Before I get into this, no I'm not looking to replace my N900 at all. In fact I use my N900 everyday (even if it's minimal use for now). I am in need of something a bit more powerful for other tasks as well as a bigger screen. I know the lack of a hardware keyboard is a killer for some (not so much me as much as I love a HW Kbrd), but I can deal. I basically want to make my N900 work in co-op with a new tablet, the Archos 101. I was looking at it on TigerDirect.com (price is nice for the 8GB version), but the biggest reason I need input is for one thing only: OS replacement!

Don't get me wrong, Android is nice and all, but I want true (full-featured) linux. I have Mint on my laptop now (using it as a make-shift personal web server for family to see my stuff and a retro gaming rig, which works very well in that regard) and wanted to get that on the tablet as well, however, there seems to be no real solution for that.

From what I've been able to gather, a Netbook Edition of a distro could work, but that's assuming the 101's hardware is supported. I know some people here have had experience with Archos tablets before or currently are using one, but yeah. I want to replace it with something that's not Android, Windows (anti-christ...I'M ENTITLED TO MY OPINION, KTNX!) or iOS (eww). I'm used to debian systems (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint), but I can make due with handling something else (Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, etc.).

Any suggestions to help me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the many run-on sentences. When I start going, kinda hard for me to stop.

P.S. - Please, no April Fools stuff. This is thread is 100% serious.

Jesse~

No body have any input or knowledge on this device?

I too am looking for a tablet, but have been unable to find any that have a good spec and more importantly don't run Android, or at least give the option to dual boot another distro.

http://www.archos.com/support/suppor...s.html?lang=en

Check the SDE edition at the end. It's an Angstrom distro. Check also OpenAOS:
http://www.openaos.org/

Here's an article linked to from The Epic Android thread [TM] explaining how to run full-fledged Ubuntu from Android. I haven't tried it.

http://www.xda-developers.com/androi...difficult-way/

You might also check over at the Meego wiki website for ARM to see what else they're managing to shoehorn it onto, in case someone starts trying to get it running on Archos. I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab and I see lardman's been doing an incredible job of getting MeeGo running on there as well as some effort to get Ubuntu running on it too.

Please note that loading any kind of linux on an archos product is legal and is acceptible to archos, but it does specifically violate your warranty. And apparently restoring android does not restore your warranty; they say the device becomes "watermarked" and you cannot simply reset it to it's default state.

The way Archos states this:

"Installing the SDE firmware is considered by ARCHOS as a voiding of the warranty and ARCHOS declines all liability and responsibility for any issues resulting from the installation of this SDE firmware."

is pretty specific, and it doesn't sound like the hardware warranty in general is voided; for example a defective usb would not be an issue resulting from such an installation.

i have the archos 101, i strongly recommended the slightly smaller one the A71 model
i soon discovered its a mistake to get the large one
now so far the people at the archosfans community couldnt port ubuntu
they could port honeycomb 3.0
and that SDE firmware offers this very stupid linux Angstrom that literary sucks!!
but soon they will port ubuntu
i hope

This is hilarious! Archos is just fine with you loading up another OS--except for the part where they'll have nothing to do with you if you do it. But otherwise it's ok. Really. They're cool like that.

Oh, and I have the 250GB 70. Unless you really need the space I recommend the flash ones. It would seem that the HD based one can only play music with the stock Android player, Perhaps due to some HD issue. If you try with other players (within Android) music pauses intolerably and constantly. Especially high bitrate stuff. But if you don't even plan to use Android I suppose it doesn't matter.

I have an A70S branded as Prestigio MultiPad 7070C which I'm using for tests. At least they released a developer edition instead of what Wits did (or didn't)