Tablet PCs and Linux and Vista?

[WooDaddy]

Ok... So Vista's (never) coming out soon. Some of us want to be Vista-ready where, the rest of us don't want to have to deal with the MS crap that they put out. For the longest time, I've been delaying my purchase of a Tablet PC solely due to the fact that the existing systems out there (excluding the Toshiba M400) probably won't be able to handle Vista with its full Aero glass functionality. Personally, I'm tired of waiting for MS to get their act together. Plus with the news releases on how much Vista will cost is maddening. For the price of what they are talking about, I can almost start to sympathize with people who get pirated copies... Almost.

Soo... Here's the big question: Are there any Linux distros that can fully support a tablet pc notebook? I'm talking about handwritting recognition, virtual keyboards, desktop rotation and the whole nine yards. Additionally, are their any windows managers out there than can rival the GUI design of Windows XP and more importantly Vista?

I have looked around a little bit and found some info of Suse's Xgl, but that's about it. I will keep searching, but I want to through this one to the Anandtech hounds and see what I get. I'll update this with any info I find too.

 

[WooDaddy]

Xgl for Suse 10.0 link
Also, Aiglx for Fedora

 

[Nothinman]

I believe any Xorg installation with a driver that supports RandR should do rotation, but the handwriting recognition will be the difficult part. At the very least you'll probably have to setup the latter yourself.

Additionally, are their any windows managers out there than can rival the GUI design of Windows XP and more importantly Vista?

As far as I'm concerned pretty much all of them do, Vista's UI is ugly as hell.

 

[stash]

Just FYI, the M400 can handle glass on Vista. I believe it requires a BIOS update (which may not be available to the public yet). Once you have the correct BIOS, Vista will install the WDDM (glass) driver from WU.

edit: Aaaand I just noticed you said 'excluding'

But there are other Toshiba tablets that run glass. The M4 supports it and the M200 can do it, but it may not be supported. There are probably other non-Toshiba tablets that will work too. Basically, if you have 64MB of video RAM and a WDDM driver, it will work.

 

[cker]

I don't know how this applies to desktop linux-es, but I used to have a Zaurus which had really good handwriting recognition. The Zaurus was a QTopia environment running on top of a Linux kernel. I don't know if that writing recognition was Sharp-proprietary, but that's at least one example of working handwriting recognition on the platform.

 

[drag]

The thing to watch out for is driver support for that pressure sensitive screen they put over those LCDs on those tablets, I figure. I don't know what all comes on those tablets since I don't own them. I know that some types of touch screens have good driver support, other types don't have good support.

Other then that is that you need to look at video and wifi cards. If you can find a tablet with a Intel wifi card and a Intel 915g chipset with embedded graphics (GMA 900) that would be pretty good. Those are generally less expensive also.

For handwriting recognition it is going to be a application-specific item. There is nothing system-wide that will support it, although there are several choices for on-screen keyboards and such. There are probably applications that have good support, but I don't have any recommendations.

For the actual Tablet I think your best bet would be the IBM Thinkpad X41 tablet, simply because it has a strong Linux following for a tablet and thus it's easier to find help.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X41_Tablet

But don't take my word for it, I don't own one and can't say for sure.

But there are other tablets and if they have similar hardware they should work out fine.


edit:

If you want something a bit more 'fun' then maybe check out the Nokia 770. You can get them for 350 bucks.. It's a tiny form factor linux-based 'internet tablet'. Small amount of memory, small cpu. (some people complain about sluggishness). Comes with Opera browser, some email stuff, and other stuff. Also Nokia has a Maemo project were you can get more applications and such.

They are suppose to be releasing a updated version of the OS with Opera 8 and support for GoogleTalk/Sip/Jabber and other stuff for Instant messaging as well as VoIP. I figure it would make a fun toy.

 

[hardcandy2]

Tuxmobile check out those Linux installation notes for various tablets.
If it were myself, and I was dropping >$1000 on a tablet/convertable, and I wanted to use it out of the box, I would stick with the pre-installed OS.
As far as Vista goes, you will need Vista Home Premium for tablet PC functionality.