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.
I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
51–60 of 240 posts
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
> 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)
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You want an ipad it seems like.
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.
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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!
> 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.
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#55I 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 h…
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 ;)
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#56For 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 cr…
As a tablet, you'd pick a mediocre tablet experience with a regular desktop experience over a good tablet experience? As a tablet?
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.
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"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)
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).
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#58Put 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.
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#59As 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.
> 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
Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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 ( h…
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)