Nokia Internet Tablet will run Ubuntu

Posted by Rob Beschizza, April 25, 2008 7:25 AM | permalink

Nokia's Internet Tablet, a nifty little handheld, is about to get even niftier. With Nokia buying Trolltech, the latter's Qt Linux dev toolkit will be slurped into the system. Moreover, the popular and consumer-friendly linux distribution, Ubuntu, is also making its way to the pocket-size portable thanks to a Nokia-supported ARM port.

Ars Technica reports that Nokia's got "ambitious plans" for Qt support across its entire lineup, making it easy for developers to create apps that work on both linux and Symbian platforms.

There's a thriving community around these internet tablets, but I've only dicked around with them once or twice at crowded conference booths. Are they close to working like fully-fledged computers, or just fancy smartphones without the smartphone?

Nokia Internet Tablets get Ubuntu and Qt [Ars Technica] (Ubuntu-tan by Piro)

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Discussion

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#1 posted by meerkat

, April 25, 2008 8:50 AM

I have a n770 and am pretty impressed at what it can do, especially at it's price point (under $150). The newer tablets, 800 & 810 are definitely more impressive but are also priced into the range of neeetbooks and the like.

The default OS on the Nokia tablets is based off of Debian and does have some gee-whiz software, Maemo Mapper is a good one off the head. The amount of legitimate work I have done on the tablet hovers around 0% but it is much closer to a computer than a phone, I would say...

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#2 posted by Mike Scott , April 25, 2008 9:11 AM

I have an N800. It's a real computer -- the main limitations are around the IO devices rather than the CPU power/memory/storage, which are all way better than the computers I was using throughout most of the 1990s. Having said that, I mostly use it as an eBook reader.

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#3 posted by monopole , April 25, 2008 9:15 AM

I've got both a 770 and an 800. They're great little Linux boxen. They have considerable overlap in applications with my EEE and my Ubuntu desktop. With a bluetooth keyboard they are very serviceable linux computers. While I largely use my EEE for heavy typing, the N800 will work (just with the same resolution on a smaller display.
What the N800 really shines on is media and display tasks. Tricked out with Comix, FBReader and the native media player, it's great for video, CBR/CBZ files and e-books. Due to the identical software and resolution of my EEE and N800 I can transcode and optimize files for both units.

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#4 posted by Anonymous , April 25, 2008 7:42 PM

I use my N800 for ebooks-through FBReader, Games-through SCUMMVM and soon DOSBOX, Chat-through Pidgin, etc. Ruby and Python support are ongoing - In short, it's a 'real computer', just smaller. You can now find N800s for around $200USD. Add a couple of 16GB SDHC cards (one internal, for things you won't change much, one external slot for swap media.) I haven't tried it yet, but it should make a good storage unit for a digital camera that uses SDHC as well. I'll have to see if GIMP is available...