The Spark tablet is now available for preorder from the Make Play Live website. Registering for a preorder doesn't require a credit card and will secure a place in line to purchase the tablet when it is finally available later this year. The product is expected to ship to customers in May.

KDE developer Aaron Seigo announced the Spark last month and revealed that it will ship with a tablet-friendly user interface based on KDE's Plasma environment. Under the hood, the Spark runs the Mer platform, which is a community-driven mobile Linux environment based on the MeeGo project.

The Spark will have a 1GHz ARM CPU, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, and an 800x480 display. Seigo has confirmed that it's based on the Zenithink C71, an Android tablet produced by a Shenzhen manufacturer. The retail price of the Spark hasn't been finalized yet, the developers are aiming for €200 ($262).

The tablet sets a relatively high standard of openness. The software environment is built with open components from the KDE and Mer projects, both of which are community-driven and welcome the participation of independent developers. Users can also optionally choose to replace the operating system that is installed on the device. In a blog post about the product's openness, Seigo explained that the only parts that aren't completely open yet are some of the hardware drivers.

"Right now we're still stuck with a few binary drivers which is not a perfect situation. With time I'm confident we'll get the binary drivers out of the picture, one by one, even if it takes time, effort and some pain," he wrote. "We've already managed to get source for some drivers that were not previously available so the trajectory is right."

Seigo also documented the answers to some frequently asked questions about the Spark in another recent blog post.