OpenBSD on the Microsoft Surface Go 2 | Hacker News Reader

OpenBSD on the Microsoft Surface Go 2

jcs.org

183 pointsrodrigo97541 comments

Also, here's a blog [i] that installs Debian w/ a customized kernel onto a Surface Go.

[i] https://willem.com/blog/2020-03-09_making-my-own-tablet-os/#...

Looks like the patched kernel is only needed to fix a minor bug in the kernel version OP ended up with. I assume that these issues will eventually be fixed directly in the mainline branch.

Also, not sure why OP didn't boot from the "unofficial" USB image with included firmware, that would probably support WiFi directly and not need a separate wired connection.

6.7 is just around the corner (19th May!) and I can't wait.

Love this guy's writeups and his blog in general. I'm interested to know whether he uses the Surface Go as a daily driver.

Then perhaps, you‘ll love his (formerly) podcast even more.

https://garbage.jcs.org/

I really wish they would bring this back, was one of the best podcasts I've listened to.

> The Surface Pen ... the top eraser button which requires Bluetooth for some reason.

It lets you launch OneNote from sleep out of pen input ranges, that’s the reason.

Handy feature. I think their implication was that you can't use it as an eraser either, which is a bummer since no Bluetooth support

Indeed

> OpenBSD does not support Bluetooth

Anyone have the story behind that? An explicit desire not to support it or lack of manpower?

No one stepped up to write and maintain it.

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=156519841415403&w=2

I hope this isn't the case... it certainly isn't on the Surface Pro 6. Erasing works fine, it's just clicking the eraser end of the pen that requires Bluetooth.

That's just how I read it, maybe it is just the click; in afterthought, it would make little sense otherwise

That's not really that great of a reason

Well, you have to communicate the clicking of the button somehow, right? I usually click it with my thumb - if it had to be within range to do that, it wouldn't be that useful, cause I'd have to ... I guess hold the pen upside down and click the button right on top of the screen? That certainly isn't the first way I would have tried to do it.

every six months I try to install linux on my surface sans-number (between 5 and 6 I guess), find bogus linux kernel, try it out, regret imensely. go back to crapy-but-still-better-than-osx windows 10. then six+ months passes, I somehow forget about all this and repeat.

surface tablets would be a killer machine if I could dual boot linux on it for serious work.

BayTrail and CherryTrail hardware has been like that for a very long time, now it works flawlessly. And there's a LOT of it in the used market - lots and lots of crappy Win8 and Win10-based "tablets" that can now become far more usable with Linux and the Gnome UX.

Installing this kernel makes it work amazing: https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface

I'd recommend the actively maintained https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface instead, which has support for newer Surface devices as well.

see this is what i mean.

every kernel has pros and cons. all of them are wonderful until you hit a con.

what issues have you been running into? I have been running Linux on the Surface Pro 5 solely without even having windows to dual boot for almost 3 years now.

Unsatisfied new user/owner of iPad Pro + keyboard + pen, generally happy OS X user here. Touch screen was the hook (as I dabble in visual arts) but for me this has proven to be a very expensive mistake.

What are the issues/peeves with Surface Go? Is this space (touch screen large form factor mobile computing devices) generally underwhelming or is this simply Apple doing UX RnD on my dime?

If you're looking for a general-purpose tablet computer I think the Surface lineup is nearly unparalleled, with some important caveats.

You get a very well built machine with the best aspect ratio (3:2), Win10 tablet mode is decent _and_ you can drop back to full Windows whenever you want. This is a double edged sword - if you get a good tablet interface for a program it's wonderful, but sometimes you're reduced to pecking at the screen for mouse targets in legacy Win32 apps (the pen or cover with trackpad is helpful here).

For me, the ability to run any software I want is worth the rough edges and inconsistency compared to an iPad. I have WSL for local dev with full Linux utilities, real Photoshop, alternate browsers, Steam games, etc. I can install whatever nifty little Windows utilities or tweaks I want, customize the machine exactly as I like it, and I feel like I have lot more ownership over the machine as a result. That flexibility definitely comes with a cost compared to the out-of-the-box experience with an iPad.

As for the Go itself, its a really cute little computer but somewhat underpowered compared to a Surface Pro or Surface Book. I know a couple of people using them as their main computers and the feedback is pretty positive, FWIW.

Yes, that's what I was looking for. Thank you.

If you are looking for a somewhat realistic drawing/writing experience, Apple’s solution is pretty far ahead of Microsoft in almost every important factor: preciseness, accuracy, palm rejection, pressure sensitivity, stability.

But that’s just actual pencil/stylus experience. Everything else is just a matter of taste and software availability.

A while back I walked into the mall of america to buy my wife a tablet to draw on. This was when the stores were right across from each other. Walk into the apple store, pick up an iPad, can't get it to vary line width by pressure with the stylus. Walk across the hall to the microsoft store, surface stylus works perfectly. Easy choice.

You must have missed the critical “open Procreate” step. It was a instant buy for me.

The problems with the Go 2 that I've seen in reviews are:

* The base model has a woefully underpowered Pentium CPU

* The upgrade model has a more reasonable but still not great m3 that seems like it'd be a tad too underpowered for dev work, unfortunately - maybe this is my fault for being an IntelliJ user, though.

* The keyboard/trackpad cover is a separate purchase, and while it's not the eye-watering $350 that the newest iPad Pro keyboard/trackpad is, it's still an extra $100 or so.

* The keyboard/trackpad cover is a bit wobbly and too small to be comfortable for extended use.

The biggest issue is that the Go 2's upgrade version + keyboard cover is a total of around $720, which is the same cost as a lot of solid entry-level Windows laptops that have much more powerful processors.

Pricing is a constant problem with Surface hardware across the board, so this isn't that surprising, but was disappointing to me - the Pentium version sounds underpowered to the point of uselessness, but the upgrade variant is too expensive to justify as anything but my primary computer and far too underpowered for that.

Here's The Verge with more: https://www.theverge.com/21259805/microsoft-surface-go-2-rev...

That said I know there have already been some small sales during the Go 2 launch (e.g. Best Buy took $25 off the cover), so I'm kind of hopeful that within the next six months it'll somehow dip below $600 or so.

It sounds like you expected to get a high-powered dev machine comparable to 1500$ laptops (which are kinda required to run IntelliJ) and not, what is essentially, a lowend laptop without about the slowest Core CPU out there.

And here I am using Toshiba Chromebook 2 with 4 GB of RAM to do schoolwork Java assignments with IntelliJ. No wonder it was taking so long to compile

I have a cheap HP convertable tablet/laptop. Windows 10 seems to work well with both touch screen and keyboard/touchpad to me so I would expect the Surface machines to be similar.

I've only used one and it was a couple years ago but the UI was really laggy and slow, if you're expecting something like iOS. The touch interface experience in Win10 was probably fine if you're someone who didn't mind using 2005-era PC laptop trackpads (I gather such people exist?).

This exact tablet didn't exist couple of years ago :/

Well yeah, it was an earlier Surface, of course. This was about three generations in to my reading about how good they were, though. I was pretty surprised at the reality of it when I finally got my hands on one.

Impressive, given I couldn't even get FreeBSD to boot at all in Hyper-V on Windows 10. I know the article is about OpenBSD, but still.

What was the problem?

We ran a large fleet on Hyper-V / Azure.

It was a couple of months ago, so I don't recall exactly, but I think I couldn't get it to recognise the hard disk.

Are you using any particular boot settings, and are you using IDE or SCSI (virtual) disks?

I think that we use blkvsc and storvsc disks. I think that the former are used for boot.

I am currently running it with as far as I remember standard setting in Hyper-V, so it may have been some sperious error that happened to you.

I remember having issues with the default Ethernet-adapter, but getting it booted was never an issue.

Maybe OP is misremembering his issues?

> OpenBSD does not support Bluetooth

hmm...

Anymore.

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140511572108715&w=2

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