Anyone ordering a Pengpod?

**acimi66** · February 14th, 2013

They have been shipping the fundraiser stuff all last week and will be starting pre-orders today.
http://pengpod.com/forum/

I will be out of town until march 1st so I am hoping to find it at home when I get there.

**Dry Lips** · February 14th, 2013

Originally Posted by Warpnow

Their "pengstick" is just an mk802. I imagine their tablet could be the same, buying hardware off the chinese market, putting a new OS on it, and rebranding it. This would concern me deeply as it means they have no control over things like quality control and hardware consistency.

Hmmm.... Apparently the Pengupod uses a Allwinner A10 SOC... After googling around it seems as if any A10 based tablet is hackable. In other words, anyone can buy one and install a custom kernel on the tablet.

The Pengupod guys (hats of to them) simply do the job for you.

Allwinner A10
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/

Hack A10 devices
http://elinux.org/Hack_A10_devices

edit: Just to be perfectly clear: the prices for the Pengopods are very reasonable, they're not ripping anyone off.

**candtalan** · February 14th, 2013

I love to try to support this stuff, and am delighted it has been delivered (!) I made a modest donation first, and later did a normal preorder early on. It was despatched from Florida (DHL) Tuesday and arrived in my local area in UK Thursday today, I collected it - there were some UK tax to pay which would have delayed by a day. I seemed to need a USA IP to look at the USA based DHL track, seems odd, but not sure. The 5V 2A power adapter is a US flat pin, marked as 100-240V AC, I need to get a USA socket. Battery is half charged, It all runs when plugged in via mini-to-normal USB cable but not sure if it actually charges via that. The 5V input socket is separate. I also bought a 16GB micro sd bootable, which seems to boot a custom Lubuntu. There is an onscreen keyboard (Lubuntu style) but I first used a usb 4 way with external mouse and keyboard for convenience. Lubuntu uses chrome and there is no flash installed yet, not sure of the issues, speed may be one, it is not *very* powerful but I am going to enjoy its hacakbilty. I saw an online picture with the back off, it also showed an actual wire(!) inside..... love it. Sorry I will not be able to do much with it for several weeks yet, am doing other things.

**jamesthequack** · February 15th, 2013

Yes, I have received it and composed a detailed review.
http://jamesdinsmore32907.wordpress....-linux-tablet/

The gist of it is that the user interface is horrible. I am afraid all but the most fanatical Linux enthusiasts will be sorely disappointed. However, consistent with this great community; people will endeavor to make it better. I just hope it does not take 10 years to produce a user experience at least equal to that of Android.

**candtalan** · February 15th, 2013

Originally Posted by jamesthequack

Yes, I have received it and composed a detailed review.
http://jamesdinsmore32907.wordpress....-linux-tablet/

The gist of it is that the user interface is horrible. I am afraid all but the most fanatical Linux enthusiasts will be sorely disappointed. However, consistent with this great community; people will endeavor to make it better. I just hope it does not take 10 years to produce a user experience at least equal to that of Android.

It comes with Lubuntu version of sorts. Lubuntu cut down is clunky, pretty much what I expected. We also own a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 which as you would expect is a smoth running fully fledged product, though restricted in many ways. Born of Google and Samsung. Not easily hackable though, but we did not buy it to hack it. I did buy the PengPod to hack though!
Hardware which is mostly open is getting almost as rare as hens teeth, I appreciate the PengPod.

**chahar** · February 18th, 2013

I have been waiting a long time for this.

**Lizzard77** · February 18th, 2013

From what I have read on xda-developers, this tablet uses old hardware,and Ubuntu is very laggy on it. This is just bad Ubuntu experience, with OS not optimized for tablet.

They just took custom Ubuntu image made by community for the device with same hardware and now selling it. People should be careful whenever they purchase device like this from unknown Chinese brand.

**candtalan** · March 6th, 2013

Originally Posted by Lizzard77

From what I have read on xda-developers, this tablet uses old hardware,and Ubuntu is very laggy on it. This is just bad Ubuntu experience, with OS not optimized for tablet.
They just took custom Ubuntu image made by community for the device with same hardware and now selling it. People should be careful whenever they purchase device like this from unknown Chinese brand.

I bought one because it is SO rare to find somebody making hardware which is anything near 'open'. I do what I can to support libre software, and hardware, - but it does not have to be perfect

**acimi66** · March 8th, 2013

Just a quick update...While I like the tablet itself the lubuntu OS was not my cup of tea. The andriod OS is fine but it needs to be updated and I can't find anywhere that it can be downloaded. Any ideas?

If your not too geeky (like me) you might wont to think about changing the linux version. I thought I could use Plasma-active but it turns out that it's not compatible with this hardware and I thought about Ubuntu but I hear it too runs pretty slow on this hardware ( and it would wipe the andriod OS in the process). I thought I could just download an image and have it boot ( like ubuntu) but that is not the case. Just so you know.

So now I have a very nice andriod tablet with 32gb of storage. But I will be keeping an eye on how linux develops touch screen systems.

**ssukijth** · March 23rd, 2013

Yes I just got Pengpod 100. I did not order sd-card. So it suppose to dual boot. But I can not boot to linux. I have to use Android for now. I ordered sd-card yesterday and waiting for it arrived. So far I can tell dual boot does not work.

I want to make ubuntu sd-card myself, but I am not sure which images I should download and instruction to doing that.

Any some know ?