This has been superseded by http://sailfish-apps.store.aptoide.com/ (preselected repository / "store" in the recent release of the Aptoide client in the Jolla Store).

Though I cannot detect any significant difference between them (i.e. WRT the apps available there):
Both seem to be a superset of Aptoide's original "app" repository and some other repositories at Aptoide.
--

IIRC the GDM drivers have some issues in 4.12 still. At least ive been facing troubles when working on the kindow.
But yea, pity that they did not go vanilla as well; guess aliendalvik requires a certain extent of android layers to be exposed.
Plus, the atom platform is dead as it stands now, no point in putting too much effort in there, aint there? Right? RIGHT?

In addition to Jolla's own shop :

- OpenRepos.net repository of 3rd party Apps for Sailfish OS (in addition to Maemo).
It case be accessed with a nice interface on the device use "Warehouse" app (or you can install the RPMs on the command line over SSH).

- Mer Openbuild System several developers use this system to compile their RPMs. It's not very end-user friendly, but it's another place to find stuff to install.

Now keep in mind that this tablet runs intel hardware.

So you either need RPMs of the "noarch" type (no binary, only scripts. Like most pure QML applications)
or RPMs compiled for 486.
You can't use (directly) RPMs compiled for ARM.


I don't have (yet...) any experience with the tablet itself, but playing with other Sailfish OS devices (like Jolla 1 smartphone) :
Yes, you can reverse-tether.

(It's GNU/Linux under the hood. No technical reason why it shouldn't work).


BUT... there are no nice interface to activate it.

By default, by plugging the cable into the device you get a simple direct USB Networking (both devices get 192.168.1.x private addresses) and can see each-other (you can SSH into your device, or the device can RSYNC to copy files).

If you want the smartphone/tablet to connect to the internet over USB, you need to :
- manually add routing on the smartphone/tablet (mainly add a default gateway on the IPv4 and/or IPv6 routing tables)
- activate routing and/or masquarading (for IPv4) on the laptop that connects to the internet.
It's nothing complicated. It's just that the phone doesn't do it by itself.
(You'll eventually need to add some script to do it automatically for you).


At least for the other direction (sharing the phone's connection, i.e.: tethering)
there are tools on the phone (though I haven't tested it on USB).


Are you planning to use the device in some "public terminal" configuration ? (Point of sale ? Photo slide show ?)

Yup, indeed. aliendalvik is basically just android's JVM-clone.
It talks straight to the kernel running on the device and thus needs it to support the necessary android-specific APIs.
Myriad's porting effort are in the realm of a few critical services : e.g. the contact list is actually shared with Sailfish OS.

(That's exactly like "andbox". Except that andbox doesn't directly access the graphics, but sends the command over a pipe)

(That's unlike an emulator where all the android-y things would be in the virtual machine and the host's kernel doesn't matter - as used by some android SDK).

This is also one of the explanation why only Android Jelly Bean is available on Jolla 1,
even if Jolla C and the Tablet have Android KitKat (4.4) :
you need more recent android kernel drivers
(there's a thread on the subject on TJC).


This means that, if you get the vanilla kernel to run on the Tablet, for Android apps, you would also need to compile all the extra android bits into the kernel (their special IPC, etc.) - exactly as in andbox.



Now regarding the vanilla drivers :
- Yes, at least intel has opensource graphics drivers for the i9xx chips (unlike the PowerVR chip used in some earlier intel netbooks).

BUT.

Are all the small extra things supported by the vanilla kernel driver ?
I mean stuff like : touch screen, accelerometer, GPS, Wifi...
I would suspect that the Wifi should be working with opensource drivers.
There might be good chances that the GPS works too (Very often it's a separate chips that is only seen by he system as talking standard serial protocol)
On the other hand, there's risk that the touch screen might not be working with vanilla drivers....

Any update on the project?

In Indiegogo site comments it's mentioned that detailed schedule should be published next Saturday.

Ah silly me, I only checked the 'update' section

Sorry (and thanks), I missed your answer.

No public terminal here, my question about USB was merely related to the fact that I don't do wifi.

so you plan to use it mostly offline ?

So yeah in my experience :
- USB reverse tethering works for sure from the command line.
(just add the necessary routing)

- Also you can plain SSH to the tablet if you just want to upload media to it (eg.: load a movie on its SD card that you plan to view offline, once the device is unplugged)

- I haven't successfully used Bluetooth networking on Sailfish, but I haven't attempted much.
Past experience between a HP/Palm webOS devices and a openSUSE laptop shows that PAN usually is achievable between devices.
You *should* be able to set-up a USB PAN link over the command line (I just haven't tried more).
Just like with USB reverse-tether, the built-in connman doesn't have any nice interface in the "Settings" app.

It's sunday 17th, no news...