can a tablet be used for coding

**TurtleOnIce** · 10-14-2012, 11:45 PM

So I may be in the market for a tablet... I started a new job that will let me bring a tablet to work and I would love to be able to put eclipse ide or something similar on it to do some coding while i have nothing else going on.

is there a tablet powerful enough to run a compiler?

if not is there another option i have? i recently learned about orion from eclipse and have started to look into that?...

thanks for any help

michael

**penguinCoder** · 10-15-2012, 12:23 AM

I have never heard of someone that wanted to program using a touchscreen device; so for that kudos to you man. Lol. You would have to root it out, and install a version of Linux onto it, as I don't believe you can program Java using Andriod, as specified here. A tablet is a computer, in pretty much every sense of the word though, it would just take some finagling to accomplish.

**TurtleOnIce** · 10-15-2012, 06:27 PM

i cant take my laptop with me to my new job but they do allow tablets. everything i have read and can find says that
coding on a tablet is a no go... rooting it sounds like a good idea. i dont have much experience with rooting. can i go
a local computer guy and have him do it for me or is it something i can easily do myself with youtube and an afternoon?

**penguinCoder** · 10-15-2012, 07:51 PM

It kind of depends upon which tablet you end up going with. I would make sure to do some research prior to buying a specific tablet; as some are much easier to root then others. If you have never used Linux before, besides Andriod, then you are going to have a pretty steep learning curve ahead of you. After getting the device rooted, you will then have to force it to read an iso image of either a usb drive or a cd/dvd drive; not to mention making the bootable iso image. Although this may seem a bit daunting, up to here could easily be accomplished following a few tutorials and an afternoon inside.

The hard part is going to be getting your Linux distro to run accordingly on your device. I would pick some kind of Debian based distro, as they are known to be able to run on just about any kind of hardware. You will however need to install drivers for every aspect of your tablet from touchscreen, to wireless, to bluetooth. Installing a driver on Windows is quite easy, on Linux, it can sometimes turn into quite a pain. An example is it took me almost 2 days to get my biometric drivers to work on my laptop, yet it took me about 5 mins to get the drivers to work for my Arduino Uno to work properly.

If you are worried about losing your default operating system, Windows, Linux or whatever Kindles uses nowadays, it is quite possible to do a dual boot. Where you can have both your default and Linux operating systems installed side by side, and be able to choose your operating system when the device boots up. This would require you to partition the hard drive on the device, which means a portion of the hard drive will not be accessible when you boot up into your default operating system.

I don't know about the local computer guy thing.. I have never used one of these services before, as I much perfer to attempt these things myself, as you learn quite a lot doing it. Just remember, no matter how bad you screw up, there is always a solution to fixing it; besides perhaps dropping it in the toilet.

**TurtleOnIce** · 10-15-2012, 08:57 PM

i think i would feel a lot better about setting up with a partition. i have no rooting experience because i was always worried about voiding warranties and etc. now a days i feel safer doing it that i know more but i would rather not completely void the "original" operations of the device if possible. while the main use of the tablet will be for me to do some coding on the go i would also like it to run normally if possible.

can you recommend any good tablets that i should consider? after getting married im not made of money any more but im sure i can scrape together a few grand for a nice one if it will yield better results.

thanks again for all the help...

**JosAH** · 10-15-2012, 09:17 PM

I'd go for one of those MS Windows tablets; they can run Eclipse and Oracle's JVM without problems. Those tablets have a price tag < $800.

kind regards,

Jos

**penguinCoder** · 10-15-2012, 09:37 PM

Originally Posted by TurtleOnIce

after getting married im not made of money any more but im sure i can scrape together a few grand for a nice one if it will yield better results.

You will yield much better results going with a cheaper tablet. This is mainly because the cheaper tablets are more popular, and therefore have a bigger range of people that are willing to 'void the warranty'. If you end up buying a very high end tablet, there will be few people that have that tablet, and a much smaller range of articles to help you. I would say something around the $500 mark is going to be what you are looking for.

Originally Posted by TurtleOnIce

can you recommend any good tablets that i should consider?

Something like the the Asus Transformer line, which has a great database of articles; as shown here. Or perhaps the Samsung Galaxy line which also has many very detailed tutorials, as shown here. If you don't need it ASAP, then the new Kindle Fire line would also be recommended. They are getting more and more popular, and there will soon be many tutorials that will demonstrate how to dual boot these as well; however as they are pretty new, there are not many articles on the subject as of right now.

Just find a list of the top tablets you want, and just Google "[tabletName] dual boot Linux", and see what kind of articles come up. The two above will probably be the easiest to accomplish, and soon the Kindle Fire line would be added to that list, but anything is possible.

If you run into problems when you are setting it up, feel free to PM me; but you might recieve better help by posting to a forum that is directed to a larger audience of people that are concerned with this subject. I have 'rooted' close to a dozen devices, and have set up dual boots on touchscreen devices, but they were all phones rather than tablets. I am sure there are people with far more experience then me on the subject matter.

**Tolls** · 10-16-2012, 09:38 AM

I would really not consider rooting or any such thing, frankly.

However, if you are happy developing Android apps as your thing then there are a couple of Android IDEs for tablets that are supposed to be quite reasonable:
Terminal IDE
AIDE

This (to me) makes more sense than faffing about trying to break your tablet...:)
Oh, and they will produce apps that will actually run properly on your tablet.

**TurtleOnIce** · 10-16-2012, 06:52 PM

I have actually been looking at the ASUS line as well. those look pretty good. i think i am leaning a little bit more in those directions.

Another option i had a coworker offer yesterday was to set up a ?repository? or something that would allow me to run a smaller program like notepad++ or something and kind of run my tablet as an extension from my laptop and then just plug in at the end of the day to update everything. im not sure if i explained that well but hopefully someone can decipher that into a ya or nay for me as well.

thanks again everyone...