Thanks for initiating and contributing to this historical thread, good to see Nooby's comments here - seems I will be always following in his footsteps...
So I inherited a rugged tablet, a CL900 with N-Trig instead of Wacom touch functionality. 2011 is already ancient history for such products but it is My First Tablet. Unsure that I could get a Linux distro working as "well" as the native Win7, I have first persevered with doing as many tweaks as possible, updated all BIOS and hardware drivers etc etc, contemplated Tiny7 and similar cutdown modifications, even toyed with ExoPC UI and other methods to have tablet-functionality as reliable and comfortable as is (sometimes) claimed on the tin. Consulted sites like "Gizmos Freeware" for the latest and greatest in security and basic productivity etc etc. Really all I need is with basic BT/browser functionality to check emails, is to open multiple pdf files and annotate on the fly. So I threw out all Adobe, MacroShaft Office and have Xournal and FlexiPDF, PaleMoon or SlimJet on. Not having the multiple workspaces of Linux is a major, major drag for Win7 tablets, I think.
Now after over 12 hours of running one of those *essential* "antivirus" programs on a 64GB HDD that is not even half full, I am more than ready to dua-boot with any Linux distro just so I can have the true flexibility and control I am used to from Puppy.
I've got a few options, but each will take some nutting out. The BIOS limits booting to cd/dvd, floppy, hdd and usb key - maybe Plop 5 on the hdd will let me boot multiple test distros from USB and SDcard, with less risk than dual-booting on the Win NTFS drive...
OOTB tablet-friendly linux distros seem to have moved away from 32-bit already (e.g., Black Lab, others I can't recall), but of those that might work here (e.g., Zorin 12.1core, Mint 18.1 xfce, PhoenixOS, Bodhi 4.1), they all look a tad on the large side. Maybe N-trig will 'just work' in those with more recent kernels. On the Puppy side, Lighthouse 5.03G (thanks g.c. martin for the heads-up) would seem to be a good match, and I'm interested also in testing LxPupXenial 16.08.2, and LxQtPup-14.12.01. Who knows, maybe ninotix's PRER 5.5.3 (Racy) and even Lupu 5287 might be go-ers. Has anyone had experimented on similar tablet hardware they might like to post some sage advice please?
UPDATE: Happy break -"usb key" doesn't mean 'keyboard' as I supposed, so I'm able to boot natively from USB. (Learn something every day.) As I write the tablet is going through a bootup process for Lighthouse 5.0.3, the last 32-bit version Tazoc was able to complete before his debilitating illness. I actually found Smokey's (and Co.) Multipup r24
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 185#941185 and am trying that on a 2GB stick I had spare. Unfortunately I realise now that I should have included a swap partition on the USB drive, as loading to RAM is a *bit slow*. Fingers crossed...
UPDATE 2: Well when I pulled the plug on it, I saw that behind the blackout/hibernation, it had loaded up to the Xorg select and test stage. But I shrunk the drivespace to put a swap partition on and hopefully accelerate future boots. I can boot with usb keyboard and usb-puppy install on a hub! I did not know that was possible, maybe a feature in more recent Grubs that I thought wasn't available earlier.
The main issue is that dual-booting on a tablet may be complicated without BT or touchscreen ability for the level of the bootloader/GRUB. I even attempted to load Plop5 as a way of an alternative approach to load puppy or other distros from a sd-card. (Windows gave me a bluescreen of death on shutdown, so something to sort out there.) I would still need to have a usb keyboard to enable choices, however, which is cumbersome. Looking for options currently on that particular front.
UPDATE 3: Hmmm so it doesn't look like the Win7 bootloader supports touch, unlike what I see reported for Win 10 at least. And there doesn't appear to be any real interest in getting touch support going in Grub, from what I can see. So I'm clueless as to how to proceed from here - perhaps the Chuwi-type tablets with Android and Win 10 might have some clues... or maybe there's a touch-supported bootloader somewheres, or even a mini kernel (something the Win10 bootloader appears to be). Otherwise, a usb keyboard looks like being required whenever dual-booting Win7 with something - which is not a viable solution for a tablet with bluetooth capabilities, I think.
Can't get a decent display from the Lighthouse503-era Xorg. Looks like I should try Tahr and work my way backwards etc.