Vivaldi Tablet News
Not just a piece of news, but an actual news page!
One one hand the last update is nearly a month old now, but on the other hand, there was an update less than a month ago! Also, the news is to do with sorting out the case for the device, which is a good indication that nearly everything else should actually be sorted by now, because they must have got the board and the location of the components finalised. Also, the big green blob in the image in that post is the processor and other core components that are at the heart of the Improv device which shipped in December.
I was almost ready to give up. After Aaron Seigo's post on Dec 6th about how the software processes within the ARM world can best be summed up by the phrases "nigh non-existent" and "utter shitgasm". and Friday's The Luminosity of Free Software Episode 15 segment 2 (@30:25) on "Hardware & FOSS" which expands on much the same thing, things generally didn't sound good. With his answer in the video to the question "Are there any plans for future development of Improv?" (@50:20) not mentioning Vivaldi at all, despite Vivaldi being a more advanced, more polished, more "complete" device based off of the same core tech, left me with the distinct impression that Vivaldi was finally dead.
So I decided to start actually looking for alternative tech.
There were two main criteria I was looking for. First, I wanted the OS and apps to be a Free Software stack from top to bottom. Second, I needed a piece of hardware capable of running that stack.
The Free Software stack is important to me because I want to own my device. Yes, that does sound a bit daft, but let me briefly digress into the nature of ownership.
When it comes to physical property, if you own something, you can do what you like with it. If I own a chair, or a book, I can sit on one and read the other. Or I can sit on the book. Or I could burn them both for warmth, or bury them in my garden, or disassemble the chair and make nunchucks out of it, or turn the book into a collection of paper aeroplanes. The important thing is, that while other people might have objections to me treating my property in non-conventional ways, none of them can stop me. Not random passers by, not the builder of the chair, nor the publisher or author of the book. And the shop(s) that sold them to me can't take them back on a whim.
Most tablets are not like that. If you have a device which is attached to some network-based account, then if you have "bought" some content on it, often you don't have the final say about what happens to that content. In many cases, the owner of your account can delete it without your knowledge or approval. (Save for the EULA you clicked through without reading, where you gave them the right to do this.)
An article which I recently read (but cannot now find ☹) made the point quite simply - if you do not control something, you do not truly own it. In order to have a good chance of properly owning my own tablet, it needs to run Free Software. Software which can be inspected by anyone, to check that it works in the service of the user, does not contain antifeatures that work in the service of someone else, and is more likely to be secure, without backdoors (video).
After a fair amount of searching around for a software stack, I eventually came across Wikipedia's Comparison of mobile operating systems. This led me to the conclusion that Firefox OS and Mer (slated for Vivaldi) were the only two stacks that would meet my requirements.
As for hardware, the most likely candidate that I could find was the Google Nexus series, which is specifically made with an unlockable bootloader and is intended to be used by those wishing to replace the software stack. While I have no philosophical problems with rooting/jailbreaking my own property (even if it does void the hardware warranty!), I would prefer to spend my money in support of programs that try to respect my freedoms, rather than those that would restrict them.
And so, the Google Nexus 7 (2013) was looking like a good candidate.
Checking to see if anyone had got a Mer working on the Nexus 7, I found the blog post Plasma Active for Nexus 7: Running the touch-optimized Plasma Active Linux Distribution on Nexus 7 (via KDE’s Plasma Active can now run on the Nexus 7) which was pretty positive. There were a few issues, but those were in Dec 2012 and other people might have come up with some workarounds, so I had a look through the comments as well. And found:kollin: Is Vivaldi initiative completely dead?
shmerl: It is not: http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/kde_tablet/
And from there, the news page!
(Apparently the SparkVivaldi tablet is now codenamed "Flying Squirrel").
So, it's back to waiting to Vivaldi. But waiting - with a link for news! Really, it was the lack of news that was really getting to me - not knowing if there was any progress being made at all. Well, maybe it was the waiting too - if I'd known 2 years ago that it'd take at least this long to arrive, I probably would have bought something else in the interim.
Still, I can wait. That's one thing I'm good at.
(It does help to have a handle on what all-surpassing patience (see "6. Decayed") really means. ☺)
One one hand the last update is nearly a month old now, but on the other hand, there was an update less than a month ago! Also, the news is to do with sorting out the case for the device, which is a good indication that nearly everything else should actually be sorted by now, because they must have got the board and the location of the components finalised. Also, the big green blob in the image in that post is the processor and other core components that are at the heart of the Improv device which shipped in December.
I was almost ready to give up. After Aaron Seigo's post on Dec 6th about how the software processes within the ARM world can best be summed up by the phrases "nigh non-existent" and "utter shitgasm". and Friday's The Luminosity of Free Software Episode 15 segment 2 (@30:25) on "Hardware & FOSS" which expands on much the same thing, things generally didn't sound good. With his answer in the video to the question "Are there any plans for future development of Improv?" (@50:20) not mentioning Vivaldi at all, despite Vivaldi being a more advanced, more polished, more "complete" device based off of the same core tech, left me with the distinct impression that Vivaldi was finally dead.
So I decided to start actually looking for alternative tech.
There were two main criteria I was looking for. First, I wanted the OS and apps to be a Free Software stack from top to bottom. Second, I needed a piece of hardware capable of running that stack.
The Free Software stack is important to me because I want to own my device. Yes, that does sound a bit daft, but let me briefly digress into the nature of ownership.
When it comes to physical property, if you own something, you can do what you like with it. If I own a chair, or a book, I can sit on one and read the other. Or I can sit on the book. Or I could burn them both for warmth, or bury them in my garden, or disassemble the chair and make nunchucks out of it, or turn the book into a collection of paper aeroplanes. The important thing is, that while other people might have objections to me treating my property in non-conventional ways, none of them can stop me. Not random passers by, not the builder of the chair, nor the publisher or author of the book. And the shop(s) that sold them to me can't take them back on a whim.
Most tablets are not like that. If you have a device which is attached to some network-based account, then if you have "bought" some content on it, often you don't have the final say about what happens to that content. In many cases, the owner of your account can delete it without your knowledge or approval. (Save for the EULA you clicked through without reading, where you gave them the right to do this.)
An article which I recently read (but cannot now find ☹) made the point quite simply - if you do not control something, you do not truly own it. In order to have a good chance of properly owning my own tablet, it needs to run Free Software. Software which can be inspected by anyone, to check that it works in the service of the user, does not contain antifeatures that work in the service of someone else, and is more likely to be secure, without backdoors (video).
After a fair amount of searching around for a software stack, I eventually came across Wikipedia's Comparison of mobile operating systems. This led me to the conclusion that Firefox OS and Mer (slated for Vivaldi) were the only two stacks that would meet my requirements.
As for hardware, the most likely candidate that I could find was the Google Nexus series, which is specifically made with an unlockable bootloader and is intended to be used by those wishing to replace the software stack. While I have no philosophical problems with rooting/jailbreaking my own property (even if it does void the hardware warranty!), I would prefer to spend my money in support of programs that try to respect my freedoms, rather than those that would restrict them.
And so, the Google Nexus 7 (2013) was looking like a good candidate.
Checking to see if anyone had got a Mer working on the Nexus 7, I found the blog post Plasma Active for Nexus 7: Running the touch-optimized Plasma Active Linux Distribution on Nexus 7 (via KDE’s Plasma Active can now run on the Nexus 7) which was pretty positive. There were a few issues, but those were in Dec 2012 and other people might have come up with some workarounds, so I had a look through the comments as well. And found:kollin: Is Vivaldi initiative completely dead?
shmerl: It is not: http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/kde_tablet/
And from there, the news page!
(Apparently the SparkVivaldi tablet is now codenamed "Flying Squirrel").
So, it's back to waiting to Vivaldi. But waiting - with a link for news! Really, it was the lack of news that was really getting to me - not knowing if there was any progress being made at all. Well, maybe it was the waiting too - if I'd known 2 years ago that it'd take at least this long to arrive, I probably would have bought something else in the interim.
Still, I can wait. That's one thing I'm good at.
(It does help to have a handle on what all-surpassing patience (see "6. Decayed") really means. ☺)