Switching one of the machines to Linux a.k.a. Ubuntu Tablet Edition is needed.

[prizrak]

I don't want to turn this into a Windows r0x0rez and Linux sux0rz thread. I mostly want to bounce some ideas off the community and see if some of the stuff is already being worked on.
#1) I love Ubuntu and think it's a great OS in fact it is running on my desktop and till recently was running on this tablet as well.
#2) I will not mention anything about hardware support as community is not in control of that.

After being an Ubuntu only user for close to a year I had to switch my tablet PC (convertible really) over to XP Tablet Edition. Things like better battery life (thanks for crappy driver for Linux nVidia) and drivers for all the little buttons aside I have found a few things that might improve the Ubuntu experience on the tablet (now some of the stuff is also beneficial to laptop users). This list is a matter of opinion and my own knowledge so some of the things might already exist.

1) Anything that can be done manually should be done automatically.

The Wacom tablet should have been autoconfigured with all the functionality including right click. There is no reason whatsoever for it not being operational out of the box as the driver is part of the default install.

VGA/S-video out should also be working out of the box, however that may be a driver issue so might not always be possible. (I know VGA out worked out of the box on my other laptop with an Intel card)

2) More software that can take advantage of the tablet.

There is no handwriting recognition program for Ubuntu that I know off. There is xstroke but it is more of a gesture recognition program and works alot like the one in Palm devices. It is by no means intuitive and while fun is too slow to be useful.

The gnome-on-screen-keyboard is absolute crap, I couldn't figure out where the actual keyboard was it really needs to be replaced. There is a project called simple-on-kbd that should take care of that. I think ideally the same style kbd that Windows has would be nice. For those who don't know it supports both kbd and handwriting on the same screen and can be dynamically open anywhere there is a text input.

Power profiles, there is no reason why we can't have power profiles that will let us turn certain things off (like wireless) transparently. For instance if I create a DVD watching profile I don't need WLAN, LAN, Cardbus, Firewire or Bluetooth activated (things that Acer's power manager allows me to turn off). There is a definite benefit to battery life.

Another nice thing would be calibration software for the tablet. While it was fairly accurate it is loads nicer when it can be calibrated and be almost 100% precise.

A Windows Journal like program where you can take a quick note w/o any handwriting recognition going on. You basically write on it same way you would on paper, which makes for a pretty quick way of taking down a random note.


I think that is all I can really think off at the moment. Just to be fair there are a few of really good things that Ubuntu has over Windows. Dynamic throttling is one of them. These are not really criticisms of Ubuntu/Linux more like ideas for improvement and if the feedback is positive I will post them as feature requests on Launchpad.

[atrus123]

SLED would probably be a really good distro for a tablet pc.

[prizrak]

SLED would probably be a really good distro for a tablet pc.

I was thinking of trying it out actually but I had bad experience with it in the past. I would also prefer Ubuntu to get tehre. Unfortunately the main problem of battery life is due to nVidia driver for Linux not supporting GPU throttling

[darkhatter]

nvidia is suppose to working on better support for that in the 9 series of they're linux kernel

[prizrak]

nvidia is suppose to working on better support for that in the 9 series of they're linux kernel

Hopefully, the Windows nVidia driver is great.

[darkhatter]

Hopefully, the Windows nVidia driver is great.

so do I, my geforce go 6100 isn't supported by the nvidia driver

[prizrak]

so do I, my geforce go 6100 isn't supported by the nvidia driver

:'(