Well it's almost Lin(u)x
As I write this it is Christmas Eve, a magical time of the year where children wonder what presents they will receive. In supermarkets across the land, enough bread and milk to feed a small army is being loaded in to cars ready for those "unexpected guests".
Anyway back to the point, in the last few weeks there has been some excited chatter on various sites such as Hot UK Deals. This chatter relates to a new Windows 8.1 tablet from Linx. Now right now you are thinking
"But Les is a strong Linux advocate, why is he bothered about a Windows tablet?"
Well you're right to think that. I love Linux but sometimes you have to take a look at what is around you, and this time I spotted the Linx 7 tablet
So why am I so interested in this tablet?
- Intel Atom Quad Core CPU
- 7 Inch screen
- Micro HDMI out so you can use the tablet as a PC
- UEFI BIOS - With access to the BIOS
- 1GB RAM
- 32GB of storage
- Office 365 licence for 1 year
- Around £60 to £80!
Why am I really interested? Well I'd love to see Linux on this device, it's technically possible to do this, just the pesky matter of the UEFI BIOS not booting from USB. Once this is solved we could have a contender for a very cheap Linux tablet.
In the meantime I am using the tablet as it was intended and so far I have installed a number of Open Source applications.
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Arduino IDE - And I successfully uploaded the blink sketch to my trusty Arduino UNO with very little fuss.
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Fritzing - Drawing circuit diagrams and breadboard layouts on the move!
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Sonic Pi - Learn to code and make music, what's not to like?
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GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program, basically a free version of Photoshop.
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Sublime Text - FANTASTIC editor for many different programming languages. Massive thanks to Jon from Pimoroni for suggesting this editor!
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IDLE Python 3.4 - A brilliant Python 3 editor.
I'll be writing a full review of this tablet in the near future, in the meantime I'll have a tinker over Christmas.