We have changed the user registration from automatic to administrator approved.  I realize this is going to be a pain for some people who are coming to post looking for help but hopefully we can finally get a handle on the forum spam this way.  If you need to be approved, please just use the contact form to send us a message and we will approve you as soon as we see it.

Otherwise we will try to approve what look like real request but the best way to be sure is to use the contact form.

Sorry about any inconvenience, this approach worked very well for the wiki and hopefully everyone will be happier once we have a spam free forum.

We know a lot of you are looking for a better touch based interface for the PengPod.  To that end, we have been working on loading Mer/Nemo Mobile with the PengPods and made a lot of progress this week.  You can download the latest image here http://pengpod.com/dl/images/pengpod1000-mer-cub2-2013.06.07-mer34.img.tar.gz

Right now I only have an image for the 1000, the 700 image should really be exactly the same just with its normal u-boot and script.bin.  Once are finished debugging the major UI issues I will post a 700 image as well.

What works

• GUI loads at boot ( you might have 2-15 seconds of black after you see the normal linux boot text, just wait for it)
• Touch screen (with pinch gesture!)
• WiFi
• USB
• Virtual consoles (ctrl-alt-f1)

What doesn't work

• mcompositor is crashing in the back ground, which means
• exiting apps with the normal swipe left to right gesture is unreliable
• After certain events (like exiting an app) things get very unstable
• Many of the actual apps (its been slow to test without being able to exit)
• Doesn't have some of the mer core packages available yet

I hadn't used Nemo before but I'm kind of blown away with how well it all work once running (minus our software problems).  More news soon, we are working on this and I'll have some videos up soon.  If you have experience with Nemo/Mer/QT5/etc and want to contribute, please download the image and help out in the forum or on IRC.  Also I want to thank Martin Brook (vgrade) without his help and cubieboard image to start from I couldn't have gotten this far with it.

The Android SD card image is now available for download here.  This seems to work with all the 700s but if you have any issues please report them in the forum here.  Also the image for the 1000 is still available here .  I think the 8188eu image should work with the older 1000s with the 8192 wifi chip as well but if not please let me know.  So now both the tablets have all the different boot options available, Android from SD or internal flash and GNU/Linux from SD or internal flash.

Barry de Graaff has done it again following up his great Debian Image now Fedora 18 with XFCE for PengPod is available for download.  We are going to try this image out and put it on our own servers just as soon as we test it.

"It is expected that all the module/kernel dependent features from the Debian build will work on Fedora. Since I am not a big fan of Fedora, I will probably not port all the features of my Debian build to Fedora. This includes GPU acceleration."

There is another Fedora image for Allwinner devices, directly from a Fedora developer.  It requires a little more setup and we haven't tested it ourselves either.

We are running a sale for Memorial day, $10 off a purchase of $100 or more on our store.  Its only running for 48 hours so if you or somebody you know has been thinking about getting a PengPod now is the time!

Apparently the site was down with some DNS problem overnight.  We aren't sure how long it was out of service but if you had trouble using it, we apologize.  Everything should be back up now.

The pengstore is back online, sorry for any trouble.  It took more work than we expected but everything is fixed.  If you have any trouble at this point, please contact us right away.

We are having an SSL problem from the server move.  If you try to buy right now, you will get an SSL error.  Please just give it a few hours, it should be fixed soon.   Sorry about any inconvenience, please enjoy our much faster hosting to peruse the forum or wiki.

Small news bit today.  We have upgraded our hosting for pengpod.com to a dedicated server.  We are already seeing a huge difference in responsiveness, especially on the shopping cart.  So if you tried to buy at www.pengpod.com/pengstore before and left because of the lag, please come back and give it another try.

Also we had a write up in a local business journal if anyone is interested.  Unfortunately its got a pay wall so I haven't read the whole thing http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/print-edition/2013/05/17/pengpod-offers-tablet-with-a-twist.html.

http://pengpod.com/dl/android/android-pp1000-sd-8188-2013-05-13.img.tar.gz

Turns out the wifi issue is just because each Android image is specifically for its wifi chipset.  I'll convert the rest of the images over soon to those of you with 700s, dont worry, you are next.  If you have Linux and want to check which image you need just run 'lsusb' from a terminal.  8176 is a 8192CU chip set (coming soon) and 8179 is a 8188EU chip set, which the link is for.  If you try it please come comment in the forum about your experience, www.pengpod.com/forum

Enjoy

I know a lot of people have been looking for this. This image allows an SD boot to Android so Linux can be left on the internal flash without giving up the option of using Android.  This should also allow a lot more Android hacking as the image will be so easy to modify from the SD.

We have just managed to get the first boot up.  It is still a little rough, some dbus error is causing wifi not to work.  Otherwise the image seems fine but we haven't tested it completely.  I am preparing an image for upload now.  It will probably be very big as we don't yet have a framework for creating minimally sized images like we do for Linaro.  I'll post again once its online, should be either late tonight or tomorrow.

With no further ado, the opensuse image is posted here http://pengpod.com/dl/images/pengpod1000-opensuse-xfce-2013.04.25-os.img.tar.gz   .  We haven't quite worked out all the kinks.  Basically some display driver change seems to prevent the LCD from working with recent kernels so this uses one from October.  Basically we had to stop and think "why did opensuse used to work in our original demos" and sure enough an older kernel was the key.  Wifi might not work, especially if you have the 8188eu wifi chip, so a USB ethernet adapter will probably be required.  The 700 image is coming tomorrow and also there will be more updates as we work on it.

A lot of users have asked about adobe flash for web browsing.  Unfortunately given the closed source nature of flash, we don't have a lot of options to bring support to our Linux Arm platform.  However a user in the forums managed to find a solution that enables it for many sites.  Those requiring the newest flash player version might not work.  Here is the forum post http://pengpod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=539

Also some have you might have noticed a support and shipping slow down last week.  We are back on our normal schedule and will be catching up the shipping today.  I'll have an announcement about the good news later.

I have had a few request for an armel rootfs as opposed to an armhf rootfs.  I am know uploading ubuntu-armel images in the image directory http://www.pengpod.com/dl/images  .  The login is root with no password.  Right now it only boots to a prompt, a window manager will have to be installed through apt-get. 

When I get a chance, I'll try and post a set with a window manager preinstalled.

If you have been waiting to add to the wiki, now is your chance.  We have installed some account verification software.  So just make you account request and make sure to put something human like in the bio so we know to approve you.  Please let me know if you have any problems registering.

http://pengpod.com/pengwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I've added this http://pengpod.com/pengwiki/index.php?title=Porting_a_new_distro as I get a lot of email request about it.  Feedback welcome, I especially want to hear results and this is one of the things I especially like to help with if people are trying new distros.  Also I have restored the ability to post links in the forums.  It seemed to help with spam for a bit but now its making no difference so my hamper everyone.

An article about that printer control module made it onto slashdot.  So you might experience some slow down as our host is throttling our usage today, sorry about that.  If you have trouble ordering because of it please come back and try again later!

I wanted to share this cool application.  Francesco Santini was looking into the possibilities of stand-alone printing with the Solidoodle. He choose the PengPod 700, a tablet that runs a full linux distribution and turned it into a standalone interface for the SD2.  You can read more of his write up here http://www.soliforum.com/topic/1954/fullfledged-lcd-touchscreen/

And see his post in forum here http://pengpod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2505&p=4067#p4067

"So, in summary, I now have a fully-functional touchscreen pronterface installation that can drive the Solidoodle, for a total cost of 110$. No assembly, soldering, firmware modding required. Just a little bit of fiddling with Linux (if required, I can post a step-by-step guide, or prepare an ad-hoc linux image)."

This is the type of application I envisioned for the PengPods commercially, as low cost touch control systems.  Kudos to Francesco for putting it together. 
We are spreading this story around and if you want to swing by slashdot and vote it up, we appreciate it! http://slashdot.org/submission/2584201/pengpod-linux-tablet-as-the-touch-screen-controller-for-an-sd2-3d-printer

I am in the process of uploading some new images at http://pengpod.com/dl/images .  These are labeled linaro-flashcard and with you can create an SD that is 100% ready to flash Linux over an Android install on the internal flash.  They will probably fix a corrupted Linux on flash system as well, depending on the actual problem.

To use them just download, unzip and dd copy onto an SD card.  You don't need to expand the partition before booting up.  It will boot into a normal PengPod Linux desktop like a regular card but you can open a terminal and run "sudo pengflash" to start copying over the internal memory, it should report the results as it works.  I got a lot of request for this one so I wanted to get it posted before the weekend, if you have any trouble with it please let me know in the forums, enjoy!

The back orders are all caught up, except about 20 orders that required a manual import because of the product mix.  All of those should have just gotten an order created email and we will be shipping them tomorrow.  Otherwise there are a few remaining perks that need shipping paid but all the rest should be sent.

If you place an order now it should ship by the next business day and it should stay this way going forward, no more long wait times.  I want to thank everyone who had a back order or a perk for your patience and understanding. 

The other good news about this is that we can start dedicating a lot more time to development again.  So make sure to check back, we should have a lot more development news this week.

If you got a shipment voided message today dont worry. 

We setup our software for international, made a test shipment then when everything seemed fine printed lots of labels on Friday.  Right before the carrier picked them up we were warned they didn't have commercial invoices electronically filed like we thought.  So today we had to void them all and recreate them, now with paperless invoicing.  Everyone we voided should have gotten an email right away with the new shipment information and all of these orders have been given to the carrier so you should see details tonight on the UPS tracking website.