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I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

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Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#71

Post by dboreham »

ttarr wrote: post #16
dboreham wrote: post #13

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 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…

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.

Don't use the host FS for your work files. Use the Linux FS.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#72

Post by dboreham »

roydivision wrote: post #28
ttarr wrote: post #16

Earlier 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.

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.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#73

Post by 29athrowaway »

dwighttk wrote: post #67
highwaylights wrote: post #46

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…

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.

Most Dell equipment supports Linux well, out of the box.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#74

Post by coder543 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #43
Lucasoato wrote: post #34

Earlier 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)

There are quite a few iPads that meet this exact set of requirements.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#75

Post by pizza234 »

dwighttk wrote: post #67
highwaylights wrote: post #46

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…

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.

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.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#76

Post by 29athrowaway »

makeitdouble wrote: post #68
highwaylights wrote: post #46

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…

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.

Sometimes these issues can be fixed by adjusting process priorities. Try giving Pulseaudio a higher priority.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#77

Post by Agamus »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #62
highwaylights wrote: post #46

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…

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...).

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.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#78

Post by hanklazard »

dwighttk wrote: post #67
highwaylights wrote: post #46

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…

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.

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.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#79

Post by rhn_mk1 »

Agamus wrote: post #77
jlkuester7 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...).

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.

Lineage is not Linux in the sense that Debian is. They share the kernel and that's it.

Re: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2

#80

Post by rovr138 »

LeSaucy wrote: post #69
least wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cr…

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 updat…

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.

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