Well, I've now gotten myself something of a Sailfish tablet, though very little works. (This is a Nexus 7, with Sailfish installed using the instructions found here.)

Next, I need to see if I can get Nemo working, and move up from there...

I assume its why Hildon was so minimalistic. You had desktops, you configured them the way you wanted. I remember the thread with everybodies different home screens

Hey, typing this now from Nexus 7 / Mer / Plasma Active 4, as per ruedigergad's instructions. I'll try to add a link later. Runs very nice! So, I've gotten about as far as 2013, now for the hard work of trying to get this guy running an up-to-date instance of Mer, if I can manage it.

EDIT: Link to ruedigergad's site. Plus, some pics.

Okay, I gotta ask... when you say "most desirable" are you talking about the folks here or the current consumers? If the latter, I'd disagree. If the former, I agree 100%.

Agree.

So... lemme ask. Why hasn't this happened yet? Or has it and I'm just that unaware (very possible)

Well, having spent a day or two now digging into the Mer documentation (such as it is), I've gotta say yeah, Mer is very nearly exactly that: everything you need to set up your own mobile device, except for the GUI. Really, I'm kinda surprised there haven't been more Jolla-like entities popping up, as Mer really does hand you a significant amount of power seemingly without constraining you to a particular type of UI or a particular corporate entity...

I'm of course talking about my own needs, I couldn't possibly know or guess what other people need.
(and why should I care either, hmm? )

"current consumers" are 100% certified iSheep anyways.

My tone tends to be stuck in "Devil's advocate" mode while here, but I'd have to say it's wise to know what the rest of the folks are doing; especially in tech. The majority is unfortunately dictating what options we, the very vocal minority of people (read: we don't need no stinkin' fart apps, give us terminal instead) will have access to unless we somehow find pockets of like-minded people... like here at TMO.

Read above... and for reasons

And those sheeple are unfortunately who the majority of R&D and marketing and products are being pushed towards and we're piggybacking whatever is out there and shoehorning our wants in a very incomplete manner on existing hardware.

My point I want to really make is that without options that fit the minority in a grander manner (read: geeks want terminal, geeks get terminal) but in a more uniform manner lest we build a fragmented approach to handling our geekery and it'll never get addressed and the sheeple will be totally fulfilled. Can't sell a properly R&D device to just one person. That's why you should care and get other likeminded people that would actually buy the damn thing to care.

Come together on something, or keep bickering about (take your pick: shell, GUI, encryption cipher, distro, kernel, package management, etc) and ignoring everybody else and you will be left out.

That's what is happening. It's great to be an individual. But companies need to make profit. A whole bunch of folks not caring about each other reduces the chances of profitability to near zero.

Comes off soapbox...

I personally think that Copernicus is onto something. Mer is indeed powerful. And it's something that could be shoved onto many other devices and a ton of UI's slammed on top of it. Viola! Instant geek tablet.

But who'd buy it still remains. I, for the life of me cannot figure out any use cases for terminal only on a tablet - all of the virtual keyboards I've seen suck and slow me down and if I add a bluetooth keyboard, I might as well use my laptop.

tl;dr

I'd like to see a geek tablet come out though. I just question if it would sell. And I'd say with confidence, no it would not because geeks are just an unhappy bunch about much too damn much.

Why, thank you!

But now, I'm confused. Maybe it's because I grew up with Linux; for most of the lifetime of Linux, there was never a device sold running the OS. In fact, there was never a device even intended to be usable with Linux. No, if you wanted a Linux PC, you purchased a PC designed for some other purpose, performed a lobotomy on it, and inserted the Linux OS yourself.

That is my intention here. I'm taking this nice old Nexus 7, lobotomizing it, and installing Mer. I'll probably play with a few different UIs, and maybe throw together something of my own. Eventually, I'll get another mobile device, lobotomize it, and carry on with more Mer goodness.

And, ultimately, I think this is the right way to go. Throughout the 80s and 90s and much of the 2000s, companies like Apple and Microsoft dumped millions (billions?) of dollars into operating systems for PCs, and made a fortune on them. But those OSs (DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 9x, MacOS earlier than OS X) are all dead and gone now. Linux (and other open Unix-like OSs) continue to move ahead, despite not making a fortune. And while a lot of that is due to their open nature, much is also due to their not being tied to any particular architecture -- various machines come and go, but these OSs continue to adapt to new devices while still being able to run their standard software.

tl;dr: No need to wait for a geek tablet to come out, or to worry about how much geeks squabble with each other; every tablet is a geek tablet, so long as you can get an open OS onto it.

See, sometimes I'm slow but I do get your intention a lot clearer now and yeah... I've been around Linux since Slackware 3.1 or so but I've always wanted devices that would remove some of the guesswork around drivers (especially wifi).

But you're right... the likelihood of something being Linux from the start on a device is relatively low.

However it's changing.

Thanks. I need to look into this more. Has anyone got this to work on Samsung devices as well? Btw, I happen to have the Jolla launcher for android and thought I'd try it on my Galaxy Tab Pro. While a little buggy it basically worked. Too bad Jolla didn't continue with this. I actually like the transitions when you put an app in background better with this launcher than the current version of Sailfish. Also like the app drawer better. Can also open floating resizable apps with a side launcher on the tablet. Not bad but not the real thing if you know what I mean!