It likely won’t be as sleek or fast as a Nexus 7 or Nexus 10, but a new tablet running both Android and Linux is in the works for open source enthusiasts and lovers of low-budget devices.
PengPod tablets, made by a company called Peacock Imports, will dual-boot Android 4.0 and a version of Linux with the KDE Plasma Active interface for touch screens. But in order to reserve a tablet for yourself, you’ll have to contribute to the company’s crowdfunding project on Indiegogo and hope enough money is raised to begin production.
The folks behind PengPod are off to a slow start, with $769 raised toward its goal of $49,000, which must be met by Dec. 2. Small donations starting at $10 will reserve bootable SD cards preloaded with Linux images suitable for PengPod devices, while $99 will provide a PengPod700 7-inch tablet with 1GB RAM and 8GB SSD. Donating $185 will get you a PengPod1000 10-inch tablet, also with 1GB RAM and 8GB SSD. For $85, there’s a "PengStick" mini PC that can hook up to a monitor or TV and run Android or Linux.
Estimated delivery time is January 2013. "The hardware is ready to be made with no further hardware engineering," the PengPod fundraising page says. "By using crowd funding to consolidate the orders we will be able to achieve the prices listed in the rewards and upgrades to the hardware become possible."
Buyers can choose to have either Android or Linux pre-installed into the internal memory. If you run Android, you’ll be able to dual-boot by using a bootable SD card loaded with Linux.
PengPods and the PengStick use the A10, a 1.2GHz Cortex A8 ARM Core system-on-chip from Allwinner Technology. Both the 7- and 10-inch models have HDMI and USB ports, a front-facing camera, speakers, and Wi-Fi. The 7-inch display has a resolution of 800x480, while the 10-inch display is 1024x600. The 7-inch has a 3300 mAh battery, while the 10-inch comes with a 6000 mAh battery.
A video on the Indiegogo site shows a PengPod running the XBMC media player on Linux, with both the touch screen and a physical keyboard being used. Familiar Linux applications including LibreOffice and Chromium can also run. PengPods use Linaro, an Ubuntu-based root file system for ARM devices, allowing access to many common Ubuntu applications.
"Our goal is to build a powerful, True Linux Tablet, one free of Google and Android's restrictions, at a reasonable price," the PengPod IndieGogo page says. "If you're a Linux fanatic you probably ended up getting an Android phone. Hey, it's Linux right? It'll be open, run all the programs I'm familiar with and let me hack around and have some fun right? Too often, this is not so. That is why we set out to find a way to run real Linux and all the software you really want."
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