https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10396-i-finally-found-a-solid-debian-tablet-the-surface-go-2 The Changelog Comments on family, technology, and society Menu Skip to content * About Search for: [ ] [Search] I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 June 22, 2022Desktop LinuxJohn Goerzen I have been looking for a good tablet for Debian for... well, years. I want thin, light, portable, excellent battery life, and a servicable keyboard. For a while, I tried a Lenovo Chromebook Duet. It meets the hardware requirements, well sort of. The problem is with performance and the OS. I can run Debian inside the ChromeOS Linux environment. That works, actually pretty well. But it is slow. Terribly, terribly, terribly slow. Emacs takes minutes to launch. apt-gets also do. It has barely enough RAM to keep its Chrome foundation happy, let alone a Linux environment also. But basically it is too slow to be servicable. Not just that, but I ran into assorted issues with having it tied to a Google account - particularly being unable to login unless I had Internet access after an update. That and my growing concern over Google's privacy practices led me sort of write it off. I have a wonderful System76 Lemur Pro that I'm very happy with. Plenty of RAM, a good compromise size between portability and screen size at 14.1'', and so forth. But a 10'' goes-anywhere it's not. I spent quite a lot of time looking at thin-and-light convertible laptops of various configurations. Many of them were quite expensive, not as small as I wanted, or had dubious Linux support. To my surprise, I wound up buying a Surface Go 2 from the Microsoft store, along with the Type Cover. They had a pretty good deal on it since the Surface Go 3 is out; the highest-processor model of the Go 2 is roughly similar to the Go 3 in terms of performance. There is an excellent linux-surface project out there that provides very good support for most Surface devices, including the Go 2 and 3. I put Debian on it. I had a fair bit of hassle with EFI, and wound up putting rEFInd on it, which mostly solved those problems. (I did keep a Windows partition, and if it comes up for some reason, the easiest way to get it back to Debian is to use the Windows settings tool to reboot into advanced mode, and then select the appropriate EFI entry to boot from there.) Researching on-screen keyboards, it seemed like Gnome had the most mature. So I wound up with Gnome (my other systems are using KDE with tiling, but I figured I'd try Gnome on it.) Almost everything worked without additional tweaking, the one exception being the cameras. The cameras on the Surfaces are a known point of trouble and I didn't bother to go to all the effort to get them working. With 8GB of RAM, I didn't put ZFS on it like I do on other systems. Performance is quite satisfactory, including for Rust development. Battery life runs about 10 hours with light use; less when running a lot of cargo builds, of course. The 1920x1280 screen is nice at 10.5''. Gnome with Wayland does a decent job of adjusting to this hi-res configuration. I took this as my only computer for a trip from the USA to Germany. It was a little small at times; though that was to be expected. It let me take a nicely small bag as a carryon, and being light, it was pleasant to carry around in airports. It served its purpose quite well. One downside is that it can't be powered by a phone charger like my Chromebook Duet can. However, I found a nice slim 65W Anker charger that could charge it and phones simultaneously that did the job well enough (I left the Microsoft charger with the proprietary connector at home). The Surface Go 2 maxes out at a 128GB SSD. That feels a bit constraining, especially since I kept Windows around. However, it also has a micro SD slot, so you can put LUKS and ext4 on that and use it as another filesystem. I popped a micro SD I had lying around into there and that felt a lot better storage-wise. I could also completely zap Windows, but that would leave no way to get firmware updates and I didn't really want to do that. Still, I don't use Windows and that could be an option also. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with it. Around $600 for a fully-functional Debian tablet, with a keyboard is pretty nice. I had been hoping for months that the Pinetab would come back into stock, because I'd much rather support a Linux hardware vendor, but for now I think the Surface Go series is the most solid option for a Linux tablet. Post navigation - Lessons of Social Media from BBSs 32 thoughts on "I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2" 1. [1a4987115] Michael Downey says: @ floss.social June 22, 2022 at 6:50 pm @jgoerzen Thanks for this; I should check it out again. IIRC there were a lot of firmware issues when I last looked a couple years back. Reply 2. [5fe25e9b7] John Goerzen says: @ floss.social June 22, 2022 at 6:51 pm @downey The only real challenge was with #EFI, and I may have brought that on myself by trying to do the whole thing with Secure Boot enabled for Grub and Debian. I eventually got rEFInd working and went "it's working, so I'm not touching Secure Boot again!"Really didn't have any other issues. I used the Debian "firmware inclusive" installer and then added the linux-surface kernel post-install but that was all pretty easy. efi Reply 3. [1a4987115] Michael Downey says: @ floss.social June 22, 2022 at 7:07 pm @jgoerzen Nice. It looks like the new-ish https://github.com/ linux-surface/surface-uefi-firmware will take care of at least some of the problems I had. Guess I have a summer project now. GitHub - linux-surface/surface-uefi-firmware: UEFI firmware updates for surface using fwupd. WIP, be careful. Reply 4. [5fe25e9b7] John Goerzen says: @ floss.social June 22, 2022 at 7:08 pm @downey Interesting! I didn't know about that. Thanks! Reply 5. [122b6fb2a] Holger says: @ functional.cafe June 23, 2022 at 1:13 am @jgoerzen Nice. Does your Surface2 offer some kind of LTE connectivity and does Debian support it, too? Reply 6. [NrEeD1Q9] HN Front Page says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 3:48 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 L: changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... C: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318734... Reply 7. [e70c76a91] Go News says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 3:49 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... #hackernews Reply 8. [G3sBtHlb] HackerNewsTop10 says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 3:51 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 Link: changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Comments: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318734... Reply 9. [G1aQvbso] Ekianjo says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 3:58 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2: changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... #linux #hardware #debian # tablet #surfacego Reply 10. [NGX0RlOw] Hacker News Bot says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 4:00 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 11. [T_9QQ8yO] Hacker News says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 4:08 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 #surface #good #linux #debian #tablet #gnome #finally #quite # windows #terribly #pretty #wound #solid changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 12. [oT6ePLdv] Marion L. says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 4:23 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 13. [WiUUojUR] Andre Should Be Writing says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 5:12 am In andregarzia.com/2022/06/about-... I defended the idea that the best tablet for running #Linux is not an #iPad but a #Surface, today on the top of #HackerNews is someone who agrees with me: changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 14. [hA0aCpEX] Hacker NewsJi Shi Ti Ri Ben Yu Fan Yi says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 5:18 am Si hatsuiniSolidDebiantaburetsutowoJian tsukemashita:Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 15. [X3P5JLJ9] M157q News RSS says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 7:46 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Article URL: changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Comments URL: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=318734... Points: 104 # Comments: 53 Reply 16. [NGX0RlOw] Hacker News Bot says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 8:00 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 17. [icon] John Goerzen says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 8:06 am (OP here) I like your framing - "A better tablet than a MacBook and a better laptop than an iPad." I went with the Go 2 because it's the right form factor for that for me. My normal usage of it is as a very small #Linux laptop and it does that well. Reply 18. [6nWNKydn] Ranga says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 8:24 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 19. [g5Wkxsis] Hapee says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 9:06 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 via @jgoerzen changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 20. [b1008bc02] Hn150 says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 9:58 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... (news.ycombinator.com/ item?id=318734...) Reply 21. [BYojPsO3] Exaday says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 10:21 am I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 22. [ZjKp0RQ4] Douglas Solomon says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 12:56 pm changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 23. [newsycbot] Hacker News 200 says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 1:49 pm I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... (news.ycombinator.com/ item?id=318734...) Reply 24. [se4Q2jlX] MezZ Tech says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 2:52 pm I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2 | The Changelog changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 25. [wejX8Mk7] else{} says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 4:13 pm Could it be? Does Microsoft make the best Linux tablet? changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply 26. [KCtj3c7i] KT Yi Hao Ji Wa Jian Jia Gu Xing says: @ twitter.com June 25, 2022 at 4:57 pm changelog.complete.org/archives/10396... Reply Likes * [122b6fb2]Holger * [78e17b6d]astralstreeting@438punk.house * [1a498711]Michael Downey * [249440b8]argumento * [685f7f94]quoll Reposts * [1a498711]Michael Downey Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [ ] Notify me of follow-up comments by email. [ ] Notify me of new posts by email. [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. 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