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Linux?

Bremen

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I cant see anything wrong with forcing linux on an ipad just for the sake of doing it.
Especially when they say you cant and say it to be the wrong thing to do.


I can see that, for the challenge and all....I'm sure it would mean geek points to someone...... But to actually use? No way. For me it would be a major downgrade.....
 

On_fire

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No, that is not always correct. Sure, you can get a decent PC for less than $500, but if you buy a similar equipped brand PC (i.e. Lenovo) this difference in almost gone.

<rant>Seriously?!? I can get something that is comparable to almost any Mac model for at least 25% less. The only way to get something comparable to a Mac for the same price is to look for the most expensive brand available, which is not usually better then the cheaper ones... Not saying anything bad about Apple, you're paying for the brand and the ease of use, but don't go saying that they are cheaper then they really are.</rant>
 

gentlefury

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No, that is not always correct. Sure, you can get a decent PC for less than $500, but if you buy a similar equipped brand PC (i.e. Lenovo) this difference in almost gone.

<rant>Seriously?!? I can get something that is comparable to almost any Mac model for at least 25% less. The only way to get something comparable to a Mac for the same price is to look for the most expensive brand available, which is not usually better then the cheaper ones... Not saying anything bad about Apple, you're paying for the brand and the ease of use, but don't go saying that they are cheaper then they really are.</rant>

Actually you are paying for the best OS on the market, the best customer service and the guarantee that the OS and all software will be 100% compatible with the hardware with no hassle setting it up.

Oh yeah and never having to reinstall the OS and really never having to restart (I know people that have had their macs running for months without restarting).

You pay for more than just parts when you buy a Mac, just like you pay for more than just the components of the iPad.

/Rant.
 

col.bris

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gentlefury said:
Actually you are paying for the best OS on the market, the best customer service and the guarantee that the OS and all software will be 100% compatible with the hardware with no hassle setting it up.

Oh yeah and never having to reinstall the OS and really never having to restart (I know people that have had their macs running for months without restarting).

You pay for more than just parts when you buy a Mac, just like you pay for more than just the components of the iPad.

/Rant.
The os x is bullet proof no viruses cost of owner ship is low minimal maintentance easy to use. It just works. Not to mention you plug in a camera it is supported nothing to install you plug in a printer over 1000 drivers on board no inistall required it just connects.
 

Delirium

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Opinions as options always differ..

Been using macs since the powerbook models, about 1995. They are cool, they are good looking, mouths drop every time i take my macbook pro out the bag.. the system is beautiful.. The iphone is amazing. Sleak, multi-touch, ipod inside, every cool thing i could want. But.. to this almost everyone will have to agree.. sync only through usb, when it go on emergency mode, need a laptop to boot it, sync only with one itunes library, converting almost every video to itunes compatible, the flash thingie, and the list could go on for a while..
What i dont like on linux (and systens alike) is they are not as sleek and beautiful as apple's are. Is that important?? depends on your use of a computer. Personally i like my jailbroken iphone, place videos for incoming calls, winterboarding the visual and stuff.. and i simply hate when those error messages pop and the apple site gives the same "restore now!" answer for everything.
The macbook i use on college broke, so i just bought an ipad. I know that not being able to connect my pendrives on the ipad will hinder my studies; i know not being able to install software made specifically to my area of study will be almost disastrous. And for that i really like the idea of freedom. The idea of, when needed, being able to boot on Android or a linux distro and have that situation handled.
As saying that, i found myself in two different situations: the geek and the normal user. As a normal user, i dont need freedom to be an individual. As a geek with personal projects not linked to computers (but everything uses computers these days), i still cannot be an individual.
Sci-fi writers of old wrote about companies hindering the liberties of using equipments as mega-corporations described as cartels, mob's, totalitarian, self-indulged. And that feels as the I on apple products seems oddly as an ironic joke, as i (through their products) am fated to never be more than a not important part of the collective.
 

IpadOne

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Been using macs since the powerbook models, about 1995. They are cool, they are good looking, mouths drop every time i take my macbook pro out the bag.. the system is beautiful.. The iphone is amazing. Sleak, multi-touch, ipod inside, every cool thing i could want. But.. to this almost everyone will have to agree.. sync only through usb, when it go on emergency mode, need a laptop to boot it, sync only with one itunes library, converting almost every video to itunes compatible, the flash thingie, and the list could go on for a while..
What i dont like on linux (and systens alike) is they are not as sleek and beautiful as apple's are. Is that important?? depends on your use of a computer. Personally i like my jailbroken iphone, place videos for incoming calls, winterboarding the visual and stuff.. and i simply hate when those error messages pop and the apple site gives the same "restore now!" answer for everything.
The macbook i use on college broke, so i just bought an ipad. I know that not being able to connect my pendrives on the ipad will hinder my studies; i know not being able to install software made specifically to my area of study will be almost disastrous. And for that i really like the idea of freedom. The idea of, when needed, being able to boot on Android or a linux distro and have that situation handled.
As saying that, i found myself in two different situations: the geek and the normal user. As a normal user, i dont need freedom to be an individual. As a geek with personal projects not linked to computers (but everything uses computers these days), i still cannot be an individual.
Sci-fi writers of old wrote about companies hindering the liberties of using equipments as mega-corporations described as cartels, mob's, totalitarian, self-indulged. And that feels as the I on apple products seems oddly as an ironic joke, as i (through their products) am fated to never be more than a not important part of the collective.

So why not consider to buy a JooJoo witch is more open and free for your 3 local app’s you can’t use in your iPad … the iPad is not made for the nerd is made for the rest of us and we are satisfied with … so don’t use your mind thinking just buy linux or android tablet based … the market is waiting you :D
 

jrrk

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iPad Linux

Why do you want Linux for the iPad ? It was ported to the iPhone, and after proving the principle it was soon abandoned. We already have a posix compatibility layer with the help of Cydia, and you can run daemons in background if you want. You can even compile with gcc locally if you want.

The whole point of the device is to provide a quantum leap in battery life and user interface convenience. I left mine on one night, and the next morning the display was still glowing brightly and the battery showed 50% full - how many laptop owners can say that?
 

Delirium

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no logic..

Defending ipad or apple products is pretty easy: they do it on itself. Beautiful, well finished, works great and there's nothing easier to learn how to use (for most it dispenses reading instructions). But say it's not product directed to me and therefore my opinion is disregardful, it's hypocrisy.
Anyone can say "my product is not directed to you" and that would answer anything. It can even unlawfully dispense rights. The level of craftsmanship apple has with their hardware does not justify or compensate the savage capitalistic view of cutting down functions (mostly on software level), disrespectful of users, for a second chance to make money on things and functions should be on the product from the beginning.
A presentator that cant connect to any second screen unless you buy an extra equipment. A tablet that dont read pendrives or connects to printers. An tablet that dont accept tethering even though my carrier allows it. The policy of the itunes store only selling keynote and pages on the USA itunes store. Taking so long to allow another browser to be on the itunes store. Iphone 3g/3gs not coming with dock. and the list can go on.
On this, again, i dont question quality, but marketing positioning coming first than simple user satisfaction and functionality. a great brand with nice ideas and emasculated by tyrannic marketing strategies.
These new products (iphone and ipad) came to make eletronics become easy and useful by almost anyone. and they do. but the cut on functionality is not in the name of easy-to-use or even new way of working.
so, therefore, ask yourself.. you being the product oriented target or not: would you like more the ipad the way it is or one with tethering, usb port, vga/hdmi plug, dock and free to install softs outside itunes store??..
 

daid

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Why? Who has an old iPad laying around that they are tired of such that they want it for linux? If you are going to buy a new iPad -- but you don't want to run the iPhone OS....why wouldn't you just buy an Android tablet from the get go?

Lee

You must not have read the question right. The point of this was to raise awareness that you could get a multitasking full operating system for ipad.

the Idea is not to get another cellphone operating system but to get a real operating system.

I think Moblin would be a good distro or Ubuntu netbook remix.
although there is a Linux distro lurking in the shadows that I can never remember that is supposed to tailor made for touch computers.

the bad thing is to get any real penephrels like a webcam working you need to know hardware to work through the proprietary connection. However, Getting an ipad connection to usb dongle to work should be the easy way out (less splicing and dicing) :p

So sad you feel this way. Apples mobile os (it really needs a name!) is very much a real os. It is a non traditional os, but it is quite real, and in my opinion quite wonderful. Everyone is so obsessed with the old way of doing everything that anything that doesn't fit that standard isn't real to them. I have not once felt roadblocked or hindered in any way by my iPad.

I only got to this thread wondering if Linux could be run on an iPad; in other words, if it was worth a thought at owning or not. I'll avoid any serious trolling here on an off-topic rant on how horrible Mac OS X itself is and how that would lead me to conclude the same thing about the mobile OS they've produced.

If Mac operating systems work for you, then of course kudos. Interestingly, Mac OS is so far the only POSIX system I *couldn't* use, and if I couldn't install a more flexible operating system on an iPad, I just shouldn't buy it because I'd surely break it in frustration. My Apple laptop triple boots, and I only gave Mac OS about 2.5 GB, and I virtually never use it. It could be my disdain for Aqua more than the operating system itself, but I never got around to getting Gentoo Prefix and stand-alone KDE running on it.

If the PureDarwin project gets moving and I can run a Darwin base with all the Apple drivers, that's about as close to I'd come to happily using any Apple OS currently on the market or released in the foreseeable future. That's mostly bogged down and slow from the minimal documentation released with the source code, and most the people who would help the project just run Linux instead.

Since my experience with the iPhone, anyway, indicates that the GUI is even more Aqua than Aqua, I can only imagine this is a horrible waste of money for me if I couldn't run something else on it.
 

Linkreincarnate

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Hi guys,

Unfortunately, I'll have to disagree with the first post. Linux will probably never exist on the iPad.

The reasons are multiple- one of the biggest problem is the processor. It is based off the ARM architecture, yes, but it is made by Apple, and no specs whatsoever are available. For all we know, 30% of its architecture could be completely different from traditional ARMs. As a result, it would be very hard to write a compiler for that processor (we'd have to retro engineer the SDK's iPad compiler- good luck with that).

This particular point may not hold sway. Samsung is rumored to be using the A4 in their upcoming Wave. They helped design and build the chip so it seems to be a rumor that holds some water. That may give hackers a side entrance to the CPU architecture. (Esp if the Wave is Android (or linux) based. The points about the drivers and boot execution are still valid though.

Even with the issues with the drivers and boot execution though I would not bet against the hackers any day...
 

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ARM and Apple

I just wanted to correct what a previous poster said the Apple iPad processor. Even the mighty Apple cannot wriggle out of their license agreement with ARM which states that they must test 100% compatibility with the ARM v7 architecture. You can even get the source code for the processor core if you pay a large fee. Apple even release all the source for their changes to gcc to support objc and all the goodies that come with it. And don't go saying this is no multi-tasking OS. All the functionality is there underneath. If Apple choose not to confuse the user by showing a bash prompt, that is up to them ...
 

daid

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I just wanted to correct what a previous poster said the Apple iPad processor. Even the mighty Apple cannot wriggle out of their license agreement with ARM which states that they must test 100% compatibility with the ARM v7 architecture. You can even get the source code for the processor core if you pay a large fee. Apple even release all the source for their changes to gcc to support objc and all the goodies that come with it. And don't go saying this is no multi-tasking OS. All the functionality is there underneath. If Apple choose not to confuse the user by showing a bash prompt, that is up to them ...

I don't try to be rude, but it's my nature. So, in any case, I'll try to be nice if you might care what I think.

The idea that I need the *source code* for the processor is non-sense. I mean, it doesn't even make sense at all. It's a piece of hardware. The "source code" is a circuit diagram! The first question is "what hardware are you running." That is actually yet to be answered by Apple AFAIK, although anyone with more money than me can feel free to break it open. Knowing that, it's an issue of how to code for it, but I'd hardly call it source code.

In terms of processors, they are useless without people who will write code for them. So I am highly doubtful a new hardware provider has Apple in the shackles of "Code for us or else!" Without people who know how to code or dissemble binary, architecture is absolute garbage. That would lead one to conclude that if it's super hush-hush, it's a software contract Apple initiated, not the hardware provider. I mean, take an Intel processor. Everyone knows how to code for it, right? Why go for something else if you don't like being uber secretive?

Although it's not relevant here, because you brought up, the idea of source code as it relates to hardware, I'll mention it here. There are some in the Linux field who disdain 'binary-blobs', but there are others who don't care, and if one provides even binary drivers and not source code, it's cool. Of course for a processor it's kind of a mess, but seriously, if a company is making a processor, you like to inform me that they gain revenue by not telling people how to code for it? That could only happen with a payoff, if it was true, which I personally doubt for now.

And with regard to Apple "releasing source code" this is literally just done so that "people like you" (not you personally, of course) can argue with "people like me" (actually, it's me) about how they release source code. Did you ever bother to look at the source code? Did you ever consider that it's a monstrosity beyond compare? There isn't documentation I ever saw released, and I personally feel like someone was hired to remove useful comments in the source code (presuming they might have existed) before its release. The OpenDarwin project is basically run by Aladdin, and he's been at it for a few years and the results are still not much of an OS. Undocumented and unhelpfully commented source code is about as helpful as whitespace code sent to postscript (google it if you like...). If you purport that Apple is so great in their release of source code, I would very kindly request you to make me a bootable, fully-functional, POSIX system based on their released source code. That isn't a jab of mockery. I really would like it. It's only mockery because it's so bloody difficult, because their methods are obtuse, their filestructure is obtuse, and no one even managed to compile anything that even BOOTS (don't worry about commands like shutdown or restart!) from within an Apple system itself, because their gcc is the largest pile of trash I ever saw. And I'd prefer not to me mocked on that last point.

And I have no real concern if the iPad ever will or won't be hacked. I only started posting here since I have no interest in it if I can't run Linux on it, pure and simple, and even my base interest is pretty low. Promoting Apple is of course why they are willing to pay so many profits to marketing and not to R&D. If you want to convince me Apple is not 100% market driven, explain to me why the use an extremely poor method of hiding and "encrypting" iPod shuffles if they are to play music, and disallowing them to play any media which is used as "media transfer mode" (ie: normal method of populating a USB storage device). Why? Cahoots with making money on songs.
 

daid

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I just wanted to correct what a previous poster said the Apple iPad processor. Even the mighty Apple cannot wriggle out of their license agreement with ARM which states that they must test 100% compatibility with the ARM v7 architecture. You can even get the source code for the processor core if you pay a large fee. Apple even release all the source for their changes to gcc to support objc and all the goodies that come with it. And don't go saying this is no multi-tasking OS. All the functionality is there underneath. If Apple choose not to confuse the user by showing a bash prompt, that is up to them ...

I don't try to be rude, but it's my nature. So, in any case, I'll try to be nice if you might care what I think.

The idea that I need the *source code* for the processor is non-sense. I mean, it doesn't even make sense at all. It's a piece of hardware. The "source code" is a circuit diagram! The first question is "what hardware are you running." That is actually yet to be answered by Apple AFAIK, although anyone with more money than me can feel free to break it open. Knowing that, it's an issue of how to code for it, but I'd hardly call it source code.

In terms of processors, they are useless without people who will write code for them. So I am highly doubtful a new hardware provider has Apple in the shackles of "Code for us or else!" Without people who know how to code or dissemble binary, architecture is absolute garbage. That would lead one to conclude that if it's super hush-hush, it's a software contract Apple initiated, not the hardware provider. I mean, take an Intel processor. Everyone knows how to code for it, right? Why go for something else if you don't like being uber secretive?

Although it's not relevant here, because you brought up, the idea of source code as it relates to hardware, I'll mention it here. There are some in the Linux field who disdain 'binary-blobs', but there are others who don't care, and if one provides even binary drivers and not source code, it's cool. Of course for a processor it's kind of a mess, but seriously, if a company is making a processor, you like to inform me that they gain revenue by not telling people how to code for it? That could only happen with a payoff, if it was true, which I personally doubt for now.

And with regard to Apple "releasing source code" this is literally just done so that "people like you" (not you personally, of course) can argue with "people like me" (actually, it's me) about how they release source code. Did you ever bother to look at the source code? Did you ever consider that it's a monstrosity beyond compare? There isn't documentation I ever saw released, and I personally feel like someone was hired to remove useful comments in the source code (presuming they might have existed) before its release. The OpenDarwin project is basically run by Aladdin, and he's been at it for a few years and the results are still not much of an OS. Undocumented and unhelpfully commented source code is about as helpful as whitespace code sent to postscript (google it if you like...). If you purport that Apple is so great in their release of source code, I would very kindly request you to make me a bootable, fully-functional, POSIX system based on their released source code. That isn't a jab of mockery. I really would like it. It's only mockery because it's so bloody difficult, because their methods are obtuse, their filestructure is obtuse, and no one even managed to compile anything that even BOOTS (don't worry about commands like shutdown or restart!) from within an Apple system itself, because their gcc is the largest pile of trash I ever saw. And I'd prefer not to me mocked on that last point.

And I have no real concern if the iPad ever will or won't be hacked. I only started posting here since I have no interest in it if I can't run Linux on it, pure and simple, and even my base interest is pretty low. Promoting Apple is of course why they are willing to pay so many profits to marketing and not to R&D. If you want to convince me Apple is not 100% market driven, explain to me why the use an extremely poor method of hiding and "encrypting" iPod shuffles if they are to play music, and disallowing them to play any media which is used as "media transfer mode" (ie: normal method of populating a USB storage device). Why? Cahoots with making money on songs.

Sorry, small mistake.

A bootable PureDarwin system does exist. But it has to be made within Apple hardware. And in that best case scenario, from the code I could find, install, and hack without being PhD student and having real work, could not shutdown without pulling the plug. Hey, kudos for the source code, Steve!
 

jrrk

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We have drifted off topic here, but if you are not familiar with the idea of "source code" for a processor you can check out opencores dot org where you can find the source code for a variety of processors, including some that claim to be x86 compatible, as well as the usual line up of 68k, sparc, MIPS etc.

If you have the time, inclination, and are skilled in the art you can make your own computer which is open source from the smallest flipflop upwards.

For most companies however a pragmatic evolution of a product which has shown success in the market is a better bet due to commercial pressures. That is why we see the iPad released without multi-tasking, and with supposedly annoying features which restrict the user but also stop viruses and malware being released for the platform - an important feature for a computer that is designed for the person in the street
 

iBold

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android on a ipad is stupid an your degrading the ipad of it good and solid OS.
I have a dual boot option on my iphone with android but the os is not near as good as the Iphone OS, i did this only for the challance not for the 'better OS' for you all who want to have this, wait for the cheep Android tablet that Google brings out, the poormans ipad..lol :D
 

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