[HN Gopher] I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
___________________________________________________________________
I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
Author : edward
Score : 225 points
Date : 2022-06-25 08:13 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (changelog.complete.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (changelog.complete.org)
| j_walter wrote:
| I have used a SG and SG3 for Kubuntu and have loved it. Add the
| "Onboard" on screen keyboard and it's a great tablet.
| floatboth wrote:
| Put UEFI on the chromebook!! Argh don't write it off, chromebooks
| are the best x86 platform by far. MrChromebox provides pre-made
| coreboot+edk2 builds for a ton of chromebooks, but you can make
| your own too.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| The Lenovo Chromebook Duet uses ARM, not x86, so I don't think
| MrChromebox supports it. I'm unclear on whether ARM Chromebooks
| even _can_ support coreboot and /or edk2; do you happen to know
| if that's possible?
| floatboth wrote:
| arm chromebooks usually run coreboot too; the utility of edk2
| there would be questionable, as on none of them ACPI tables
| can cover all the HW, so u-boot would be good enough.
| leni536 wrote:
| Last I checked, you can't do that on more recent models, can
| you?
| floatboth wrote:
| You can, why would that be the case?
|
| MrChromebox currently publishes only RW_LEGACY firmware (not
| full ROM, only replacing the stock SeaBIOS) for AMD
| Picasso/Dali and Intel Tiger Lake devices, but a) that's
| enough to boot whatever you want and b) you can build your
| own full ROM.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Or better, the Surface Pro X (when this is done):
| https://github.com/Sonicadvance1/linux/issues/27
| inawarminister wrote:
| Huh, I might go get a surface go* 1 (with 8gb of ram) as my Linux
| tablet. Trying to find out which android tablet I can install
| PostMarketOS on is a bit too difficult.
|
| Any issues with the first generation?
|
| Edit: sorry, my bad, I meant surface Go 1, not surface pro 1,
| which is too old I think.
| lucas_codes wrote:
| Do your research, the surfaces tend to have a lot of hardware
| issues. There are many threads on the support forum about
| people losing functionality like touch after updates. I have
| the surface pro 3 and lucky haven't had major issues, but it
| has series battery drain while powered off.
| smallerfish wrote:
| I have a surface go 1 running (currently) PopOS, but have been on
| Kubuntu also. It's a great travel computer, combined with a USB-C
| dock, mini keyboard, bluetooth headphones and a wireless
| trackball. I use it to run chrome, zoom, bitwig, and the
| terminal; I don't think I've ever attempted intellij on it, but
| it would probably be ok (that said the screen size is too small
| for me to really want to code on it).
|
| Things have steadily gotten better in terms of support via linux-
| surface, but it's definitely on the wild-west edge of the linux
| universe; current issues:
|
| 1) The wifi driver isn't in the mainline kernel yet for whatever
| reason. After doing a dist upgrade you have to copy the driver
| into two locations. This is documented on linux-surface's site; I
| wrote a script to do it, and it's not that bad.
|
| 2) Camera doesn't work. Gives me a good excuse to do off-camera
| zooms while travelling. :)
|
| 3) PopOS specific issue: cannot run their system updater with the
| linux-surface PPA active. This is really annoying, and probably
| enough reason for me to just switch back to Kubuntu on it. (Also,
| I don't like Gnome's insistence on switching to lodpi mode,
| despite my having set up fractional scaling).
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _1) The wifi driver isn 't in the mainline kernel yet for
| whatever reason. After doing a dist upgrade you have to copy
| the driver into two locations. This is documented on linux-
| surface's site; I wrote a script to do it, and it's not that
| bad._
|
| That's a very Debian issue. It's the only distro where I've
| ever had to do silly things like that.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| I've got a vintage Surface One. 32-bit, WinRT. I'd love to just
| even run a cross compiled golang binary on it. If I recall
| correctly, even Dropbox wouldn't install. But I've never been
| tempted to boot linux into it, just because its such an
| esoteric device, even though the nvidia popos image works. The
| Adobe paint program is rather elegant. And perhaps the device
| can run MAME ;)
| dboreham wrote:
| Depending on your needs it may be easier to use WSL2 under
| Windows vs native Linux since you get full device support. Fwiw I
| used Surface Go <n> in this mode for years as my "light travel
| coding" platform but have recently upgraded to the arm-based
| Surface Pro X. Much (much) faster than the Goen, 16G ram and 1Tb
| SSD available. Also a full sized keyboard - the most annoying
| thing I found about the Go is not being able to type quickly. The
| Pro X is physically larger but not much heavier. Since my bags
| are all large enough for it, the practical payload difference
| when traveling is minimal.
| ttarr wrote:
| I think WSL is overrated.
|
| I haven't used Windows for years but it was forced upon me by
| my new employer.
|
| Overall I'm not impressed, at least when compared to a full
| native Gnome experience.
|
| Not sure how people are managing, any filesystem operation (on
| C: for e.g.) takes forever, also GUI apps feel sluggish and
| heat the laptop.
| distances wrote:
| I entered a project with the understanding that the client's
| systems work with Linux, but that wasn't the case. WSL saved
| me there -- for me it's much much better than developing on
| pure Windows. Still at the bottom of my choices though (Linux
| > Mac > Win WSL > Win).
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| WSL sits above Mac for me, if only because you get a _real_
| distro with a good package manager. Even when losing some
| FS performance.
| roydivision wrote:
| Agree, honestly I don't see the point of WSL, it is far less
| hassle to either Remote Desktop into a real Linux machine, or
| run a VM.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Agree, honestly I don't see the point of WSL, it is far
| less hassle to either Remote Desktop into a real Linux
| machine, or run a VM.
|
| Windows is way more configurable than Linux. To this day,
| there's nothing like AHK on Linux! Also, Windows offers the
| best terminal experience.
|
| I've tried foot on Wayland, it's ok, but I want better than
| ok. I've spend too much time trying to squeeze a good
| experience out of xterm
| (https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Surely you need AHK because Windows is less configurable?
| I want basic window management that's been in KDE for
| decades, but corporate IT won't let me have AutoHotKey.
| It's so frustrating having to move windows around all the
| time rather than them just going where they should. No
| focus options, no pin-on-top (except in OneNote) ... it's
| really a massive climb down from Kde/Plasma.
|
| How are you using terminals in Windows? Like you want to
| SSH from a fresh install, what do I do? (I find Linux
| superior here, but interested to learn why you're the
| opposite; maybe I'm doing it wrong)
| leni536 wrote:
| I also prefer Linux, but Windows ships ssh nowadays. Even
| ssh server, but arguably that's way less useful than an
| ssh server on any other OS.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Surely you need AHK because Windows is less
| configurable
|
| No, but because it lets me do remaps, like having Caps be
| both Control and Esc - and I do the same with Enter being
| both Control when used with another key, and Enter alone.
| My Alt keys are Alt keys when used with another key, or
| Home/End when used alone.
|
| My physical Esc key is a "jump to terminal" key that
| takes me from wherever to my fullscreen terminal, then
| back. For example, from the browser: one press of Esc
| gets me to the terminal, another press gets me back to
| the browser - and likewise for every app (not just the
| browser). That's even better than quake-mode!
|
| I have other sequences to copy/paste images as base64enc
| and other crazy things that make my life easier: like
| changing the system and app theme to dark (or back to
| light), applying a color inversion +- red filter (late at
| night, no white: it's all just red), an OLED-black filter
| (to convert bad greys to pure black)
|
| > How are you using terminals in Windows? Like you want
| to SSH from a fresh install, what do I do?
|
| Install openssh from the windows settings: check
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-
| server/administrati...
|
| I'd recommend the latest Windows terminal from the
| Microsoft store, or mintty from msys2, but that's just
| for comfort :)
|
| > I find Linux superior here, but interested to learn why
| you're the opposite; maybe I'm doing it wrong
|
| I like sixels, so I prefer mintty, but even without
| sixels, I find the Windows experience better. Yes, I want
| sixels and cute fonts with ligatures in my terminal. But
| I want proper support of bold, underline, italic. I want
| multiple tabs. I want to map key actions to everything -
| like, I want my terminal to change its color profile and
| font with just 1 key. I want keyboard shortcuts to
| different profiles with different shells or ssh hosts
| (with color or other titlebar/tab indicators to know at a
| glance which is which)
|
| That's very hard on Linux, and sometimes just impossible.
| That's easy on Windows.
|
| https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm#why-did-you-make-
| cutexte...
| dboreham wrote:
| WSL2 _is_ a VM, just nicely packaged by MS and well
| integrated into the Windows experience. Less faffing around
| than with VirtualBox or Hyper-v, integrated with Windows
| terminal, GUI works out the box if you need it, etc.
| hnra wrote:
| Did you use the WSL graphics support in Windows 11? If so
| then that is pretty disappointing that it performs poorly.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I am using WSL2 right now and it is not better than 'glass
| of cold water for someone stuck in hell'. It is better than
| running Virtualbox, but doesn't hold a candle to real
| thing.
| dboreham wrote:
| Don't use the host FS for your work files. Use the Linux FS.
| highwaylights wrote:
| It doesn't sound solid reading the author's post.
|
| - EFI didn't work.
|
| - The camera doesn't work.
|
| - The SSD is too small so needed to be topped up with a MicroSD
| (awful).
|
| - Not lap-friendly for travelling (type cover).
|
| - Windows 11 needed to be kept around despite not being used (and
| sometimes rewrote the boot menu, if I'm reading this correctly).
|
| This sounds like a downright painful experience. I'm not sure why
| you'd want this, and it sounds like the author might be trying to
| force a tablet to be a laptop when they'd have just been better
| of with a laptop to begin with.
| linmob wrote:
| You can have a similarly bad experience with Linux on a laptop;
| all these issues (except for virtual keyboard related ones)
| also occur there:
|
| - EFI is a bit difficult with distributions when Secure Boot is
| enabled. Ubuntu and Fedora support it, if you choose a
| different distribution you may have to tinker, as evidenced in
| the post;
|
| - camera: Well, Microsoft was doing fancy stuff here; and most
| distributions just don't support anything but UVC
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class) style
| webcams. It's a pain point now, but may not be in a year or
| two. Also, depending on the lifestyle and the devices one uses,
| a non working camera may not be an issue at all;
|
| - SSD: Yes, this may be painful, but... for me personal it
| works well enough. Networking does wonders ;-)
|
| - Lap friendliness... I have had a Surface Pro 3 years ago, and
| with that device I would agree. With the Surface Go 2 it's way
| less of an issue. The device is just so much lighter. Works on
| the subway for me without fear or trouble so far.
|
| Now on the "Why would anyone want this experience" point: I
| just love desktop Linux, and it's nice to have some full
| desktop Firefox or apps like rNote [1] on a small, portable
| device. It's nice to run the OS you know, be able to replicate
| the same experience on a small form factor device so that you
| can have it, when you need it, while also being able to use it
| as tablet - more and more touch friendly apps are available.[2]
| With GNOME Shell adapting to mobile [3], this experience is
| only going to get better.
|
| [1]: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.flxzt.rnote
|
| [2]: https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/
|
| [3]: https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/05/30/towards-
| gnome-s...
| benlivengood wrote:
| Have you noticed a big problem with ZFS on 8GB of RAM? I've
| successfully ran fairly large (2TB, thousands of snapshots)
| zpools out of 4GB of RAM, with dedup off of course.
| linmob wrote:
| I don't use ZFS, so I can't comment. Maybe the blogs author
| just wants to use that RAM for the web browser :-)
| mkesper wrote:
| Debian supports UEFI with secure boot too so this must be
| some specific quirk.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Agreed, this is why I find Chromebook, with its great Linux
| container support, so nice. I know the author mentioned he
| tried this on a Lenovo Chromebook and said it was dog slow. I
| have it running on my Pixelbook and with maxed out RAM it
| worked well.
|
| Soooooo sad there hasn't been much news on a new Pixelbook, was
| such a great device.
| jshen wrote:
| Can you properly install a browser other than chrome on a
| chromebook these days?
| 0des wrote:
| you can install firefox on linux and run it as an app in
| chromeos but the performance isn't great on pixelbook i7. I
| ran into a lot of issues with regard to networking between
| the chromeos layer and the linux layer, its like they're
| nat'd or something rather than bridged, so good luck
| running a test environment for some things without extra
| steps.
| 31835843 wrote:
| This is my experience with every "Linux works on..." post. It's
| always caveated down to an unreasonable definition of working.
| sph wrote:
| It's not the first time I read a review from somebody, "it's
| great!", they say, and immediately after they start listing all
| the things that are not in fact great.
|
| Reminds me of that meme that shows Brits using "it could be
| worse" to mean anything less than average, and "not too bad"
| for everything else, while Americans say "awesome!" for any
| kind of sentiment, good or bad.
|
| I'm not saying OP is American, just that adjectives in reviews
| have lost most of their meaning.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| I suspect it's a linux "enthusiast" thing, rather than an
| american thing.
|
| Virtually every thread about linux on laptop starts out with
| someone claiming that it runs perfect on this or that
| hardware, then 20 other people chime in with all the things
| that actually don't work on the same same machine, and
| finally the original poster concedes with some weasel
| statement along the lines of "well it works for me". And the
| year-of-linux-on-x circle of life continues...
| goosedragons wrote:
| OEMs sometimes will do things like use different Wifi
| modules (among other things) on the same exact model and it
| can be somewhat luck of the draw as to what works well with
| Linux.
|
| Distro choice also has a big impact. Like I tried Guix on
| my P14s and haven't been able to get Wifi working even with
| the latest non-libre kernel among other issues. Literally
| EVERYTHING works perfectly on Ubuntu 22.04 despite in
| theory non-libre Guix having a newer kernel so something
| must be going on there.
| retcon wrote:
| Your WiFi module in any ThinkPad should be a M2 card and
| there's a wide selection of alternatives for about thirty
| bucks.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Not disagreeing with you per we, but I will note that the
| author may be judging the tablet as compared to other mobile
| devices running Linux. With the exception of the PinePhone and
| a few other devices Linux on mobile devices is truly
| painful/broken in most cases (and in ways that make this tablet
| look almost fully featured...).
| fomine3 wrote:
| I wonder what tablet is used by GNOME developers.
| Agamus wrote:
| Untrue. I'm no expert, but I have never had a problem setting
| up LineageOS on a Samsung - works like a charm, and I love
| it.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Lineage is not Linux in the sense that Debian is. They
| share the kernel and that's it.
| solardev wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but isn't Android
| already Linux? What's the advantage of installing another
| distro?
|
| I thought the whole point of Android is to make a curated
| touch friendly Linux experience. If you want a more
| traditional distro, wouldn't a touchscreen laptop (yoga etc.)
| be a better choice, if only for x86 support?
| linmob wrote:
| Android is running a Linux kernel, yes. But, as an
| enthusiast GNU+Linux desktop user you'll find that you
| can't do your linuxy stuff on Android - sure, termux does a
| lot, but it's just not the same.
|
| The Surface Go 2 that the article is about, is an x86_64
| device - I recently aquired one and it's really quite nice
| with Linux in my limited testing. The biggest difficulty
| with a standard desktop GNU+Linux on a tablet is that most
| distributions are not optimized for easy tablet use - KDE
| Neon User Edition e.g. does not come with a virtual
| keyboard preinstalled.
|
| On Yoga style laptops: Well, they are easier to get started
| with, but they often are quite a big bigger and having
| those keys on the back all the time... It's doable, but if
| you want a "nice 10" tablet" experience these devices are
| just not what you will want: Too large, too thick, too
| heavy.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > The biggest difficulty with a standard desktop
| GNU+Linux on a tablet is that most distributions are not
| optimized for easy tablet use - KDE Neon User Edition
| e.g. does not come with a virtual keyboard preinstalled.
|
| Ubuntu 22 on a Lenovo X1 Fold gave me the OSK without
| installing anything - though the touchscreen was not
| supported by default, the driver is under work cf
| https://github.com/quo/ithc-linux
| linmob wrote:
| Some distros do, and GNOME has been good to me too on
| many distributions with delivering a working virtual
| keyboard OOTB. KDE Neon, however, which I wanted to try
| after reading that KDE Plasma 5.25 has better tablet
| support, comes without a virtual keyboard (and AFAIK does
| not come with an easy option to install one, you need to
| know that it you have to install maliit-keyboard).
| midislack wrote:
| Android is a proprietary OS filled with spyware. Linux
| kernel is irrelevant.
| solardev wrote:
| Is that true even if you compile AOSP from source? (not
| being sarcastic here, just never looked into this)
| idle_zealot wrote:
| You lose the spyware if you use AOSP (except any that's
| baked into your OEM's kernel blobs), but you also lose a
| _lot_ of functionality. You can regain some by using a
| community-maintained AOSP-based OS like Lineage, but
| chances are that a bunch of device-specific hardware
| /software features will still be missing.
| chopin wrote:
| I am writing this from a Fairphone 4 with e/OS installed
| (AOSP based) and don't miss anything so far.
| chopin wrote:
| To add: my wife has a Samsung and can't add a shortcut
| for locking the phone on the lock screen (needed to
| enforce PIN) which the Fairphone enables.
| solardev wrote:
| I see, thank you for the explanation!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, Android is Linux. That means that you can just install
| the GNU OS with the kernel that comes with the device, and
| get a GNU/Linux installation running on top of it.
|
| But by doing that you get to maintain all the malware that
| comes builtin on the mobile OSes.
|
| The OP wants to replace the kernel. But most mobile devices
| use very specific hardware that do not have drivers
| compatible with the standard kernel you get from your
| distro. Technically, the manufacturer should have to supply
| you the source of the drivers they use (so you could port
| them), but good luck enforcing any right of yours against a
| large company on the legal system (any country's one
| actually).
| mrbuttons454 wrote:
| It's pretty broken on the Pinephone too
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Not true. Linux on BayTrail hardware is pretty much rock-
| solid by now (at least if you're running Fedora-derived
| distros). The thing is it can take many years to get to that
| level of support. It's absolutely normal for newly released
| hardware to be broken in many ways.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| rob_c wrote:
| Yeah, have to agree, wish they actually made half of that it
| work because it can, as they say it requires _effort_ to setup
| properly,...
|
| Tbh the surface pro 3 and sp4 were about at the same level of
| fiddlyness, but the battery life was just up there with a
| normal laptop, definately not ipad territory.
| dwighttk wrote:
| As a person who has tried setting up Linux like 5-10 times over
| the years this sounds exactly like my experience and basically
| what I assume Linux use is always like.
|
| It's just like cars, there are people who are super comfortable
| just tinkering around with cars and fixing crap and say "this
| car is great" and if I tried to drive it it'd break down 5
| minutes in and I would consider it a total loss.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Most Dell equipment supports Linux well, out of the box.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I've been using Linux professionally for a decade, on many
| machines (desktop/laptop), and the compatibility is really
| hardware-dependent. It's "for tinkerers" on some hardware,
| and "fully mainstream" on other.
|
| Choosing a Microsoft laptop to use Linux is asking for
| trouble :) I had two of them, and Microsoft had this awful
| idea of the connected standby, which caused standby/suspend
| problems (power-hungry standby, which is a very serious
| problem on a laptop). At least the older machines should now
| have a good upstream support, in other words, everything
| working out of the box, with the exception of touch (Linux is
| just not there).
|
| Regarding other brands, it depends. I remember IBM/Lenovo
| (Thinkpads) as always just working out of the box. Dell used
| to be also very compatible, but paradoxically, the Dell XPS
| developer edition is marketing garbage (it's not very
| compatible as they claim).
|
| I've installed Linux on a couple of budget computers and they
| worked fine. I suspect that low-end laptops tend to be much
| more compatible, since they use more common/cheap components.
|
| Bluetooth has started to be compatible just in the last
| couple of years - bluez is poor software (and Ubuntu has been
| sloppy in handling it), but it finally reached a usable
| level.
|
| I don't remember having to do any tweak on desktop machine,
| except the time where I had a very modern Ryzen that was
| supported by very recent kernels only.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Choosing a Microsoft laptop to use Linux is asking for
| trouble :)
|
| Not true anymore.
|
| > I had two of them, and Microsoft had this awful idea of
| the connected standby, which caused standby/suspend
| problems (power-hungry standby, which is a very serious
| problem on a laptop).
|
| When? Which models?
|
| ACPI S01x when well done works better than ACPI S3, and
| Linux support for S01x is now getting quite good.
|
| On a X1 nano, I've got less than 0.2%/h of power draw: so
| 10h of sleep consumes about 2% battery
|
| On the X1 Fold, I was able to reduce that to about 0.5%/h
| after some workaround for Intel drivers bugs: cf
| https://csdvrx.github.io/ or just the graph https://csdvrx.
| github.io/X1_Fold_(20RL_20RK)_Optimization/pa...
|
| It's still a work in progress, but I can't remember ACPI S3
| consuming less that 5% overnight and resuming instantly.
|
| > I don't remember having to do any tweak on desktop
| machine, except the time where I had a very modern Ryzen
| that was supported by very recent kernels only.
|
| Laptops often need more tweaks than desktops.
| kreetx wrote:
| AFAIK Macbooks are slso mostly supported, albeit with a lag
| (e.g ATM graphics supporton M1's GPU is not ready yet).
|
| Also had to tweak kernel with a recent Ryzen GPU a few
| years ago on a desktop, but after that it worked. (Now the
| tweak isn't required anymore.)
| cmatthias wrote:
| I just went through trying to install Linux on my 2015
| 15" retina MacBook Pro (model 11,5 with Radeon dGPU) and
| it was not usable. Every distro I tried (Ubuntu, Pop OS,
| Fedora, and NixOS) had severe Bluetooth instability (most
| times the computer booted, Bluetooth worked for about 15
| seconds after boot and then it would die completely until
| the next reboot). Graphics switching seems non functional
| on this model as well.
|
| I'm looking for an alternative when Apple stops
| supporting Mac OS on this machine, and I was surprised at
| how flakey the hardware was in Linux on a 7 year old
| machine.
| EnKopVand wrote:
| Have you ever had anything that resembled the experience or
| a MacBook Air with a M1?
|
| I have a windows running Lenovo t14 for work, and it's a
| decent enough laptop but it's sort of like the stone ages
| compared to my personal MacBook. It has a terrible
| mousepad, it's bulky, it runs out of battery after a two
| hours even though its factory new (developer specs in non-
| tech enterprise), the screen isn't very nice and it's
| actually more expensive.
|
| I ask because I kind of want to get out of the closed
| ecosystem. Not so much because I dislike Apple but because
| I figure that with the way things are going for big
| American tech companies I'll likely dislike them sooner or
| later. But I've never found a Linux (or windows) laptop
| that came close to the daily usage of a MacBook Air.
| Obviously I'm not in need of a powerhouse or a computer,
| weight, battery life and a good mousepad is my primary
| requirements, but yeah.
| Dudemeister_ wrote:
| Have you tried an LG Gram? I got myself one, it is one of
| the closest laptops to a macbook air M1:
|
| - extremely light (my 14 inch is a little under 1kg),
| you'll absolutely feel the difference when holding it vs
| holding a macbook air M1, and it is very significant.
|
| - great screen
|
| - amazing keyboard
|
| - the fan is very quiet, but the laptop can get a bit
| warm under load
|
| - the touchpad is lacking on windows but is amazing on
| linux (I mainly use ubuntu / pop os)
|
| - expect 9-10 hours battery life in most use cases, it
| sometimes goes as high as 14h+ if you're simply surfing
| the web/reading or as low as 6 hours on heavy use
|
| When installing a linux distro, in some rare cases you
| might need to tweak a few bios option just to start the
| installation, but everything after that works out of the
| box.
| phren0logy wrote:
| That battery life is impressive! Thunderbolt 4 and a
| better selection of ports than the MacBook Air M1, also.
|
| But, as great as the screen is, looks like it falls short
| of the 12" MacBook screen. Same 8GB of RAM in the base
| model as the M1, but memory bandwidth not the same. And
| the processor isn't going to keep up.
|
| I mean, it's nice, but I picked the base model M1 Air
| about a year ago for $750 - still seems like the laptop
| to beat, if you can live with MacOS.
| eropple wrote:
| I quite like my work M1 Pro, but (to help coworkers with
| Mac problems while I was using a ThinkPad) I had an M1
| Air 8GB from work for a while and I honestly found it
| really pretty bad because of the RAM limits. It seems
| like there's a floor against which MacOS bumps pretty
| hard if you want to use the machine for development-ish
| stuff and it reacts _really_ poorly to memory starvation
| if you get ahead of yourself.
|
| Having 16GB and up, though, an M1's fantastic. If I _had_
| to be resource constrained, though, I think I 'd prefer
| something that handled Linux well.
| phren0logy wrote:
| Agreed, 8 GB is just not enough even for basic needs in
| the era of remote work and electron apps. I don't know
| why they are continuing that as the base in this year's
| MacBook Air M2, because it is just a worse user
| experience. These are already premium computers, even at
| the base models. I wish Apple would be a little bit more
| forward thinking about keeping users happy rather than
| saving a few pennies in the short term.
| EnKopVand wrote:
| I'll certainly look into them.
| steeleduncan wrote:
| If you have an old MacBook lying unused, then Ubuntu
| tends to run out of the box on them. It is a lot lighter,
| so even though my 2014 MacBook Air is unusably sluggish
| with macOS, it runs Ubuntu 22.04 great.
| philistine wrote:
| Make sure you don't forget display nits. So many laptops
| not made by Apple are so dim that you don't want to use
| them. Apple is at 500 nits with the newest Air with an M2
| chip. That's positively bright!
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| This does not exist. System76 and some others do a good
| job at trying, but despite many efforts over the last 20
| years, this just isn't possible.
|
| Consider that even the best Windows laptops are worse
| than MacBooks (and I would say this was true before the
| M1 but is inarguable now), despite the billions of
| dollars of investment from Intel, AMD, Dell, Microsoft,
| etc. I think the Surface line has historically had the
| closest experience for Windows, thanks to Microsoft's
| investments, but battery life and heat have been an issue
| on all x86 laptops for at least 5-7 years, with very
| recent improvements only coming from AMD and now on the
| 12th-Gen Intel processors. But nothing exists that
| matches the battery life and power/performance of the
| M-series. You can get a more powerful machine, but not
| one that will have battery life worth a damn.
|
| And even as trackpads have improved with the Precision
| Touchpad drivers, Macs are just better here. Period.
|
| If you don't count Chromebooks (and I really don't),
| there is no one investing anything close to what
| Microsoft and OEMs are in Linux, not just in software,
| but hardware, so even the best scenarios are going to
| fall short. It doesn't help that the latest and greatest
| hardware takes to hit the kernel (understandable, of
| course), meaning you've got a lagging timeline from when
| the stuff is new/hot and when it works.
|
| My Framework is quite good and with Linux, but it took a
| few months for drivers to be included in most distros
| (Fedora being so bleeding edge made it a real hero), and
| now 12th-gens are coming out and I don't know the status
| of those chipsets (though WiFi 6E and the like are
| supported), and Framework cares about Linux and that
| community.
|
| System 76 and Tuxedo basically just buy Chinese or
| Taiwanese laptops from Clevo or Tongfang and can make
| some adjustments to the firmware and hardware config, but
| they don't control the whole stack. And even Purism, who
| sells itself as offering an Apple-like experience, falls
| embarrassingly short (like, their own firmware updates
| are bricking $2000 laptops running 2019/2020 specs. And
| the keyboards are terrible and their own Debian spin
| distro is not great).
|
| So it's amazing we have what we have. That we can buy
| pre-configured Linux laptops. But unless you want to do a
| Chromebook and tweak into run Linux apps, nothing has the
| experience you have on Windows, let alone Mac.
|
| Someone will try to refute what I've said, but unless the
| hardware is very specific and the distro is very
| specific, you don't get anything close. And it absolutely
| won't have the power or niceties of a Mac. It just won't.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| System76 has started designing their own machines.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| They haven't designed their laptops yet.
| trelane wrote:
| I have had excellent experiences with System76. They
| fully support Linux, and work hard to make sure the
| hardware works with Linux. Also, their support is very
| responsive, though limited to business hours.
|
| Putting Linux on Windows hardware is a mug's game.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I'm personally expecting Apple Silicon machines to become
| really good Linux devices within the next year. A killer
| team is working on it, and they can benefit from the game
| console effect--ie, Apple sells a limited number of
| models in large quantities.
| hanklazard wrote:
| Same. I follow a number of team members on twitter and
| can't wait for it to be a bit more complete. I'll buy an
| M1 or M2 at that point for sure.
| EnKopVand wrote:
| That would be the best option. My last MacBook lived for
| 7 years, ideally this one will do the same.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Which makes sense. If manufacturers designed laptops
| exclusively for Linux--only writing Linux drivers and
| rarely even testing Windows during product development--how
| well do we think Windows would run?
|
| Hardware designed to run one operating system isn't
| necessarily going to perform well with a different
| operating system, and expecting otherwise of every
| arbitrary machine on store shelves is unrealistic.
| Prospective buyers need to do research beforehand.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can see with the Steam Deck. Valve is slowly
| releasing drivers over time but in early stages Windows
| was inefficient, sound didn't work or didn't work well,
| sleep wasn't snappy, the list goes on.
|
| It had all the problems your average Linux install will
| encounter without the enthusiast-written drivers to work
| around manufacturers' lack of support.
|
| That said, the Steam Deck seems to be the first non-
| enthusiast device where the manufacturer actually cares.
| Even laptops that get sold with Ubuntu preinstalled from
| the factory don't seem to receive that much support over
| the years.
| eropple wrote:
| I'd say pretty confidently that Lenovo has done quite a
| bit of caring over the years. I've had a bunch of
| T-series ThinkPads that have been super good under Linux.
| MediocreSysEgnr wrote:
| This might have more to do with the glut of off-lease
| corporate ThinkPads being available at very competitive
| pricing for FOSS developers to pick up rather than any
| indication of Lenovo's commitment to FOSS.
| hdlothia wrote:
| The dell XPS developer edition that comes with linux pre
| installed has worked great for me. What are your
| complaints?
| pizza234 wrote:
| These are two acknowledged issues on Ubuntu (which is
| supposed to be fully supported):
|
| 1. sleep draining batteries: https://bugs.launchpad.net/u
| buntu/+source/linux/+bug/1808957
|
| 2. keyboard lights turning on even when disabled:
| https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/keyboard-light-keeps-
| turning...
|
| The second is just annoying; the first is serious (for a
| laptop).
| bharrisonit wrote:
| I've run debian on a non-dev xps 13 for years trouble-
| free.
|
| My biggest gripe is docking station compatibility with
| the Dell TB16 which, to be fair, is largely own fault.
| Suspending the laptop while connected to three ext
| displays and input devices, then spinning it back up
| before re-connection produces some gnarly results.
| bittercynic wrote:
| Arch linux on non-dev xps 13 here. Install went smoothly
| and it's been working very well for the past few years.
| Admittedly, the trackpad is not as awesome as Apple's,
| but it's adequate by my standards.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > As a person who has tried setting up Linux like 5-10 times
| over the years this sounds exactly like my experience and
| basically what I assume Linux use is always like.
|
| It's not my experience at all. When I buy a computer to run
| Linux I normally get one with Linux preinstalled (normally
| the latest LTS Ubuntu). Then if I ever need to upgrade to a
| more recent version of Ubuntu it generally goes smoothly.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The Intel monoculture in laptops has been a boon for linux
| compatibility. A random mid-range laptop with the an Intel
| CPU, Intel WiFi chipset, and integrated graphics will usually
| run linux straight out of the box. Most webcams in laptops
| are UVC devices so also work.
|
| Desktops are somewhat more hit-and-miss, as are discrete GPUs
| (I hear the newer AMD GPU drivers are much improved, but have
| no personal experience with them).
| hanklazard wrote:
| Pop!_OS is a piece of cake to install and has been my daily
| driver on a Lenovo CX1 for the past 3-4 years. (I'm assuming
| your comment is referring to Linux in general, not on a
| tablet). And I'm not a former CS major or anything. I'm on
| the verge of recommending it to my dad who only has
| experience with windows machines.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Lenovo hardware is known for being Linux compatible.
| Microsoft hardware is not. Let us know how it went when you
| try to install popos on a Microsoft Surface 2.
| vanviegen wrote:
| I teach a university course for which we require students to
| install Linux on their Windows laptops, all of them
| different. These are overwhemingly inexperienced students
| that we give a short manual, mostly about tweaking a few bios
| settings before you insert the installation medium.
|
| Of the 35 students in my class, 25 completed the installation
| without issue, with all hardware (never asked about
| fingerprint scanners) running fine. The rest required some
| help from expert googlers like me and some patience, in most
| cases related to Nvidia drivers. We got all but two to work
| fine or well enough in the end.
|
| Having 5 to 10 consecutive bad experiences sounds like a
| fluke to me, given the 70% instant success rate I've seen.
| [deleted]
| dwighttk wrote:
| To be fair every time I've tried it has been on a cheap or
| free computer and I haven't needed to get it running... I'd
| probably have gotten better results of it was my only
| option or if I went out and tried to plan my computer
| purchase to make Linux work. And this is extending back
| like 20 years, so it has, I'm sure, gotten better somewhat.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I teach a university course for which we require students
| to install Linux on their Windows laptops
|
| Can't they use a normal cloud instance or a VM?
| vanviegen wrote:
| Our first year consists of a pretty intense dive into
| programming, with many assignments for which we provide
| starter material. And for that we want all students to
| run a predictable environment. Also, dual booting helps
| some students to cleanly separate course work from
| gaming. :-)
|
| A few students (those whose laptops we could not convince
| to run Linux) work within a VM, but that experience is
| comparatively miserable.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You should try some cloud development environments -
| could give people a completely predictable environment.
| midislack wrote:
| This, Microsoft needs to identify this institution for
| eradication.
| nicbou wrote:
| It's not just about getting it to run. The devil is in the
| details: sleep mode, bluetooth, power usage, etc etc.
| Usually, the first 90% went great, and the last 10% took
| whole weekends to fix.
| highwaylights wrote:
| I don't think it's a Linux problem. It's a trying to run
| Linux on arbitrary hardware problem.
|
| On one hand that's kind of the whole point of open-source.
| Because it _can_ be extended to support almost anything it
| usually _is_ extended over time by someone else that has
| already had the same problems you do getting a thing to work.
| That's not the same as just assuming everything already works
| without checking though.
|
| There are some very suitable laptops that would have had
| support out of the box.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Oh yeah definitely. I bet the experience would be at least
| a little better if I had ever wanted to switch to Linux and
| spent money on the effort.
|
| But I bought the (perhaps unspoken?) promise that it would
| be an easy test drive to find a crappy old laptop and throw
| Ubuntu on it... and those test drives ended up with me not
| wanting to switch to Linux.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I agree with you, but also think for a linux experience on a
| device that wasn't meant for it, it's par for the course. Of
| the above, the only critical flaw would be the camera not
| working, the rest is manageable.
|
| It's been a while, but updating a DELL laptop ended up with
| flacky sound that wouldn't work for video calls, and the video
| card drivers sometimes crapping the bed and bringing the system
| down with it.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Sometimes these issues can be fixed by adjusting process
| priorities. Try giving Pulseaudio a higher priority.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Giving pulseaudio a higher priority to avoid it bringing
| the system down... ?
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| I agree, the hurdle is too high for most still, but I'm
| expecting a System76 tablet or Framework Tablet.
|
| It's only a matter of time till one of the linux-first
| companies does it, and it's been a 30 year wait already, what's
| 1/2/3 more.
|
| Well actually I guess there's PineTab[0] but something with
| better specs is bound to come around
|
| [0]: https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Well actually I guess there's PineTab[0] but something with
| better specs is bound to come around
|
| I monitor their news section almost daily to follow the
| development of their devices, especially the PineNote and
| PineTab. I've almost given up about the PinePhone however
| because of my reading difficulties with smallish screens;
| Having no needs for a smartphone, I've found that a 4G
| capable dumbphone working as hotspot plus this Thinkpad are
| the perfect pair.
| fortran77 wrote:
| This is what Linux true believers put up with, no matter what
| laptop or tablet platform.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Cool that they are happy with their setup. The author tried the
| Lenovo Duet Chromebook, which I also have. I agree that the
| resources on the Duet are light weight for running Linux
| containers, but I find it very useful nonetheless. To be honest,
| when I travel with the Duet, I usually SSH into a remote server,
| but, I do something's locally. I would like something like the
| Duet for twice the price with more computational horsepower. The
| combination of zero-hassle ChromeOS with good Linux container
| support (also no hassle) is a time saver.
| linmob wrote:
| Agreed. The Lenovo Duet Chromebook is quite nice, and if one
| ever gets tired of Chrome OS (or once Google drops it, there's
| already a distribution [1] that supports it.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/Maccraft123/Cadmium
| [deleted]
| cycatz wrote:
| How about XPS 13 2-in-1 or HP spectre 360 ? They can be flipped
| 180-degrees backwards and have pen support. I recently had a post
| on reddit asking for the recommendation for a linux 2-in-1
| laptop:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/vjc8ta/recom...
| PrivateButts wrote:
| I've been messing around with Linux on some old Surfaces I pulled
| from the recycling cart at work. Linux on the laptop is fine, but
| boy howdy has it been a bad time on a tablet device. Wayland
| seems to have really thrown a wrench in the works. I tested:
|
| - Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - Login screen showed the on screen keyboard
| (OSK) after enabling it in the accessibility menu, but had
| annoyances like shift staying on after hitting a key - Gnome was
| okay as a tablet interface, but OSK didn't work in non GTK apps,
| including Firefox - Autorotate worked once, but then never worked
| again - After waking up from sleep, the device would go back to
| sleep after 1 minute, regardless of what I was doing. - Kubuntu
| 22.04 LTS was like using a desktop OS with only a mouse. No
| autorotate or OSK - Fedora ran so poorly I gave up on it before
| testing it thoroughly - Manjaro had a working OSK throughout the
| OS, but autorotate was busted. It had the same sleep issue after
| Ubuntu.
|
| In addition, the camera didn't work in every OS I tried. I
| eventually just put W10 back on them.
| deepsun wrote:
| As for decent powered charger try one from https://frame.work --
| it also has both power and USB-C cords detachable, so you can use
| any other USB-C you like, as well as custom length (or plug)
| power cords.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > As for decent powered charger try one from https://frame.work
| -- it also has both power and USB-C cords detachable, so you
| can use any other USB-C you like, as well as custom length (or
| plug) power cords.
|
| Uh? That's HUGE!
|
| I recommend instead a AOHI GaN USB-C PD charger: the 30W is
| much smaller and sufficient to charge most laptops
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097BWY4WG
|
| The chubbier AOHI 65W I got when I thought I may need it now
| sits at home. I also got a USB-C cable with an integrated
| display to monitor how much the devices are drawing:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MS545VF
| Macha wrote:
| > the 30W is much smaller and sufficient to charge most
| laptops
|
| Even the M1, which is praised for it's power efficiency can
| hit 40-50W under load. Such a charger will let the battery
| run down if you actually use your laptop for intensive tasks
| while charging. I don't think that qualifies as "most
| laptops" (and forget high end Intel laptops that are more
| than a generation old, they'd draw more than that watching a
| 4k movie)
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Even the M1, which is praised for it's power efficiency
| can hit 40-50W under load
|
| I've sometimes seen high draws thanks to the small display
| on the cable, but I rarely do very intensive task at a
| coffeeshop.
|
| The small charger is mostly for the peace of mind.
|
| At home, I've got the chubby 65W if needed.
| bbarnett wrote:
| In the comments, there is a question about LTE working or not.
| That's a good question, wish the author replied.
|
| Anyone know if y/n?
| mrbuttons454 wrote:
| It works, with some tweaking. I have a Surface Go 3 with Debian
| Testing. The Go 2 and Go 3 have the same LTE modem. This
| article was VERY helpful:
|
| https://kepi.cz/surface-go-2-lte-modem
|
| Edit: I'm not using the Surface Linux kernel, just the stock
| Debian Testing kernel.
| snthd wrote:
| They linked the hardware support matrix:
|
| https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...
|
| https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Surface-...
|
| >The LTE version of the Surface Go 2 features the same Qualcomm
| Snapdragon X16 modem as the Surface Pro 2017 with LTE and the
| original Surface Go with LTE. The following thread is dedicated
| to enabling the LTE modem of those systems on Linux
| bbarnett wrote:
| Didn't see that, thanks.
| [deleted]
| martyvis wrote:
| I bought a Lenovo Thinkbook 14s Yoga about 1 month ago. Great FHD
| 360 degree touch screen with a neat docked stylus. Comes with 8GB
| soldered RAM + 8GB SODIMM that can be swapped for up to 32GB. The
| 500GB Nvme drive comes with Win10 but having a 2nd empty M.2 slot
| meant it was easy to put in another drive that now has Ubuntu,
| Fedora and a sweet ChromeOS installation. Only problem I'm having
| is getting the built-in mic to work on ChromeOS.
| zac23or wrote:
| It's a "Solid Debian Tablet" because it boots. Linux religionists
| ignore all problems after booting.
|
| Linux and Oss in general are religions like Apple is. "Apple has
| NEVER done anything wrong," an Apple cleric told me about
| Antennagate.
|
| I've been using Linux for programming work for ten years now, but
| every time I buy a new machine I try to use Linux natively. In
| the last attempt, Linux stopped working after I tried using a
| Bluetooth joystick: Linux froze and never booted again.
|
| In ten years I never got hardware that runs 100% on Linux. I
| remember using a ThinkPad in 2010 and the wifi randomly
| disconnects 10 or more times an hour. I have issues with Flash
| animations, Youtube, sound, etc, a mix of hardware and software
| issues. If the ThinkPad is the best hardware for Linux, the worst
| is not imaginable.
|
| But... My friend, a religious Linux uses Linux every day, and for
| him linux is perfect, his laptop just needs a wifi dongle on USB
| because linux doesn't support the motherboard wifi chip. And
| there is a problem when Linux changes the integrated graphics
| card to a 3D graphics card, the screen goes black because when
| changing Linux sets the luminance of the screen to 0. The
| religious person accepts all weird religious things because it's
| good for you: "now I understand video drivers". No, you don't
| understand.
|
| After every failure in my Linux experience, my religious friend
| and the internet have told me I'm using either too old or too new
| hardware, or hardware from a bad vendor (Nivida is Satan) or the
| wrong Linux distribution (anything that isn't be Debian, Ubuntu
| included) and I'm too stupid to use Linux. Linux is the land of
| enlightened people and I'm not one of those people. And some
| people say "Linux is open, fix the bug yourself"...
|
| I love Linux, but I'm not religious about Linux, so to me the
| current status of Linux on real hardware is a disgrace.
|
| Linux works great on VirtualBox or equivalent, I use WSL for my
| daily work and I love working on Linux on WSL.
|
| Windows is a shit show with a lot of problems. But I never lost a
| Windows because of a joystick.
| idonotknowwhy wrote:
| I've been using Linux as my daily driver since windows 8 was
| released.
|
| Never had a single issue on Lenovo think pads or Dell xps.
|
| Desktop had an issue when I bought a ryzen 3700x processor at
| launch, due to a bug in the cpu. A patch was released within a
| week iirc.
| jancsika wrote:
| > In ten years I never got hardware that runs 100% on Linux.
|
| You've never used XPS 13 Developer's Edition. It ships with
| Ubuntu. The hardware runs 100% on Linux.
|
| I even checked with the intel GPU command that measures whether
| it's actually using accelerated video. Everything works on
| Firefox and Chromium. Well, except those Reddit videos that use
| the web blob API, but those seem to buffer and screw up on
| every OS I've ever used.
| zac23or wrote:
| > Well, except those Reddit videos
|
| Reddit videos are something, it is horrible on all
| systems/networks I've tested. :D
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'd say your experience is atypical. When I'm preparing to buy
| a new device that I expect to install Linux on, I look it up
| and make sure that everything will work (or the steps to take
| to ensure everything will work.) I buy the device, install
| Linux on first power-up, it installs fine, I never have any
| significant problems that I wasn't expecting.
|
| Instead of constantly accusing people of being religious
| zealots (in order to associate them with irrationality), how
| about just doing an hour of research before making your next
| attempt?
| zac23or wrote:
| > When I'm preparing to buy a new device that I expect to
| install Linux on, I look it up and make sure that everything
| will work
|
| My friend did the same thing and in the end the Wifi didn't
| work.
|
| > Instead of constantly accusing people of being religious
| zealots
|
| Many people are religious about one thing or another, Linux
| is no exception, it's a fact of life.
|
| > how about just doing an hour of research before making your
| next attempt?
|
| Needing to research whether the hardware supports Linux is a
| clear indication that it shouldn't be used! Linux has been
| around for 30 years! if in 30 years the project has not
| solved the problem of drivers, it is a shame and a total
| failure in this area, because billions are invested in Linux
| per year.
| npteljes wrote:
| I agree with your assessment. Linux and open source is, very
| often, an aftermarket solution. As such, it lags in things like
| hardware support, design trends, integration with other
| products. In fact, this is one of the things Microsoft made
| sure with their business tactics regarding Windows: that
| Windows should be the primary PC platform. They did their
| hardest to support this software-wise, with things like
| backward compatibility, and with ruthless business deals,
| bundling, support and discounts for govs and schools, and by
| letting people pirate it to their hearts' content. The result
| is what we see today: Windows everywhere, every hardware
| supports Windows, every software runs on Windows. Plug and
| play. (With caveats of course, for example I have an USB wifi
| stick that makes Win10 BSOD the moment I disconnect it. Linux
| has no problem with it.)
|
| That said, I lucked out with my Linux experience. Everything I
| need works well, and I don't tinker with it more than I did
| with Windows. The main difference is that I have much more
| control over the situation, compared to Windows' typical
| unhelpful messages and opaque environment.
| zac23or wrote:
| > ings Microsoft made sure with their business tactics
| regarding Windows: that Windows should be the primary PC
| platform...and with ruthless business deals
|
| Yes, without doubt, Microsoft make a lot of bad things to
| Windows being the primary pc platform.
|
| > That said, I lucked out with my Linux experience.
| Everything I need works well
|
| My friend who uses a USB dongle for Wifi says the same thing!
| npteljes wrote:
| I get your point about the friend, I was quite the zealot
| myself, and I have known a few others too - they were so
| obnoxious that I was turned off of Linux for quite a few
| years.
|
| When I say that everything I need works well, I do mean it,
| but the "I need" part does a lot of work. I don't need the
| fingerprint scanner, or the built-in sound card, or the
| bundleware that comes with the rgb gaming mouse.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > My friend who uses a USB dongle for Wifi says the same
| thing!
|
| I reckon you may have not tried a recent Linux kernel.
| Network hardware support is definitely better than MacOS at
| this point, and is creeping up on Windows in the consumer
| segment. I've used 5 different devices from 5 different
| manufacturers on Linux. Only one of them had a WiFi issue,
| which was only because the distro I was testing didn't ship
| with the specific driver for it (FWIW it was also a Surface
| product).
|
| It is curious though, I _do_ see people who share your
| sentiment but, like the parent comment, I legitimately have
| no problems with it. My OEM Lenovo desktop from 2014 worked
| just fine. My new custom-built gaming PC with proprietary
| everything seems to work fine, too. I genuinely struggle to
| find devices that run Linux poorly, outside of maybe the
| gaming laptop space and Macbook market. It 's probably one
| of those Paretto principle things: 80% of people will be
| offended by the 20% of drivers that are missing from your
| kernel.
| zac23or wrote:
| I tried it this year, with the gaming laptop I use for
| programming. After Bluetooth problem, I didn't try again.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Oh, well there's your problem. Gaming laptops are
| notoriously useless on Linux, oftentimes moreso than
| Macs. Gaming laptop manufacturers only sell products to
| Windows users, and likewise don't really care if they buy
| cheap components without proper driver support. It's a
| common and sad practice, but I kinda have to blame you
| for not doing your research here.
|
| I do wish you luck in the future. Nobody deserves to be
| saddled with telemetry/adware just because their hardware
| is unsupported on other OSes, but blind-box reverse-
| engineering the drivers for all your esoteric Chinese
| WiFi cards is oftentimes not really worth the trouble.
| Like I said in the other post, Linux never claims to have
| driver parity with Windows (nor can it, really).
| _However_ , informed consumers can pretty easily source
| hardware with excellent Linux support. HP and Lenovo sell
| first-party machines with Linux preinstalled and
| guaranteed driver support, as well as many other smaller
| manufacturers. With cheap, cobbled-together gaming
| laptops, that's often not possible.
| npteljes wrote:
| It's not guaranteed to be an out of box experience
| unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, because of how
| the human mind works. For regular, pragmatic usage, Linux
| doesn't really have any upsides. So if someone changes,
| and everything works as it did before, yay, maybe we
| scored some privacy points, or one-upped a corporation?
| Great. But if someone changes and is facing issues, and
| sees no upsides, the conclusion will be clear: the change
| isn't worth it. This is among the first things that'll
| come to mind and again, with no positive effects to
| expect, the person is left with the feeling of regret, or
| feeling stupid.
|
| This is why I'd like to see the following things in the
| technology space. Linux, Libreoffice, GIMP, etc being the
| default software they teach in schools. Them being used
| as defaults in governments. Linux coming preinstalled on
| computers by default, with Windows coming with an extra
| price tag. If these would magically happen somehow, the
| tables would have been turned - now it's up to Microsoft
| to adhere to a standard, and people would be confused as
| to why someone would bother tinkering with Windows and
| Office when the forms, submissions, contracts and
| presentations are expected in the libre formats anyways.
| kobalsky wrote:
| I understand that your point is about Linux zealots, but this
| isn't correct:
|
| > linux doesn't support the motherboard wifi chip
|
| Some drivers are included with the kernel and have 1st class
| support due to their importance but most wireless and video
| depends on manufacturers due to changing hardware and licencing
| issues.
|
| You are a software developer, you know this should read "the
| manufacturer didn't release a Linux driver".
| zac23or wrote:
| Regardless of why the driver doesn't exist, the result is the
| same: Linux does not support the motherboard Wifi chip.
|
| Probably many Linux problems are not just technical problems,
| but political problems or other types of problems, but the
| result is the same: A terrible user experience.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Linux does not support the motherboard Wifi chip.
|
| I'm sorry, this is a bald-faced lie. Every motherboard I've
| ever purchased has worked just fine with Linux networking
| out-of-the-box. If you bought a motherboard that doesn't
| support Linux, then I'm sorry to hear. That doesn't apply
| to _everything_ though, so I 'd recommend revising your
| wording in the future.
|
| It's kinda like complaining that your new Nvidia GPU won't
| get recognized by your Mac Pro, therefore _all GPUs are
| incompatible with MacOS!_
| zac23or wrote:
| > This is a bald-faced lie
|
| I another thing people say: You're a liar.
|
| > That doesn't apply to everything
|
| I never said that. And I never said that every GPU is
| incompatible with Linux.
| scandox wrote:
| > I have a wonderful System76 Lemur Pro
|
| I bought one of these recently but the keyboard is making me very
| sad. Especially the arrow keys are almost too small for my
| fingers.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Does anyone have experience with Linux on the latest model, the
| Surface Go 3?
|
| I'm considering getting one of these as they seem like ideal
| travel devices, but uneasy about having to rely on a small
| community for basic driver support. Official Linux support would
| be much better.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I don't have one anymore (it was an internal device that I gave
| back when I left Microsoft proper), but I had one last summer
| and while most of my testing on it was for Windows 11 builds, I
| did put Linux on it before and after release. And it worked
| well.
|
| I don't think official support will ever happen, but the Linux
| Surface project is very good and has lots of users internally
| at Microsoft who are very committed to helping report
| bugs/contribute back because they use it for work and for play.
| There's a whole community of Linux enthusiasts at Microsoft and
| unsurprisingly, many use Surface devices, including the Surface
| Go line.
|
| If I were to buy a Surface Go again -- maybe the next model
| will be a little speedier (that was my main gripe with the 3),
| I think I would primarily use it as a Linux box, with Windows
| installed just in case , just as OP has.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| I have one of these and it's wonderful
|
| Cellular internet is the bees' knees
| squarefoot wrote:
| I was given years ago a Asus Transformer tablet (don't have the
| exact model here) by a relative who bought it by mistake and
| couldn't use it, so I installed Debian Linux on it. For what I
| can recall, everything but the camera worked, including audio
| although it needed some post-install tweaking. WiFi, BT, battery
| management, detachable keyboard and all else worked out of the
| box. I also seem to recall that the camera was supported later,
| but I had no use for it and never tried to make it work again. I
| didn't keep the tablet however ; that was like 4-5+ years ago and
| at that time the only way to have a working screen rotation was
| to use Gnome3, which with only 2GB RAM walked like molasses.
| darkamaul wrote:
| https://archive.ph/jCczB
| causality0 wrote:
| I would pay good money for a Surface 2 with modern internals. The
| form factor is lovely and the 1920x1280 display is just perfect
| at ten inches.
| maxbaines wrote:
| Made possible by the Linux Surface project, have been using this
| on Surface laptop 3s for a few years its pretty great and an
| active project. https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
| googleide wrote:
| I've used one, not great, but why would you spec a Go out, its a
| cheap coffee shop laptop, and at least warranty is pretty good in
| Asia. Keyboard broke, okay do you have a CC, yep, well send you a
| new one, send us the old back, as long as it isn't your damage (i
| guess water or obvious drop) its job done and no charge to CC.
| Small delay as part had to come from Hong Kong to Thailand first.
| Much better than travelling to and speaking to bloody genius if
| you happen to get an on the spot appointment with one of the
| clowns.
|
| This was meant in response to the people complaining about build
| quality
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I've used one, not great, why would you spec a Go out, its a
| cheap coffee shop laptop
|
| I've done most of my recent coding work on a Go, like, most of
| my sixel stuff!
|
| The size is just right, so it followed me everywhere, and by
| spending 5 min on it here and there, I could get a lot of work
| done!
|
| Also LTE is great: I don't want to waste even a minute looking
| for Wifi password. That's another productivity multiplier!
|
| After that, I got a X1 nano, it's a great device but a bit too
| big for me, even it's just about 1 inch larger in both
| dimensions and about the same thickness.
|
| More recently, I've moved to a X1 Fold, and it's even smaller
| than a Go when folded so it's now my favorite device! There
| were a few drivers problems I had to tackle, but now it's rock
| solid on Windows 11. Also, the OLED screen is ideal to use at
| night!
| seltzered_ wrote:
| I've been using an HP Elite X2 G4 tablet and it's been truly
| solid:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/s6k1qr...
|
| Only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader.
|
| There was a better writeup from someone using debian on a surface
| pro 6 to run their law firm:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29199395
| jcuenod wrote:
| I keep checking youtube for reviews of people running linux on
| surface tablets. The surface-linux project looks like it's done
| some really great work and surface pro tablets do equally well.
| The one piece of hardware I wish there were more work on is the
| Surface X (especially after seeing how successful the Asahi
| project has been).
| ge96 wrote:
| Random comment about the device: I have the weak version and I'm
| amazed at its sleep battery preserve capability. Put it in
| airplane mode, hit the power button to turn off screen, then
| leave it on my desk for weeks, still has battery later on/wakes
| up.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Random comment about the device: I have the weak version and
| I'm amazed at its sleep battery preserve capability. Put it in
| airplane mode, hit the power button to turn off screen, then
| leave it on my desk for weeks, still has battery later on/wakes
| up.
|
| ACPI S01x done right is great: it can consume less power than
| S3 suspend and resume faster! (though after a few weeks, I
| think your surface may have gone into S4 hibernate)
| ge96 wrote:
| Will note: I would not recommend the weak SG2 (Pentium Gold Y)
| as far as usability. It's one of those where you open up a
| couple of browser tabs and it starts to really perform badly.
| It gets better if you plug it in, particularly for the updates,
| they run faster while plugged in.
|
| I really just got it to have a Windows tablet that was not too
| expensive, I had an SB2 before but I ended up selling it. The
| SB2 was a cool device though. Also I wanted drawing but I ended
| up using an e-ink tablet for that (also concern with battery)
| my stuff is just doodles/note taking, so no color is fine and
| e-ink means long battery life.
| atraac wrote:
| I've been using Surface Book 2 as a work laptop and at this point
| I won't buy a single Microsoft's hardware beyond an Xbox. It was
| utterly bad. Lack of thunderbolt so USB-C docks won't fully work,
| lack of HDMI ports, insane thermal throttling, had issues
| handling 1000hz polling rate mouses(seriously), quite often
| laptop would just not turn on until specific reset combination of
| keys was pressed, general performance issues with time. Whole
| thing was also very fragile and scratched very easily. And the
| worst part - power button sticks out so much it was randomly
| turning on in my laptop bag or backpack, quite often heating
| really badly and discharging to death. I would come to work
| almost every day without power. Never again.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| Similar experience, with a Surface Pro 4 many years ago. After
| one year it bricked but thanks god I still had the warranty and
| they sent another one...
|
| Am I asking too much? I want a tablet with high precision
| drawing and low-latency to take notes about everything. Add an
| ARM processor and I'd buy it today, damn it.
| Moosdijk wrote:
| You want an ipad it seems like.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| For me the iPad feels too constricting when you want to do
| anything other than consume content.
|
| But I think that's just because I'm accustomed to having
| direct access to files and filesystems, and the extra later
| of abstraction (already necessary to visually translate a
| filesystem) just becomes bothersome.
|
| E.g. I still need to cd and ls in a very primitive and
| visceral way, feel my way around the warren like a mole so
| to speak, even if I can just click/tap on a screen or C-x
| C-f.
|
| Probably how the mind gets wired with basic text UIs like
| the DOS and Unix command lines, before you get to stuff
| like Midnight Commander.
|
| Pretty weird, if you ask me, as that's more of a verbal and
| less than a visual way of interacting with the system,
| while I'm an otherwise visual person.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I have 2 iPad Pros, both sizes, two Linux laptops, and a
| Lenovo Duet Chromebook with Linux containers. Lots of
| experimenting with hardware choices.
|
| When traveling with an iPad (sometimes I take the
| Chromebook) I find using a SSH or Mosh client app with a
| remote server works very well. Your mileage may vary.
| nicbou wrote:
| It's great for reading, sketching and taking notes. It's
| not a development machine, though some people try really
| hard to make it so.
|
| I never found a good solution, so I pack my iPad Mini and
| my Macbook. I just need stronger legs.
| nicbou wrote:
| I tried a Surface Go 2 then bought the latest iPad Mini.
| There's truly no equal for doing tablet stuff.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > There's truly no equal for doing tablet stuff.
|
| Lenovo X1 Fold: it's so small it's always with me. Great
| keyboard, OLED screen. I use it with a regular Thinkpad
| bluetooth keyboard for terminal work.
|
| I'm now working on the Linux support now that I got the
| ACPI S01x fixed under Windows.
| girvo wrote:
| Oh that's exciting to hear; I've always been a fan of
| some of their products but sometimes the hardware support
| under Linux is lacking for their more modern devices.
| Cool to see someone tackling it!
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I've always been a fan of some of their products
|
| Same!
|
| > Cool to see someone tackling it!
|
| Just FYI, the last showstopper was the touchscreen. It's
| now working great with quo's driver (from the surface-
| linux project).
|
| If you use Ubuntu 22 and this driver, you just need some
| kernel cmdline option for X to avoid some minor display
| corruption.
|
| Like I did for Windows11 on https://csdvrx.github.io/ I
| aim to write down everything to get a great Linux
| experience on the Fold.
| nicbou wrote:
| By tablet stuff, I mean reading, taking notes and
| sketching. No app ecosystem does it like iPad OS'.
|
| The problem with the Surface Go isn't the hardware, but
| the fact that it runs Windows, a system that just isn't
| made for these things.
|
| The most ridiculous part was being forced to "save or
| discard" drawings before I could close an app. I had to
| painstakingly pick a location and name for each file. It
| felt like using Photoshop, not a notebook. Every app
| sucked in a different way. In contrast, most iOS ones are
| decent to great, and there are far more options for
| readers.
|
| That's on top of the regular Windows problems. I spent
| the first day just doing updates and disabling bloat. As
| a tablet OS, it's incredibly clunky. I didn't get to the
| part where it wakes itself up and fries itself to death
| in my laptop bag, but I heard that it's still an issue.
|
| The iPad was so much better at its task that it's not
| even funny.
|
| Now I take my iPad everywhere, and if I intend to do more
| work, I pack my Macbook. It's not heavy enough to make me
| consider Windows ever again. However, I'd consider an old
| 12" Macbook to shave a kilo off when I travel.
| csdvrx wrote:
| I've got an ipad in a drawer somewhere. Also work has
| been trying to push a macbook on me. After trying it I
| said no: I stick to my Fold, because I like it better,
| both for the hardware and the software.
|
| It's smaller and does everything multiple separate device
| would be needed for.
|
| > I had to painstakingly pick a location and name for
| each file.
|
| First world problem lol!!
|
| For old apps, I have an AHK shortcut to save files by ISO
| date. However, it's rarely a problem with modern apps.
| And if you close them without saving, most of them will
| bring back your unsaved work. Even Word does that!
|
| > By tablet stuff, I mean reading, taking notes and
| sketching. No app ecosystem does it like iPad OS'.
|
| For comics and mangas, I use Takiyomi (technically, it's
| an android app, but WSA makes it seamless)
|
| For taking notes, I use ZimWiki and Windows stickies
|
| For sketching, I use OneNote.
|
| > The iPad was so much better at its task that it's not
| even funny.
|
| We must have very different uses, because between even
| just Takiyomi+OneNote vs an ipad, indeed it's not funny
| for the ipad.
|
| > That's on top of the regular Windows problems. I spent
| the first day just doing updates and disabling bloat
|
| Well, don't look further for the root cause: "disabling
| bloat" often causes more problems. I only remove very
| specific things. For updates, I use Windows Pro and
| usually defer them until I want to reboot. When I read
| the problem people report with windows, it's like they
| live in a different world.
|
| > Now I take my iPad everywhere, and if I intend to do
| more work, I pack my Macbook
|
| I just take my Fold everywhere - nothing else is needed,
| but I've got a bluetooth keyboard for comfort if I want
| to type a lot.
|
| On the Fold, I can draw with a Wacom pen - no need for a
| separate device like the ipad, because most windows
| tablet and convertibles also have a touchscreen.
|
| If I need to work, I have Windows Terminal and everything
| I need to code. ZimWiki means my notes can be converted
| to HTML and published.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Am I asking too much? I want a tablet with high precision
| drawing and low-latency to take notes about everything"
|
| This is actually quite much. Low latency means high powered
| hardware and all of that in a slim, passive cooled fanless
| design, bundled with the best possible display avaiable. I
| don't see how one can ask for more ...
|
| (but I actually want the same)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I have a Surface Pro 7, honestly it's pretty good; I didn't
| buy it though.
|
| When I first had it the responsiveness and accuracy for
| drawing were great, but the lines all wiggle now -- there's
| a simple calibration that I think will fix it, but that's
| locked down by our IT department for _reasons_. If the
| wiggle were fixed I 'd have almost no complaints (except
| the prices to me are eye-watering, I have the oem dock and
| keyboard cover too; also Windows is so awful as a window
| manager).
| coder543 wrote:
| There are quite a few iPads that meet this exact set of
| requirements.
| solardev wrote:
| Is that really that high of a bar? A bunch of Apple tablets
| and Samsung phones offer those features, as did Wacom
| tablets a decade ago. There are even (relatively) low
| latency inkable e-ink devices.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It is a high bar, when you are seriously drawing on a
| tablet, you want really low latency.
|
| But yes, there are devices which are quite good. But
| ideally I also would want a linux one.
| Tomte wrote:
| Xbox and IntelliMouse (Pro).
| madjam002 wrote:
| I agree, generally terrible performance all around and poor
| build quality for the price (almost PS3,500 fully specced out).
|
| I installed Linux on it recently thanks to the linux-surface
| project which improved the experience quite a bit as I don't
| have to deal with Windows 11 shit anymore, but the performance
| is still dreadful. You know it's bad when after 30 mins of it
| being on it's slower and laggier than a PS500 laptop.
|
| Will never by a Surface product again, easily one of the worst
| purchasing decisions I have made.
| snarfy wrote:
| The surface laptops are decent, but the rest of the line are
| not worth the premium.
| emilfihlman wrote:
| These have been issues ever since Surface Pro 3, I don't
| understand what kind of user testing they do if they can't
| catch and fix them.
| iasay wrote:
| Similar experience here. Just shipped 20 off to a recycler.
| They didn't even get to a year old. Replaced with thinkpad L
| series which suck but at least they actually work.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Similar experience. And MS accusing me I dropped it and
| refusing warranty. I did not drop it; it was broken out of the
| shop. It never worked well even after I paid for fixing (they
| just sent a new one). Would be nice if it worked but maybe they
| should learn something about customer experience and hardware
| quality from other vendors.
| jansommer wrote:
| I recently got the same tablet in a cheap second-hand deal.
| Seller had never used it so battery is excellent. Bought it
| because I wanted to kill time by installing Linux, and it
| actually wasn't as bad as expected. Could have just disabled
| secure boot and be done with it, but that was probably where I
| spent most of my time. Waydroid is was easy to install so I can
| run both Android and Gnome, but x86-64 Android is so limited in
| software that I uninstalled it.
|
| What I found was that it's a cool way to play Heroes of Might and
| Magic 3. Playing that game on a tablet gives the feeling of
| playing an interactive board game. It runs smoothly in Wine. A
| pretty important thing in the game is the ability to right click,
| which didn't work, and I would assume Windows have the same
| problem (I don't think Windows tablet support would be
| sufficient), so I wrote a mouse hook in win32 c that enables long
| press to right click.
|
| There's lots of annoying nuances, like the Gnome 42 icons in the
| activity list is really small, the on screen keyboard is small
| and almost unusable in landscape mode (but big in portrait mode)
| and camera works for gstreamer apps only so no browser support
| (and the suggested fix doesn't work for Fedora 36).
|
| I removed Windows and have locked the boot order so it won't be
| altered.
|
| All in all 10/10 as a tablet for someone looking for excuses to
| tinker with Linux (and win32!).
| aposm wrote:
| I have no idea why you'd willingly use a Surface with Linux (let
| alone call it a solid Linux tablet) given all these problems, but
| I have a Dell Latitude 5290 2-in-1 (available for under $300 as
| off-lease refurb depending on specs) which fixes almost all of
| these. The only real issue is the camera which does not work for
| similar reasons, but I don't find that to be a big loss because I
| have a phone with a far better camera on me at all times.
| leephillips wrote:
| I'm enjoying Debian on a Surface Pro 3. The hardware, especially
| the screen, is excellent, except for the keyboard on the cover,
| but I use a wireless keyboard. Cameras worked with no fuss. It's
| not perfect--I have occasional issues after waking from sleep--
| but it's close.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| For what it's worth, I can recommend the Surface Go (2 and 3) as
| a tablet, even if you do not intend to run Linux. Simply because
| it's x86 and your not running Android or iOS.
|
| While the actual tablet experience in Windows 11 is mediocre, the
| fact that I run plain, regular desktop apps makes the device so
| much more enjoyable to use. It's not a replacement for a decent
| laptop, but as a tablet, I'd pick this one over crappy Android or
| locked-down iOS any time of the day.
| frou_dh wrote:
| As a tablet, you'd pick a mediocre tablet experience with a
| regular desktop experience over a good tablet experience? As a
| tablet?
| Macha wrote:
| The iPad is out, too locked down for my tastes.
|
| Android is out, they've basically thrown in the towel in this
| space. Their newest release claims "We're back for real this
| time", but they already dumped it once.
|
| I'd take a desktop with touch experience over a "phone app on
| big screen" experience 100%.
|
| So I've ended up with a Surface Go as my tablet when I
| replaced my nvidia shield k1 also. The UI can be janky, but
| having stuff like proper multitasking, being able to use apps
| like VS Code or my preferred PDF reader, and actual desktop
| Firefox with all the extensions does outweigh that jankiness
| for me.
|
| I don't understand the purpose of the "big phone" tablets
| when phones themselves have now gotten as big as my first
| tablet.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Agree but a cons of Windows tablet is that Kindle app
| sucks. It's not minor problem since tablet is primary for
| reading books for me.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| I've never used the Kindle app, so I don't know what that
| user experience is like, but I've been pretty happy with
| Sumatra PDF for reading EPUBs. Inside the advanced
| settings you can adjust color, font, and font size. For
| me, that's all I need from an ebook reader.
| Macha wrote:
| Does Sumatra support reading Amazon's books direct, or do
| you need to pass them through DeDRM first? Or is there
| some other store selling DRM-free epubs I'm not aware of?
|
| I end up stripping DRM off mine with Calibre's tools,
| then reading them on calibre-web.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| Pretty sure Amazon's books are not directly supported.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| iPadOS 16 beta with StageManager helps a bit, especially
| with the cover case/keyboard and a $10 Bluetooth mouse and
| a USB-C external monitor.
|
| I think future iPhones may provide similar docking and
| software, so, who knows, maybe in five years a phone will
| be good for everything as long as docking setups are
| available.
|
| As I said elsewhere in this thread, to use iOS or iPadOS
| for general use, I need a SSH/Mosh client app and a remote
| server. This may seem like a huge constraint but I often
| use SSH/Mosh on my laptops and work on remote servers. This
| is likely an age thing: I am 71 years old and it seems
| natural for me to work with remote Emacs, etc. setups.
| nicbou wrote:
| It comes down to what you want to do with your tablet.
|
| I want to replace paper books and notebooks. The iPad is
| unrivalled for that. If I need a machine to type on, I need
| a full OS on a full laptop. I just pack both.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This presumes there is a good tablet experience.
| least wrote:
| This requires some elaboration. I'd argue that iPadOS
| offers an excellent tablet experience because it was built
| with its unique set of properties in mind. It doesn't
| behave exactly like a phone and it doesn't behave exactly
| like a laptop, but you do see elements of both in it.
|
| It offers a lot of applications that do all sorts of
| wonderful things. It's a great way to draw/paint, you can
| sculpt stuff in 3d, you can create full music tracks with
| professional quality. You can write books on it, you can
| watch your tv shows, read your comic books, and do a whole
| lot of stuff in a way that for me, is simply much more
| delightful than sitting at my computer.
|
| There's plenty of uses that it doesn't serve very well,
| though. The coding experience is lackluster at best. The
| fact that there's only one web browser engine is a miss.
| The fact that the concept of extensibility is severely
| gimped or nonexistent in applications is a miss (though the
| addition of extensions to safari helps a bit). The fact
| that there's no reasonable way to side load officially
| supported by Apple is awful. A lot of these points are
| probably ones that are important to the hacker crowd on HN
| so to those people they probably find it hard to overlook
| those shortcomings.
|
| I use my iPad every day and I love it for the things that
| it _does_ do. To me that is enough to consider it a good
| tablet experience.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e
| 100...
| girvo wrote:
| While I love my iPad, I love my Boox Note 2 even more.
| Fantastic device for what it does: reading and note
| taking with crazy long battery life. I charge it once
| every few weeks, to a month and a half with my usage
| patterns. Great weird expensive but fantastic device!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| e-book reader is the one exception in which a tablet
| offers a leading experience.
|
| Even there, I'd argue that Android is the worst part of
| the platform.
| LeSaucy wrote:
| I don't think you can do much better than an iPad Pro in
| the tablet space, super refined tablet experience,
| combined with the Microsoft rdp app to a vm or other
| desktop for a full x86 windows env, apple rdp to
| macs/MacBooks, and blink mosh ssh to Linux systems. Yes
| running external systems is cheating but the actual end
| result is insanely functional. Say what you will about
| iPadOS but it still gets yearly major updates and new
| features for free.
| rovr138 wrote:
| I want an iPad (Pro or whatever) with a full OS.
|
| I want to run the full browser I want, if needed, I want
| to be able to load up some code and review/run tests and
| maybe start coding something simple and keep going.
|
| There are apps that kind of help, but they're not the
| same. I also can't say I'm always online.
|
| I went with a Surface Pro. I'm running windows which I
| don't particularly like, but it'll have to do for now. I
| would have preferred something that runs Linux over
| Windows, but I didn't see things with great support and
| I'm also not here to fight the hardware to make it work.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Question: do you use Linux container support on Windows?
| I find Linux container support in ChromeOS to be
| sometimes useful.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Not sure if you mean WSL2 or Docker Desktop.
|
| I've tried both. Both are a pain IMO (but Mac doesn't
| really improve this). With WSL2 you end up with another
| abstraction layer that you have to figure how to get your
| programs to work nice with.
|
| With Docker Desktop, there's been some performance issues
| lately. Doesn't turn into a hoverboard like my mac, but
| the performance still lags.
|
| I mainly use it to script small things on python and
| that's worked out fine. Haven't had issues with paths
| which was the most annoying things last time I tried it
| on Windows.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Serious question: why not simply an ultra-light laptop?
|
| I've taken a hard look at what the strengths/weaknesses
| of tablets are (see my link-drop elsewhere in this
| subthread), and the one thing they're really good at
| seems to be reading ebooks. For which a dedicated e-ink
| ebook reader is far superior.
|
| Almost any productivity task is better done with a
| keyboard, ergo, laptop.
|
| Video and audio capture are more flexibly and usefully
| achieved with a dedicated camera or recorder, and both
| can be extremely inexpensive.
|
| (I've also reasons for wanting my audio/video capture
| tools to have minimal connectivity and not be part of a
| surveillance-capitalism platform.)
|
| Handwritten notetaking is another possible application,
| though having a keyboard available makes typed notes and
| note-management systems viable. Then there's drawing /
| sketching. Again, e-ink kworks well for B&W there.
|
| Video can be watched on a laptop. Audiobooks are pretty
| well suited to an e-ink tablet again.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Sometimes I just want to just browse and consume content
| and don't need a keyboard. Sometimes I want to annotate
| and handwrite on something and the ones with keyboards
| that fold back, become too thick.
|
| The iPad has a great size and depth for this. When I use
| my wife's the thickness is not bad. If I want to annotate
| a PDF, I can sit on the couch and it's super easy and not
| heavy or too thick.
|
| Videos, I can easily remove the keyboard, prop it against
| something and it doesn't take more space. However, I
| rarely do this for long periods. My main use to watch
| videos is to figure something out and take notes.
|
| I want to be able to take handwritten notes, highlight
| and annotate PDF's, and research using a full featured
| browser. So it's an in-between. I think the iPad is
| close. Hardware is there (same CPU/architecture). Just
| needs software support.
|
| We also have leaned towards mac's just for the UNIX tools
| but also it has a ton of nice things so that's why I
| think that the OS would be great. Copy from your
| computer, paste it on your ipad, keep going or open it
| through Files.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| E-ink tablet fits for pretty much all of this.
|
| I'm pretty happy with the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi. That's
| 13.3". There are 10.3" and 8" devices as well.
| kramerger wrote:
| Maybe because you need a mobile desktop, not a tablet?
| least wrote:
| This is better served by a laptop for the majority of
| people, though as someone that uses an unconventional
| keyboard anyway, a laptop is somewhat less compelling
| (since it occupies a lot of space with a keyboard that I
| actively avoid using), I can certainly see the appeal of a
| tablet for that purpose.
|
| I personally don't think Microsoft quite got it right with
| using Windows on a tablet, though it was certainly a lot
| better with Windows 8, which is what the surface pro 2 (I
| think the first one as well?) shipped with. There's way too
| many compromises on usability _because_ it 's running
| Windows, and there's no meaningful impetus for developers
| to create their applications specifically with touch in
| mind.
|
| Apple's been much more antagonistic to developers yet they
| still get people making apps specifically for iPadOS in a
| way that neither Google nor Microsoft have managed. I think
| this is the advantage to their totalitarian strategy; they
| get less applications built for iOS/iPadOS overall and
| their restrictions make it significantly harder or
| impossible to create some things you can find easily on
| Windows, Android, or even MacOS, but because they control
| the platform they can impose minimum requirements for
| applications on the platform and as a result you actually
| get programs that run with that device's UX paradigms in
| mind. It probably also helps that their platform makes more
| money and that the iPad is already in a position of
| dominance in this market, but I digress.
|
| If Microsoft wants to fully realize their Surface tablet
| vision, they need to pump a ton of money into getting
| developers on board and building apps that fit the UX
| paradigms of Surface tablets.
| sseagull wrote:
| I bought a Surface 7+ a few months ago and really like
| it. I think of it as a "laptop replacement". My serious
| work is done on a desktop with 3 large monitors at home,
| and a laptop with two large monitors at work. So I only
| needed a small-ish laptop to handle the in-between.
|
| Plus I can read books or watch videos, take notes, etc,
| in tablet mode.
|
| > building apps that fit the UX paradigms of Surface
| tablets
|
| I kinda don't want this. A major selling point was that I
| have a full OS with the same applications on my desktop
| and laptop (ie, PyCharm, other python-related stuff,
| Firefox, custom python, bash, powershell scripts). No
| need to have completely different apps because the tablet
| maker hobbles the OS, making using a tablet in laptop
| mode useless.
|
| It can be awkward for sure in tablet mode, but it does
| kinda work.
| majkinetor wrote:
| This is also my finding - I need regular apps even while
| reading books or watch videos. Windows 10 in non tablet
| mode is totally great for that. I use winget/chocolatey
| to install stuff I use on work and home and no need for
| different OS/apps. I can run anything work related on
| Surface - I have docker installed, Visual Studio, Sql
| Server, PostgreSql, nodejs, dotnet etc - I rarely use
| them but its good to know everything just works if I
| needed it. Most of the time I use it for reading HN and
| friends, watch some videos/podcasts, read ebooks. Besides
| that, I have it with me on each meeting. I save any work
| in git repository so having all that working the same as
| on my Desktop computer is a big win.
|
| Regarding that use case, the only thing I don't like
| about Surface 7 Pro is its screen which is very much
| reflective. Other then that, its totally awesome.
| least wrote:
| I think the Surface line serves the "I only want one
| portable device" crowd well enough, even though I think
| it could be better. Applications being able to adapt
| based on the way you're interfacing with them would be
| the most work required from developers but also probably
| the best of both worlds... just that'd require Microsoft
| investing in 3rd party developer support in a way they
| haven't before.
|
| I personally use both a laptop and an iPad regularly
| enough in their own contexts that I find it worthwhile to
| have both.
| idatum wrote:
| Related to the Surface Pro 2, I have Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
| running on an 8 GiB version (i5-4300 CPU), 256 GB SSD.
|
| It's been reasonable for what I use it for, mainly SDR
| applications, such as CubicSDR and GNU Radio X11 apps,
| and multiple CLI apps like rtl_433. Audio is good, screen
| is fine, and WiFi works. It's nice to have a laptop if I
| want to use an antenna outside.
|
| Don't even bother using the tiny trackpad on that model's
| type cover. Bluetooth works so I use that for an external
| mouse.
|
| Bonus: I never even thought to try the built-in video
| cam, and after reading the article, I installed VLC and
| to my surprise the camera worked!
| rollcat wrote:
| > This is better served by a laptop for the majority of
| people, though as someone that uses an unconventional
| keyboard anyway, a laptop is somewhat less compelling
| (since it occupies a lot of space with a keyboard that I
| actively avoid using), I can certainly see the appeal of
| a tablet for that purpose.
|
| I've switched to an Ergodox in early 2019 and I couldn't
| use a laptop since. MNT[1] is the only laptop
| manufacturer I know of, that is even trying to do
| anything about the absurdity of emulating 19th century
| typewriters; although the Planck-style ortholinear layout
| is not my type.
|
| At one point I've been considering a tablet + a small
| foldable camera tripod + Corne-ish Zen[2] or similar; and
| a custom carrying case to fit all of these neatly. The
| tripod could also be useful for actual photography, and
| would put the screen at a reasonable height for actual
| work.
|
| I'm having a difficult time finding decent tablet
| hardware though. I would ideally like to run OpenBSD on
| it!
|
| [1]:
| https://mntmn.com/media/reform_md/2022-06-20-introducing-
| mnt... [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/co
| mments/jyht57/
| rovr138 wrote:
| I've been using a Advantage Pro for over 10 years now and
| it's great. But I still travel and use my MBP's and now
| my Surface Pro's keyboard.
|
| Besides shortcuts between Windows and Mac, I can type on
| any of them.
|
| Of course, I prefer my Kinesis, but, it's not an issue
| really switching.
| least wrote:
| I don't have trouble _typing_ but I do have trouble
| trying to type for a long period of time on a standard
| laptop keyboard because it tends to cause flare ups in my
| hands, the whole reason I switched to an ergonomic
| keyboard (in my case a Kinesis Advantage 2).
|
| I do wish there was a better option available on
| keyboards but alas the market is quite niche. Separating
| the keyboard from the laptop seems to be the only
| realistic option for people with those needs.
| rollcat wrote:
| Well I'm using my Thinkpad X230 now and then (still in my
| top 3 best laptop keyboards), and my wrists regret it.
| Findecanor wrote:
| I still use a 8" Windows tablet from 2015 every day, for the
| same reasons. I wish I could upgrade from the mediocre specs,
| but newer, better x86 tablets in this form factor simply don't
| exist.
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