Linux on ARM tablets?

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 03/28/2011 11:35 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 3:08 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The only people who can realistically target tablets are the ones with
>> commercial backing and a business plan.  It is not a market where a
>> volunteer community can easily thrive in.  It requires custom built
>> kernels,  patching all over the stack etc and since Red Hat is not
>> interested,  it is unlikely to happen IMO.
> If you shoot down the idea from the start, obviously it won´t happen.

On the contrary,  I have no impact on any actual outcome. 

> I think a team of 4-5 people could buy the 2 or 3 most popular tablet
> models, or at least the ones getting the most press reports (I´d stay
> away from Apple)... HP, RIM, Samsung, and build Fedore for those.

You grossly underestimate the amount of work it would take.  Even a team
of 4 or 5 dedicated people working full time on such a project would be
barely scratching the surface

> For me, it´d be a good promotion for the OS and brand mindshare, even
> if the firm doesn´t directly make money of it. Hint: provide a
> "donations" button.
>
> And one day, if the project makes good progress, tablet makers might
> even decide to preload Fedora on their tablets as an option, and THEN
> RedHat can charge the firm for support and continued development.
>
> But nothing of this would happen until someone does the first step...

Red Hat is in the business of enterprise support.   Tablets are a
entirely different market and one that Red Hat has shown zero interest
in it and yes, talk is cheap.