Viability of Tablet PCs with Linux
 

Hello. Just wondering a few things:

Does anyone own a tablet PC?

If so, how much functionality can you get out of your Linux install (e.g. quick note taking, calendar scheduling, etc.)

Can anyone recommend a good vendor? My personal favorite is out of business. Ideally, I'd like to buy a higher-end tablet PC with NO installed software.

Hi,

Yes, tablet pc's work fine under linux. I don't speak from personal experience, but my laptop distributer also sells a similar model to mine with tablet hardware specifications, and I've read success stories on the net with that one.

There are many different note-taking and calendar programs for you to try and experiment with, until you find one that suits you. Tomboy is one of my favorite note-takers, and there are many calendar programs, usually included with a Gnome or KDE suite install.

Mine is a Panasonic, and there is currently full support for the tablet version in linux. They make rugged laptops and tablets under strict specifications.

Also, I've heard fujitsu has some great tablet pc's too. Most manufacturers are making tablet pc's along with their laptop models, so there's a lot of choice now.

Sam

I'm also curious about this. I am seriously considering getting a tablet because it seems like it'd be nice to be able to take all of my notes on a computer, but I want to be able run Linux on it, and just Linux. Does anyone else have success stories with Linux+tablets?

thanks!

Linux on Fujutsu Stylistic Tablet PC
 

I have a Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PC running Windows XP Tablet and its so slow that its almost unusable. Even the kids won't get on it. I'd like to install a good Linux OS on it that works well with its 512K memory and slow processor. We really just need email, web browsing, and IM, although it would be cool to have some tablet-specific apps as well.

I've tried booting from a Ubunto Linux Desktop v7.0.4 CD and the screen goes wacky and the whole thing locks up.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a good Linux OS that will run on this tablet PC?

Thanks!

Try Xubuntu 7.10. Use the alternate installer, as the live cd is rather resource intensive.

I have a Toshiba Portege M400-S4031 Tablet that came with Windows XP Tablet 2005 on it, which turns out to be, in my opinion, quite the crappy operating system. At least in my case, it freezes rather often, even when I am just running Google Earth, so I decided to run a dual boot setup that I have had great success with. I partitioned the hard drive, created a FAT32 shared partition that both Windows and Linux can use, and installed Ubuntu 7.04 on it. The stylus worked without any trouble, and I haven't had any problems so far... at least not with Linux.

There are a couple things I might change, however. As of right now, when I put the tablet into note-taking form, the screen doesn't rotate as it does with Windows. Also, the buttons on the screen aren't configured right. One opens Firefox, another Evolution, when I would like one of them to make the screen flip, and the others to have functions similar to those on Windows. I am rather new to Linux and I haven't had much time to do research, so I haven't fixed any of these issues, but I am sure there are ways to do it.

The only hardware change I have made is that I upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 2GB, mostly for running Mathematica and MATLAB on the Windows side, as I use them quite frequently for my classes. I still use OneNote 2007 for all my notes, partly because it is what I used before I installed Linux, so all my notes are already there and partly because I like it a lot. Xournal, the best notetaking program I have found for Linux, is very similar to Windows Journal, and it doesn't compare very well to OneNote. Overall, though, I love running Linux and have had very good luck with it. It runs great and though there are some minor changes I would make, I don't intend to go back to full-time Windows anytime soon...

Some Tablet Linux Info:
Programs for Linux Tablets:
http://groundstate.ca/tabletsoft
OneNote crossover on Linux?
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibi...rum=1;msg=4804
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibi...e/?app_id=2865

Hope this helps!

Hello, I don't mean to steal the thread, but I had a question and just thought someone might throw something out there if they know of anything about my question. But first I'll just share a quick bit of info about mine. I am currently running SLED 10 on an IBM X41 tablet. I haven't really shopped around to see other prices, this just happened to be the laptop I got from the company I work for, but I do know that this one is pretty spendy (it was about $1800) but functions pretty good. As ellhef mentioned, it had the XP tablet edition when I got it, and just played around on it to see what it was all about, and it was terrible!! Mainly too slow! But, when blowing it away and putting SLED on it, Configuration was quite easy via "sax2" and the pen works well, but when you put it in "tablet" mode the screen doesn't rotate. No big deal for me, I don't use it a alot in that mode, but did see there is forums out there on how to make that rotate.

My question is if anyone knows of a good annotation software package for Linux where you can write on the desktop or on top of any application. Ive seen demonstrations where people with the windoze versions use "annotatepro" and that seemed like it was pretty good. Any suggestions on anything out there would be greatly appreciated.

If you can enable compositing through compiz-fusion, beryl, or (I believe) compiz-extras, there is a really excellent annotation plugin in there.

Display Issues with xubuntu 7.10 on Tablet PC
 

I was able to install xubunto on the Fujitsu Tablet PC successfully using the alternate installation CD. However, I get the same screen issues after the install that I did trying to run the Live CD. The screen ends up with some thick white vertical lines on a black background. Obviously I can't see what the system is trying to display, so I have no idea how far it has gotten in the boot up process. Based on the fact that it does go through listing all the drivers and such that its loading before the screen goes whacky, it seems to be getting pretty far into the bootup process.

I've tried running the Live CD with the default VGA as well as 1024x768 and 800x600. When I did the alternate CD installation, I left it as VGA. At one point during the installation it asked me to check off what display resolutions I wanted and I checked only 1024x768 because that's the native resolution of the screen.

FYI... I have been able to successfully run the Live CD on my Lenovo R52 laptop without any issues whatsoever. Its just the TabletPC that is giving the fits.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to where I should start to try to get this issue resolved?

You could try either connecting it to an external monitor to see if it'll display through that.

If I had to guess I'd say the problem is due to driver issues. If you can boot using the single-user mode (takes you to a command prompt) then you can edit the xorg.conf file to change the driver to vesa (which should work on almost all hardware). Or you could try editing the file by booting to a live cd and mounting your root filesystem, then opening the file from your hard drive.

-Eli

Thanks for sticking with me on this!

My xorg.conf looks like this:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Intel Corporation 82830 CGC <rest snipped>"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

So what do I change to "vesa" to try to get it to work? I don't actually have a monitor to try with it. I only have the TabletPC and a laptop.

It's actually in a different part of the xorg.conf file. I think it's under Section "Adapter" , but unfortunately I'm not at my own computer right now so I can't check. Either way, it'll be formatted like this

Section "Adapter" (or something else like adapter)
blah
blah
blah
Driver "nv" (or any of a million other drivers)
blah
blah
EndSection

The part after driver in the quotes is what you'll want to change to vesa.

-Eli

try:

Thanks for the info on the auto-configure. That's a lot easier for me than trying to edit the file manually. I have now had some limited success, taking all the defaults EXCEPT:
* Chose the "vesa" driver
* Select the "Use kernel framebuffer device interface" option
* Select "Simple" for the "Method for selecting the monitor characteristics (otherwise it prompts for refresh rates which I can't find any info on what my system supports)

Using these options, its only at 800x600 resolution, though, which is less than desirable. Is it the generic "vesa" driver that is forcing the lower resolution? Does it not support 1024x768 like my LCD monitor supports?

At least now that I can get into xwindows, I can use the "test" mode in the screen settings. However, I'm having no luck in being able to choose the intel driver (its an 830, but I've also tried 810). Sticking with the vesa driver won't let me select higher resolutions.

The lack of higher resolutions isn't because of the driver, it's again because of the xorg.conf. I'm sure there's an easier way to do this, but I don't knwo of one except manually editing the file.

Anyways, if you want to do it like that, at the bottom of the xorg.conf is the screen section. Every place it says "800x600", just add "1024x768" (in it's own set of quotes) in front of "800x600" And since I'm sure that doesn't really make much sense, check out this example xorg.conf http://brenta.free.fr/IMG/txt/xorg.txt . It's in each of the "Display" SubSections under Section "Screen" that you should do this.

-Eli