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I'm looking for a portable, lightweight device to do some programming on. Up to now the natural choice would have been a notebook but with Tegra 3 tablets due in a few weeks the necessary performance is coming to something even more "mobile". As a programmer I got hundreds of interesting pdfs, even the university gives out the courses as pdfs. To read a text, a tablet sure is more comfortable than a notebook. I'm intrigued of the thought of relaxing on the sofa reading and being able to test the code at once. Of course android - I'm not talking of an ipad - is just a consumer platform and not intended to code on. Yet I've seen videos and tutorials how to set up ubuntu on an ex-android tablet such as the asus transformer or samsung galaxy tab 10.1 . However, no offence meant, I've learned that everything with linux is due to become difficult. You have to configure and tweak for hours. Therefore my questions:

  • Has anybody of you ever used linux on arm ?
  • Do you know about driver support for arm ? tegra 2/3,...
  • Did you ever use an arm linux for programming ? What about eclipse, netbeans,.. Are the arm builds officially supported ?

Frankly: Am I running into some serious problems or will it work fine? I'm not a linux master but wouldn't mind some initial problems. I just don't want to get stuck with something really difficult.

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Use a laptop that converts to a tablet. They're normally quite portable and run Ubuntu with only a bit of hacking :P – drnessie Sep 19 '11 at 15:05
A laptop that converts to a tablet will never be as thin and portable as a real tablet. Just imagine reading on that dell convertible. In comparison a tablet can really show off: asus transformer . The thought of reading and coding on something like that is sweet. Especially as the transformer comes with a keyboard – lhk Sep 19 '11 at 15:23
This question is better asked at unix.stackexchange.com. Furthermore, your approach to asking for help from the Linux community is not very friendly. My advice is to avoid statements like "However, no offence meant, I've learned that everything with linux is due to become difficult. You have to configure and tweak for hours." <--- That will not get you very much (friendly) help from most Linux enthusiasts. – RolandiXor♦ Sep 19 '11 at 16:06
The fact alone that I want to install Ubuntu on a tablet should show you that I appreciate linux. I didn't mean to be unfriendly just honest. I've installed many different linux versions on 4 different computers and my personal experience was that always something didn't work as expected. Especially driver support can be very poor (still no wlan on my desctop). That certainly isn't the fault of the linux community but there's also no point in hiding from the truth. Linux is more flexible and maybe more powerful than windows but on the other hand it also needs more efforts to get it working. – lhk Sep 19 '11 at 16:35
I can't give you concrete steps, but the general guide to go about doing it. First is gathering info - what device do you want Ubuntu on? Which ARM architecture? Does Ubuntu support that architecture? Next you need to find info on rooting the Android device. Most brands should have rooting instructions around. After that is the actual booting to Ubuntu installation image, I do not know how the installation experience differs on Ubuntu ARM. – Oxwivi Sep 19 '11 at 18:47
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closed as off topic by Marco Ceppi♦ Mar 15 '12 at 13:53

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