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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

#121

Post by filmgirlcw »

vinceguidry wrote: post #117
filmgirlcw wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cl…

System76 has started designing their own machines.

They haven’t designed their laptops yet.

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

#123

Post by ge96 »

ge96 wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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

#124

Post by dwighttk »

highwaylights wrote: post #110
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 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…

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.

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

#125

Post by solardev »

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...).

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?

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

#126

Post by solardev »

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)

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.

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

#127

Post by vanviegen »

chrisseaton wrote: post #96
vanviegen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

#128

Post by rollcat »

least wrote: post #29
kramerger wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because you need a mobile desktop, not a tablet?

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 b…

> 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/comments/jyht57/

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

#129

Post by phren0logy »

Dudemeister_ wrote: post #97
EnKopVand wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#130

Post by squarefoot »

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.
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