We are very happy to announce the first testing release of Plasma Active for Nexus 7. Plasma Active, in a nutshell, is a Linux distribution (based on Mer as a core) that is specifically optimized for tablet computers.
Tuomas Kulve and me had been working on the Mer "hardware-adaptation" for Nexus 7 that enables to run Mer-based distributions like Plasma Active on the Nexus 7.
Before I start , I must make it clear that it is not an in depth review of Nexus 7, you would find a lot of those on the internet. I am just narrating my own experience from an Indian’s point of view , which a lot of people should find useful.
First of all, I am a final year undergraduate and was thinking of buying a tablet for the last 6-8 months or so. Earlier I wanted to buy the Micromax Funbook but then I thought that if I am buying a tablet, I should go for a good one, at least a decent one. I am not saying that the Micromax Funbook series is bad, they offer a great value for money but unless you are in dire need of a tablet and have a 7-8 K budget limit, I wouldn’t advise you to buy it.
I started checking out the Nexus 7 reviews and found them pretty great. Sure it had some cons, but all of those were fine with me. It didn’t have a back camera , no expandable memory slot and no sim slot ( Now , a 3G version of Nexus 7 is available though, it wasn’t then). I didn’t want a back camera, in my opinion it looks pretty stupid trying to take a snap with a 7″ tablet. I found the on board 16 GB memory pretty decent ( You can always buy a microUSB OTG, connect pen drives or card readers to it if you need). And I primarily wanted to use it indoors, where wifi was almost always available so no issue there too.
It wasn’t available in India officially then , but I found some sellers were offering imported versions on eBay, tradus and indiatimes shopping. I found it the cheapest on tradus, 16K for the 16GB model of nexus 7, so I bought it from tradus.
When I first held it in my hands, it felt pretty nice. The size and weight was perfect, the back had a dimpled plastic which gives it a good grip and you feel that its made to be held in your hands.
Then I switched it on and the whole Jellybean experience combined with a 1.3 GHz quad core Tegra 3 processor and 1 GB of ram blew my mind . I had heard that there were serious lagging problems in older Android tablets, but there were none on nexus 7. It felt smooth as butter thanks to the hardware and Google’s project butter on Jellybean. Its also worth to point out that it was the first and probably the only 7″ tablet to pack a quad core processor.
As of today , I have had the tablet for more than a month and I am still pretty happy with it. I used it to browse the web, play games, watch movies/ tv shows and read Books. It does all of that flawlessly. Watching movies and reading books is an absolute delight thanks to its form factor and its 1280×800 display. The 4000 mAH battery has enough power to get it through any task. I got 9+ hours of screen time while reading a novel and some light browsing with the wifi on. It still had 25% of battery left then.
Also worth mentioning is the stock android experience. Companies like Samsung , Sony, LG, HTC put their own customized UIs over the stock android which may be good in some ways but it puts a lot of bloatware on the phone. It also means that those devices receive updates much later after it has been released,but not the nexus line up. The stock android means that you get the core android OS without any customization which actually looks pretty cool. It is the first to receive any updates from Google , so if you like to stay on the bleeding edge of technology , it would suit you perfectly.
Its kind of like my constant companion now, it helps me to move out of my laptop for lighter tasks and I find that great. Its a good travelling partner too, I watched movies on a journey from my college to home of about 3 hours and it was a pretty good experience.
To conclude, I would strongly recommend Nexus 7 to anyone looking for a tablet with a 10K+ budget. For people who want everything in a 7″ tablet, they can go for the Samsung Galaxy Tab2. I haven’t used it so no idea how good it is but I found the reviews generally positive.
This year I am going to apply for Google Summer of Code popularly known as GSoC. For those who do not know what it is, GSoC is an internship program from Google where Google pays you a hefty amount to hack FOSS softwares. Can’t get any better than this right ? But this program being so lucrative attracts a lot of competition and although there are a lot of organizations who are accepted for GSoC , the number of students is large too.
There are various stages of GSoC. First the organizations which want to participate in GSoC have to apply with their ideas. Google then publishes a list of accepted organizations and students can apply for GSoC for the accepted organizations only. After the GSoC student application period is over, all the mentors in a particular organization vote the proposals for their organization and send it to Google. On the basis of this vote Google selects the students who are going to be part of GSoC .
My interest in contribution has always been in KDE and I am applying for GSoC for a project idea in Kdegames. The idea is “Write a Kde game using QML/Qt Quick” . I am basically going to port two existing games present in Kdegames. One is KPat, which is basically a Patience like game including a lot of variants and the other is Kigo, the Go game. These games currently use the QGraphicsView/ KGameRenderer to render their graphics and in my project I am going to design a QML based interface for both of these games and integrate the existing game play logic with these new interfaces. Using QML , the interface can be designed fluid and intuitive so that the game play experience of the user is taken to a whole new level altogether. On talking with some of the people in Kdegames like Stefan Majewsky, I came to know that there are plans of porting Kdegames to the tablet platform Plasma Active, and the interfaces designed in QML would also help when these games would be ported. Although the interface would have to be written from scratch but the design would be available without any major changes.
After the interface designing is over, I am also planning to write a multi player module for Kigo. Go is a very popular game in many parts of the world and the IGF (International Go Federation) has over 70 member countries. There are Internet Go Servers (IGS) where people can connect using their clients and play against other players. They also have the option of watching other games in real time. The multiplayer module would enable a player to connect to any go server using his/her credentials and play. There are some such clients available like Cgoban and Jago but they are primarily designed for Gnugo. But the good thing is there are some standardized protocols for Go like Go Text Protocol (GTP) and Go Modem Protocol (GMP). These protocols are meant to standardize the Go games so that it can be played from any system against any system without any problems of compatibility. Jago is an open sourced Go client written in Java and I am going to study its code for porting it to Qt/C++ in Kigo.
I have already submitted my proposal and it is available at http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2012/arjbasu/1 . It would be viewable after the GSoC student application period is over i.e. fromApril 6th 2012.
Fingers crossed and waiting for the fateful day April 23rd.
Today , I don’t know why I felt like I should have a blog where I can write about the interesting things I find or the things I do which might be of interest to other people.About the title of my blog, I am kind of tech savvy and a little geeky kind of guy, and hence what I talk about often tends to bore people who aren’t like that. Guys like me should find some of the things at least mildly interesting, which is good enough for me.
About me, I am Arjun Basu, pursuing ECE in NIT Durgapur with a keen interest in computers and computer related stuff (programming, hardware etc.) .One thing that I have to confess is that my knowledge in my field of study is poor to say the least, not because I don’t understand stuff, just that I am too uninterested to get a deeper understanding of those things.I rather study or know about stuff which I actually like and I am marginally good at like programming and related stuff. Everyone must be wondering why I am studying ECE instead of CSE , many of my friends have the same question too , and its a sad little tale meant for another time.
Anyways I think that’s enough for my first post. So , Goodnight All
