Cooking With Android

Over on my mailing list, the WFTL-LUG, a "whatever happened to" discussion has emerged in part because question traffic has gone down dramatically. Fewer people are coming out to LUG meetings. It's as if Linux is fading away.

"Has Linux dropped off the face of the Earth?" The answer is obviously no. Linux is still around, stronger than ever, but the desktop OS does seem to be disappearing. Of course this is true of Windows and Mac OS, at least from the average user's perspective. Desktop Linux is strong with those who use it; those who have been using it, but the buzz seems to be gone. 

None of this surprises me though. Sure, we may never see the Year of the Linux Desktop, but the nature of the desktop is changing. People are increasingly living their lives online. Yes folks, it's that cloud you keep hearing about and it's really out there. Google+ and Facebook and Twitter and online document management and email and just plain old Web surfing. For most, the network really is the computer and as time goes on, people care less and less what is running on their computers and more about what they can access once they get online.

For a while there, it looked like netbooks were going to be the big thing with Linux getting another shot at the elusive desktop. Now it's tablets and smartphones everywhere you turn. And what's emerging as the de facto operating system of the tablet and smartphone world? Something called Android. Those of us who have been doing this FOSS thing for a long time still see Linux back there somewhere. Android is the evolution of Linux for the mobile world.

And what of the old Linux? It's still out there, and it's bigger than ever before. It's everywhere. It's everything. It runs the infrastructure that makes the mobile world work. Mail servers and media servers and Web servers and application servers and every kind of server you can think of.

Want to know just how good Linux and free software is these days? Get this. Linux has become invisible. Maybe that's how you measure real success.

World domination? Been there. Done that.

Over on my WFTL-LUG mailing list, we've been chatting about Android lately, despite it being primarily a Linux mailing list. Android, of course, is a child of Linux, so it kind of fits. As yet, there are only a few people that I know of who have taken the leap and bought themselves an Android tablet. A few weeks ago, I asked for those who did have a tablet to let me know what they bought, what they thought of it, and whether they would recommend it to someone else; namely me. There were a few suggestions, but most were from people telling me what they were going to buy, not necessarily what they have at this time. So I went shopping and I bought a tablet. 

Twice.

My first purchase came during a visit to what my wife and I refer to as "the evil place". That would be Costco. It's the evil place because if you go in to buy anything, no matter how inconsequential or cheap, you leave after having spent hundreds of dollars buying cases of stuff you may never use. But I digress . . . while at Costco, there was a 7 inch eBook reader from Pandigital. It had WiFi and was packaged with a handful of tools including an email app, a browser, and the Kobo eBook reader; to that end, it was called the Pandigital Novel (see image to the right). It was a reasonaly nice package at just under $160 so I bought it, knowing that it ran some form of Android.

After I got it home, I spent a few days, on and off, trying to bend it to my will, flashing its firmware with updates I found on various sites, only to discover that the Android 1.5 OS it was loaded with would never give me the basics that I wanted. To give the device its dues, the Pandigital Novel was actually a fine eBook reader, looked good, came nicely appointed with a protective sleeve, a nice charging stand, and it made a good digital picture frame. The latter isn't surprising given Pandigital started out with digital picture frames. It was even built so that flashing the firmware didn't require 'rooting' the device. Just download an image, press and hold the power button with your SD card in place, and presto! Unfortunately, it was weak where it counted, and that meant any Android software that needed 1.6 or later. A week later, I took it back.

Despite my initial failure to procure a cheap tablet, I went back to looking. Now I'm not a big eBay guy in that I've bought maybe four things on eBay in all the years that the site has existed, but having found nothing on my local Kijiji site, I started looking for Android tablets on eBay. And there were lots. And lots. 

Being a little sheepish about these things, I watched several tablets come and go, trying to get a feel for just what people were paying for these things. While I'm more of a "Buy Now!" guy (which is normally what I do on eBay), it makes some kind of sense to figure out just what people spend. So I watched.  A couple of weeks after returning my Pandigital Novel, I decided to go for it. 

In my next post, I'll tell you what I bought, why, and what I think of purchase number 2. Before I wrap up this post however, I need to tell you my one driving force behind buying an Android tablet.

Kindle. And Nook. Okay, my two driving forces. Kindle and Nook. And Kobo. Three! Three driving forces. Amongst my driving forces were Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and the ability to run Android apps, oooh  . . . never mind. I'll come in again.

-- Marcel