[PLUG] Android tablets - configurability?

[Eric Wilhelm]

# from Keith Lofstrom on Tuesday 12 March 2013:
>They look like media vending machines to me,

The are.  Out of the box, they are very geared to consuming, not 
hacking.  They are also very disturbingly skynet-enabled.

>The tasks I have in mind are: typing notes for later upload to
>a server, looking at downloaded PDFs and documents.  Bonus points
>if the device can run local copies of Apache and MoinMoin....CUPS,
>Securely, of course.
>...All FOSS apps, of course.

Finding open source apps for android can be difficult, since the mass-
consumer hype around everything android treats free and open as 
interchangeable, and almost every article about anything involving 
android includes the words "open source" regardless of which paid app it 
is advertising.

The main thing to realize is that you don't get a standard Linux 
environment with a shell (you can get a shell with connectbot to see 
just how crippled it is) and you are not root until you void the 
warranty.  There is also not a standard bios/bootloader, so you have to 
do device-specific workarounds to "root" your device.  Then, all of the 
apps are in java (although it's possible to compile and run binaries on 
a "rooted" device.)  That said, the touch interface can be pretty handy 
and the CPU/ram/camera/video capabilities of a sub-$200 7" wifi tablet 
are pretty impressive.

--Eric
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