The Linux-based Spark tablet becomes Vivaldi

Remember the Linux-based Spark tablet we told you about in January? As it turns out, it will be getting a new name, because of unspecified trademark issues. Aaron Seigo, one of the founding members of the Plasma Active project, revealed on his blog that the slate, which is expected to start shipping in May of this year, is renamed Vivaldi.

Just to jog your memory, the now-Vivaldi is a 7-inch (800-by-480 pixels native resolution) tablet equipped with a capacitive multi-touch screen and a 1GHz single-core ARM central processing unit. Furthermore, the slate houses 512MB DDR3 RAM and 4GB for storing data, expandable by up to 32GB through the built-in SD card slot.

The main idea behind the project is reportedly to provide users with a device that features an open source and free operating system (Mer Linux) with KDE’s Active Plasma user interface on top. According to Seigo, the KDE community is also actively working on building a dedicated add-on content store that will offer apps, digital books and more.

Pre-orders for the Vivaldi, which carries a €200 (about $260) price-tag, are now closed apparently “after an overwhelming response” and thousends of registrations.

Source(s)