getting working drivers for the touch screen a priority if we had hardware to work with.
If there are any tablet manufactures on the list ... and if you are willing to provide a hardware donation of any architecture tablet (x86, x86_64, ARM, or PPC) to the CentOS Project then contact me off list.
Thanks, Johnny Hughes
On 03/30/2012 01:56 AM, Nataraj wrote:
but my question is whether anyone really has linux running on any kind of tablet or tablet PC device in such a way that the touch screen can be used productively and it won't take a month to get it running?
I've had a tablet PC for about 5 years now, the HP TC4400, and it mostly just worked out of the box with centos-5; it runs centos-6 fine, but is starting to get a bit old at a core2/2GB of ram.
nothing special was needed, the screen interface comes up as a wacom device. and I've found it very useful.
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Johnny Hughes -
Karanbir Singh -
Michel Daggelinckx -
Nataraj -
夜神 岩男