Recommend me a distro for my tablet...


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Thread: Recommend me a distro for my tablet...

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Posts
    31

    Recommend me a distro for my tablet...

    greetings all.
    i tried to install Ubuntu 11.04 on my iconia tab w500 tablet ...
    now this is a tablet that's keyboard-less. i know there's a version that comes with a keyboard but that defeats the purpose... i might as well get a laptop if i am gonna get one with a keyboard.
    i really wanted to get the full fledged experience of a simple easy to carry tablet that runs any OS i want...

    so i took the plunge and installed 11.04 via cdrom and all went fine. the hardware is all fully detected and works (except for some things which I'll mention later).

    i realize Ubuntu 11.04 may not be optimized in any way for a keyboard-less tablet. i can move the mouse around just fine although not accurately with the touch screen...

    my current issues are:

    there really isn't a system wide onscreen keyboard that even works. sure there are a few to download however each has their own rules and most of them have very small keys to even tap. this is really problem #1 for me.
    on the logon screen you can click on the assistance icon and get a keyboard to enter your password -- its a crappy keyboard with very tiny keys however its there.
    in the system though once you're logged in there isn't any!
    if you wait for the screen saver to come on and then try to activate your system you're outta luck! there is absolutely no way to get any sort of on screen keyboard via the screen saver lock screen.

    then comes the even somewhat serious issue of kinetic scrolling. it doesn't exist in any app. the new style of the scrolls-bars is really great for keyboard and mouse however isn't working so well here! i find myself missing the scroll bar and resizing all the time. its basically a pain in the a$s to scroll through any program.

    then comes the issue of the screen rotation.
    as you guys know this is a tablet and its supposed to be used in landscape and portrait mode without any drama. of course this is missing because of the accelerometer not being used for this purpose? perhaps its another sensor for the rotation.

    so thats the experience with ubuntu. very unhappy at this point.

    i am sure there's a distro out there that will work on tablets without a keyboard.
    anybody got any recommendation?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2001
    Posts
    517
    Hi,

    Driver support seems a little lacking (such as for a multitouch screen). The A500 (Android) would probably be much more supportive of installing a linux distribution.

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