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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

#141

Post by zac23or »

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.

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

#142

Post by midislack »

solardev wrote: post #125
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...).

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?

Android is a proprietary OS filled with spyware. Linux kernel is irrelevant.

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

#143

Post by midislack »

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?

This, Microsoft needs to identify this institution for eradication.

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

#144

Post by solardev »

midislack wrote: post #142
solardev wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Android is a proprietary OS filled with spyware. Linux kernel is irrelevant.

Is that true even if you compile AOSP from source? (not being sarcastic here, just never looked into this)

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

#145

Post by linmob »

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…

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...

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

#146

Post by fomine3 »

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...).

I wonder what tablet is used by GNOME developers.

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

#147

Post by fomine3 »

Macha wrote: post #56
frou_dh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

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.

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

#148

Post by nicbou »

csdvrx wrote: post #44
nicbou wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried a Surface Go 2 then bought the latest iPad Mini. There's truly no equal for doing tablet stuff.

> 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.

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.

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

#149

Post by idle_zealot »

solardev wrote: post #144
midislack wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is a proprietary OS filled with spyware. Linux kernel is irrelevant.

Is that true even if you compile AOSP from source? (not being sarcastic here, just never looked into this)

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.

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

#150

Post by nicbou »

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)…

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.
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