The next purchase I am looking to make is that of a tablet PC. Anyone have any first hand experience they are willing to share with running Ubuntu/Linux on tablets? My big question is are there any distros out there that support multi-touch on the screen? Also are there any brands/model I should look at in particular or more importantly that I should stay away from?

Any suggestions/input is welcome. I am just starting to look this evening but plan to spend lots of time googling around the next couple weeks to try and find the best system out there tablet wise.

Thanks,
~Jeff

I have an older tablet ... HP TC4200, it does not have a multitouch screen.

I dual boot with Windows 7 ... because Pen/Writing applications on Linux has not gone anywhere. There is no real handwriting recognition. It is OK to doodle with or navigation.
The problem is application support.

I am not sure how far the Linux MPX project has progressed ... but Linux does not compare to Windows (Vista/7) for tablet PC's.

The only "no real handwriting recognition in Linux" is Cursive writing. As for printed characters CellWriter is great. All other Wacom functions will work; Auto rotation with pen, everything a mouse can do the pen will do, so the Wacom pen for tablet PCs will work in all your applications including Graphics programs. Unless one must have Photoshop for work I personally don't see any reason to buy Windows7 over Ubuntu or Linux Mint for the sake of the Tablet PC.

I use my Linux tablet constantly and am mostly thrilled. Here is what I use it for:

• xournal -- electronic legal pad
• xournal -- PDF document markup
• xournal -- sketches
• cups-pdf -- create PDF from xournal documents
• tomboy -- sticky notes
• cellWriter -- input without a real keyboard
• onboard -- a tap keyboard
• kvkbd -- a Qt/KDE tap keyboard
• pencil -- sketch animations
• inkscape -- drawing graphics
• dia -- diagrams

xournal and PDF files work together nicely for PDF-markup ... including adding my signature as digital ink onto a scanned or other PDF document. (I sold a house and never handled real paper: fax or email of documents received; xournal markup of PDF; xournal signature on PDF; fax or email return; done.)

The xournal and PDF-markup workings have help up through several conferences with PDF handouts.

I agree with other posters that digital ink to editable text is not currently available. There is OCR for scanned images and one can get from xournal digital ink to PDF or similar. But when you try to OCR an image from xournal, the results are near useless for a variety of reasons. CellWriter does a good job one-character-at-the-time,
but cannot handle writing speed printing or cursive.

NOTICE -- If anyone knows that I'm wrong here, please PLEASE PLEASE reply and explain how I'm wrong.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan


My Platform:
EmperorLinux Raven Tablet
(Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet)
... tablet is OEM Wacom serial "high res" with stylus
(a "low res" with touch configuration exists; I have
not played with "touch" anything ... yet)
Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (v9.04)
... cold install from Ubuntu Hardy Heron (v8.04.3 LTS)
Dual boot with Windows XP/Pro Tablet PC Edition
... rarely used

Right, CellWriter lacks some performance. It may be interesting to try some proprietary services but I don't really need it that bad http://www.visionobjects.com/handwri...nlinestore.htm
Please note I'm not spamming, I just happened to notice they have a version for Linux, but I havn't tested it.