I have to agree with Neko here! I have a Dell netbook and the Genesi smartbook. While the Dell is noticeable faster with ThunderBird, my e-mail client of choice (7 mail boxes, 5GB+ e-mails to handle), for the rest there isn't much difference in performance. On the other hand the Dell runs about two hours on batteries, the Genesi smartbook more than six. Which makes a huge difference, especially when power is not available :-)
So, Ubuntu on the smartbook is quite OK, as long as you compare it within its own category. And some features even beat higher category notebooks: PDF rendering. Last year at the local *BSD conference the conference program was in a quite complex PDF file. The smartbook rendered it faster than many large x86 notebooks in the room.
Just combine fast PDF rendering with the easy to read screen, long battery life and silence (no moving parts), and you don't need a separate e-book reader...

I don't find Ubuntu useless at all on the smartbook.

If the Efika MX smartbook only ran android and Genesi wasn't interested in supporting other operating systems on it and embracing the open source community like they are doing, I wouldn't have bought my smartbook in the first place.

I don't regret at all my purchase and I plan on using my smartbook for a lot of the same things I would use Linux for on a regular desktop or laptop machine. It's more powerful than a lot of machines I've owned in the past and done the same things on.

Having a mainline Linux distro on it means that I can run any Linux software combination I want. Which pretty much means the possibilities are only limited to my imagination and the limits of the hardware (which I don't consider too limited)

I really don't understand why people think "this device is only good for running a crippled OS only meant to consume information on" when they think ARM or netbooks in general.

I might agree to that to some extent on a device that only has a touch screen for user interaction (and might not support a KB/mouse). but there is no reason at all that you can't create real content on these devices or even use them as your primary system if your needs aren't too demanding.

I don't see this as some "less than a real computer" but simply a nice, inexpensive general purpose computing device. That means I get to decide what role it will play and how and what software combination it will run and nobody will or can make that choice for me. (even if that choice were to run android)

Thats what I like about Genesi's approach to the Efika MX they aren't forcing me to use this device the way they think it should be used and I don't have to jail break anything to run something other than android/the vendors OS of choice.

I would much rather the generic approach any day that way everyone can get what they want exactly how they want it. (provided the right people are motivated to write the software for the way you want things of course)

Is the source available for this?

So is that a no? It would be really interesting to get a Cyanogen port for the Efika Smarttop. I don't even know if that's possible but I would certainly like to start playing around with an Android port and since I have two of these things it would be a great target. I am about to get the image up and running right now. Thanks.


Tim

And since it annoys me to no end that there is no actual link to the image in the thread here is the link to the page that has the link to the image.

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms/efikamx/android


Sorry, I just always land on this thread when looking for the image and it doesn't actually get me there.

Finally got the image booting (after I got my head out of the clouds) and I'm anxious to play around with it. However, I have screen clipping issues. I am using an HDMI to DVI cable to a monitor that is 1680x1050 capable. I'm sure that's part of the problem. Maybe I'll check on my HDTV and see what the result is.

Any suggestions? It makes it a tad hard to use that way. I have no problems with Ubuntu booting in this configuration.


Thanks.

I guess I'll just have to start dissecting what's available and figure it all out myself. It would have been nice to use the smarttop as a learning platform for Android porting/development. I understand that can't be a primary mission for such a small company but with the source out there it would be easy as a community project. Oh well.

Hi, hold on. It is not so easy. We have been trying to prepare an Android source file but we cannot distribute what we cannot as some of the patches came from Freescale.

R&B :)

So what are the patches to? If it's the kernel and you release that image don't those have to be provided? Similar to all the manufacturers of phones being required to release the source to their kernels that run Android?

If it's patches to Android specifically well I guess than they do not have to be released, is that correct? But if that's the case we should be able to get the kernel used for the Android image and then go about getting a port of Android working that is open source for the community. Because Android does require a specialized kernel, correct?

I'm pretty new to all of (not development in general but embedded and Android system level) and just thought since I have these great Smarttops that it would be a fantastic thing to dive into. :)

In either case it seems to be a detriment to both Genesi and Freescale not to release that source to encourage development.

But what do I know...

You certainly know a lot, but be assured the process is not so easy. We are working on a solution.

R&B :)

P.S. Do you have the Honeycomb sources?

Great, let me know if there's anything I can do to expedite the solution. ;)

Of course I don't have the Honeycomb sources. And rest assured I'm not happy about that either but alas it's Google's ball and I suppose they can do what they want with 3.0 but as for 2.3 well that's free!

I'm going to ramp up on some other things that will get me ready for it so I'll leave you guys be for a bit. Thanks.

It's been exactly two weeks since I last posted. Any progress? Is the source available yet? I'm not trying to be a pain but isn't this a license compliance issue at this point? Is there a formal address where I can request the source of the kernel used for the Android port released?


Thanks.

Hi, please email us here:

corporate@genesi-usa.com

Thanks.

R&B

Okay we got it ready, prepped it for release and now it's up for download:

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms/efikamx/android

Have fun, everybody. I need not mention that we do not offer any support for Android as a rule - this is just a proof of concept that Android can run on our devices and that if we wanted to go there, we could in a heartbeat. We really are reserving our effort for something more Tablet-capable and this means Honeycomb or better, for best usability and performance.

That said we're happy to help with specific kernel problems as they arise as they fit into our current software development roadmap.

This is great! I can't wait to dig in. Hopefully I can make some sort of contribution with it. I will be pointing it out to the good folks on the CyanogenMod forums in case anyone over there is equally interested.