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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

#91

Post by hardwaresofton »

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, 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/

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

#92

Post by leephillips »

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.

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

#93

Post by fortran77 »

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…

This is what Linux true believers put up with, no matter what laptop or tablet platform.

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

vanviegen wrote: post #87
dwighttk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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)…

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by dwighttk »

vanviegen wrote: post #87
dwighttk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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)…

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.

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

#96

Post by chrisseaton »

vanviegen wrote: post #87
dwighttk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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)…

> 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?

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

#97

Post by Dudemeister_ »

EnKopVand wrote: post #84
pizza234 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whic…

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…

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.

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

#98

Post by dredmorbius »

girvo wrote: post #49
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…

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!

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.

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

#99

Post by steeleduncan »

EnKopVand wrote: post #84
pizza234 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whic…

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…

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.

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

#100

Post by goosedragons »

pxmpxm wrote: post #64
sph wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

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 y…

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.

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