Replace android with mint

[fredbloggs]

Would it be possible to buy a general purpse android tablet - take android off it and install mint?
Has anyone ever done this at all or even come close?

[xenopeek]

Android tablets generally have ARM architecture processors; Linux Mint is only available for x86 and x86-64 architecture processors. You could install Ubuntu on a Android tablet though. Most prominent the Nexus 7: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7

[fredbloggs]

Thanks for the info xenopeek
Thats a real shame because I like mint.

So much so that my next question has to be - does it run on intel Atoms?
And would it be hard to make it run on a tablet based on one?
Or does anyone know of a tablet it could be made to run on - preferably low cost.
(The nexus is poor value for money from my perspective)

[xenopeek]

It will run on Intel Atoms, but you have to make sure it has a graphics core from Intel and not the PowerVR graphics core licensed from Imagination Technologies as there is no good support for it on Linux. Reported earlier here: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=105091. Situation may have improved, but I'd avoid it.

On Cinnamon at least you get Caribou pre-installed, which is the on-screen keyboard from Gnome. You'd need something like that. The question is though, how do you install it on the device and will all hardware be compatible, and is the desktop environment you pick even touch interface friendly? (KDE is the only one that is, along with Unity and Gnome Shell trying to catch-up with KDE.) Ubuntu makes available a pre-compiled image that you basically flash a compatible tablet device with. There is nothing like that for Linux Mint.