I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
changelog.complete.org
changelog.complete.org
- 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 want this, and it sounds like the author might be trying to force a tablet to be a laptop when they’d have just been better of with a laptop to begin with.
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 adjectives in reviews have lost most of their meaning.
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 year-of-linux-on-x circle of life continues...
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.
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?
The Surface Go 2 that the article is about, is an x86_64 device - I recently aquired one and it's really quite nice with Linux in my limited testing. The biggest difficulty with a standard desktop GNU+Linux on a tablet is that most distributions are not optimized for easy tablet use - KDE Neon User Edition e.g. does not come with a virtual keyboard preinstalled.
On Yoga style laptops: Well, they are easier to get started with, but they often are quite a big bigger and having those keys on the back all the time... It's doable, but if you want a "nice 10" tablet" experience these devices are just not what you will want: Too large, too thick, too heavy.
Ubuntu 22 on a Lenovo X1 Fold gave me the OSK without installing anything - though the touchscreen was not supported by default, the driver is under work cf https://github.com/quo/ithc-linux
But by doing that you get to maintain all the malware that comes builtin on the mobile OSes.
The OP wants to replace the kernel. But most mobile devices use very specific hardware that do not have drivers compatible with the standard kernel you get from your distro. Technically, the manufacturer should have to supply you the source of the drivers they use (so you could port them), but good luck enforcing any right of yours against a large company on the legal system (any country's one actually).
Tbh the surface pro 3 and sp4 were about at the same level of fiddlyness, but the battery life was just up there with a normal laptop, definately not ipad territory.
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.
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.
Also had to tweak kernel with a recent Ryzen GPU a few years ago on a desktop, but after that it worked. (Now the tweak isn't required anymore.)
I’m looking for an alternative when Apple stops supporting Mac OS on this machine, and I was surprised at how flakey the hardware was in Linux on a 7 year old machine.
What is graphics switching, there is one (integrated) GPU, no?
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 actually more expensive.
I ask because I kind of want to get out of the closed ecosystem. Not so much because I dislike Apple but because I figure that with the way things are going for big American tech companies I’ll likely dislike them sooner or later. But I’ve never found a Linux (or windows) laptop that came close to the daily usage of a MacBook Air. Obviously I’m not in need of a powerhouse or a computer, weight, battery life and a good mousepad is my primary requirements, but yeah.
Putting Linux on Windows hardware is a mug's game.
- 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.
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.
Having 16GB and up, though, an M1's fantastic. If I had to be resource constrained, though, I think I'd prefer something that handled Linux well.
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 closest experience for Windows, thanks to Microsoft's investments, but battery life and heat have been an issue on all x86 laptops for at least 5-7 years, with very recent improvements only coming from AMD and now on the 12th-Gen Intel processors. But nothing exists that matches the battery life and power/performance of the M-series. You can get a more powerful machine, but not one that will have battery life worth a damn.
And even as trackpads have improved with the Precision Touchpad drivers, Macs are just better here. Period.
If you don’t count Chromebooks (and I really don’t), there is no one investing anything close to what Microsoft and OEMs are in Linux, not just in software, but hardware, so even the best scenarios are going to fall short. It doesn’t help that the latest and greatest hardware takes to hit the kernel (understandable, of course), meaning you’ve got a lagging timeline from when the stuff is new/hot and when it works.
My Framework is quite good and with Linux, but it took a few months for drivers to be included in most distros (Fedora being so bleeding edge made it a real hero), and now 12th-gens are coming out and I don’t know the status of those chipsets (though WiFi 6E and the like are supported), and Framework cares about Linux and that community.
System 76 and Tuxedo basically just buy Chinese or Taiwanese laptops from Clevo or Tongfang and can make some adjustments to the firmware and hardware config, but they don’t control the whole stack. And even Purism, who sells itself as offering an Apple-like experience, falls embarrassingly short (like, their own firmware updates are bricking $2000 laptops running 2019/2020 specs. And the keyboards are terrible and their own Debian spin distro is not great).
So it’s amazing we have what we have. That we can buy pre-configured Linux laptops. But unless you want to do a Chromebook and tweak into run Linux apps, nothing has the experience you have on Windows, let alone Mac.
Someone will try to refute what I’ve said, but unless the hardware is very specific and the distro is very specific, you don’t get anything close. And it absolutely won’t have the power or niceties of a Mac. It just won’t.
Future Apple hardware being usable with Linux is not a bet I would make. I used to run Linux on a PowerPC iBook, and it's been downhill from there.
Hardware designed to run one operating system isn't necessarily going to perform well with a different operating system, and expecting otherwise of every arbitrary machine on store shelves is unrealistic. Prospective buyers need to do research beforehand.
It had all the problems your average Linux install will encounter without the enthusiast-written drivers to work around manufacturers' lack of support.
That said, the Steam Deck seems to be the first non-enthusiast device where the manufacturer actually cares. Even laptops that get sold with Ubuntu preinstalled from the factory don't seem to receive that much support over the years.
My biggest gripe is docking station compatibility with the Dell TB16 which, to be fair, is largely own fault. Suspending the laptop while connected to three ext displays and input devices, then spinning it back up before re-connection produces some gnarly results.
1. sleep draining batteries: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1808957
2. keyboard lights turning on even when disabled: https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/keyboard-light-keeps-turning...
The second is just annoying; the first is serious (for a laptop).
Not true anymore.
> 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).
When? Which models?
ACPI S01x when well done works better than ACPI S3, and Linux support for S01x is now getting quite good.
On a X1 nano, I've got less than 0.2%/h of power draw: so 10h of sleep consumes about 2% battery
On the X1 Fold, I was able to reduce that to about 0.5%/h after some workaround for Intel drivers bugs: cf https://csdvrx.github.io/ or just the graph https://csdvrx.github.io/X1_Fold_(20RL_20RK)_Optimization/pa...
It's still a work in progress, but I can't remember ACPI S3 consuming less that 5% overnight and resuming instantly.
> 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.
Laptops often need more tweaks than desktops.
Of the 35 students in my class, 25 completed the installation without issue, with all hardware (never asked about fingerprint scanners) running fine. The rest required some help from expert googlers like me and some patience, in most cases related to Nvidia drivers. We got all but two to work fine or well enough in the end.
Having 5 to 10 consecutive bad experiences sounds like a fluke to me, given the 70% instant success rate I've seen.
Can’t they use a normal cloud instance or a VM?
A few students (those whose laptops we could not convince to run Linux) work within a VM, but that experience is comparatively miserable.
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 are some very suitable laptops that would have had support out of the box.
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.
It's not my experience at all. When I buy a computer to run Linux I normally get one with Linux preinstalled (normally the latest LTS Ubuntu). Then if I ever need to upgrade to a more recent version of Ubuntu it generally goes smoothly.
Desktops are somewhat more hit-and-miss, as are discrete GPUs (I hear the newer AMD GPU drivers are much improved, but have no personal experience with them).
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.
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
I monitor their news section almost daily to follow the development of their devices, especially the PineNote and PineTab. I've almost given up about the PinePhone however because of my reading difficulties with smallish screens; Having no needs for a smartphone, I've found that a 4G capable dumbphone working as hotspot plus this Thinkpad are the perfect pair.
- 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...
# cat /etc/modprobe.d/tiny-modprobe.d-zfs.conf
options zfs zfs_arc_max=2147483648Yes, but not with a laptop mentioned in an article called "I Finally Found a Solid Debian Laptop".
This is not a solid debian tablet, it's a shitty unsupported tablet. Thinkpads (t series) are solid linux laptops, with occasional mini quirks, this tablet is far from anything "solid".
Touch works, the Pen works (with pressure sensitivity) rotation works, WiFi and Bluetooth work, Standby (deep sleep, I put to sleep for 8 hours and it only lost 5%) works (including wake-up).
Non working: Webcams.
All that OOTB, without switching to a special kernel or similar. If that’s "shitty unsupported tablet" in your book that's ok, but in my book it's pretty cool and way better than what I've seen on my last ThinkPad (L380 Yoga) when I got it, where standby wouldn’t just work.
Soooooo sad there hasn't been much news on a new Pixelbook, was such a great device.
I installed Linux on it recently thanks to the linux-surface project which improved the experience quite a bit as I don’t have to deal with Windows 11 shit anymore, but the performance is still dreadful. You know it’s bad when after 30 mins of it being on it’s slower and laggier than a £500 laptop.
Will never by a Surface product again, easily one of the worst purchasing decisions I have made.
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.
But I think that's just because I'm accustomed to having direct access to files and filesystems, and the extra later of abstraction (already necessary to visually translate a filesystem) just becomes bothersome.
E.g. I still need to cd and ls in a very primitive and visceral way, feel my way around the warren like a mole so to speak, even if I can just click/tap on a screen or C-x C-f.
Probably how the mind gets wired with basic text UIs like the DOS and Unix command lines, before you get to stuff like Midnight Commander.
Pretty weird, if you ask me, as that's more of a verbal and less than a visual way of interacting with the system, while I'm an otherwise visual person.
When traveling with an iPad (sometimes I take the Chromebook) I find using a SSH or Mosh client app with a remote server works very well. Your mileage may vary.
I never found a good solution, so I pack my iPad Mini and my Macbook. I just need stronger legs.
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.
Same!
> Cool to see someone tackling it!
Just FYI, the last showstopper was the touchscreen. It's now working great with quo's driver (from the surface-linux project).
If you use Ubuntu 22 and this driver, you just need some kernel cmdline option for X to avoid some minor display corruption.
Like I did for Windows11 on https://csdvrx.github.io/ I aim to write down everything to get a great Linux experience on the Fold.
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.
It's smaller and does everything multiple separate device would be needed for.
> I had to painstakingly pick a location and name for each file.
First world problem lol!!
For old apps, I have an AHK shortcut to save files by ISO date. However, it's rarely a problem with modern apps. And if you close them without saving, most of them will bring back your unsaved work. Even Word does that!
> By tablet stuff, I mean reading, taking notes and sketching. No app ecosystem does it like iPad OS'.
For comics and mangas, I use Takiyomi (technically, it's an android app, but WSA makes it seamless)
For taking notes, I use ZimWiki and Windows stickies
For sketching, I use OneNote.
> The iPad was so much better at its task that it's not even funny.
We must have very different uses, because between even just Takiyomi+OneNote vs an ipad, indeed it's not funny for the ipad.
> That's on top of the regular Windows problems. I spent the first day just doing updates and disabling bloat
Well, don't look further for the root cause: "disabling bloat" often causes more problems. I only remove very specific things. For updates, I use Windows Pro and usually defer them until I want to reboot. When I read the problem people report with windows, it's like they live in a different world.
> Now I take my iPad everywhere, and if I intend to do more work, I pack my Macbook
I just take my Fold everywhere - nothing else is needed, but I've got a bluetooth keyboard for comfort if I want to type a lot.
On the Fold, I can draw with a Wacom pen - no need for a separate device like the ipad, because most windows tablet and convertibles also have a touchscreen.
If I need to work, I have Windows Terminal and everything I need to code. ZimWiki means my notes can be converted to HTML and published.
Onenote particularly is a hard no for any sketching in terms of actual artistic output.
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)
When I first had it the responsiveness and accuracy for drawing were great, but the lines all wiggle now -- there's a simple calibration that I think will fix it, but that's locked down by our IT department for reasons. If the wiggle were fixed I'd have almost no complaints (except the prices to me are eye-watering, I have the oem dock and keyboard cover too; also Windows is so awful as a window manager).
But yes, there are devices which are quite good. But ideally I also would want a linux one.
While the actual tablet experience in Windows 11 is mediocre, the fact that I run plain, regular desktop apps makes the device so much more enjoyable to use. It's not a replacement for a decent laptop, but as a tablet, I'd pick this one over crappy Android or locked-down iOS any time of the day.
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 create full music tracks with professional quality. You can write books on it, you can watch your tv shows, read your comic books, and do a whole lot of stuff in a way that for me, is simply much more delightful than sitting at my computer.
There's plenty of uses that it doesn't serve very well, though. The coding experience is lackluster at best. The fact that there's only one web browser engine is a miss. The fact that the concept of extensibility is severely gimped or nonexistent in applications is a miss (though the addition of extensions to safari helps a bit). The fact that there's no reasonable way to side load officially supported by Apple is awful. A lot of these points are probably ones that are important to the hacker crowd on HN so to those people they probably find it hard to overlook those shortcomings.
I use my iPad every day and I love it for the things that it does do. To me that is enough to consider it a good tablet experience.
Even there, I'd argue that Android is the worst part of the platform.
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.
I've tried both. Both are a pain IMO (but Mac doesn't really improve this). With WSL2 you end up with another abstraction layer that you have to figure how to get your programs to work nice with.
With Docker Desktop, there's been some performance issues lately. Doesn't turn into a hoverboard like my mac, but the performance still lags.
I mainly use it to script small things on python and that's worked out fine. Haven't had issues with paths which was the most annoying things last time I tried it on Windows.
I've taken a hard look at what the strengths/weaknesses of tablets are (see my link-drop elsewhere in this subthread), and the one thing they're really good at seems to be reading ebooks. For which a dedicated e-ink ebook reader is far superior.
Almost any productivity task is better done with a keyboard, ergo, laptop.
Video and audio capture are more flexibly and usefully achieved with a dedicated camera or recorder, and both can be extremely inexpensive.
(I've also reasons for wanting my audio/video capture tools to have minimal connectivity and not be part of a surveillance-capitalism platform.)
Handwritten notetaking is another possible application, though having a keyboard available makes typed notes and note-management systems viable. Then there's drawing / sketching. Again, e-ink kworks well for B&W there.
Video can be watched on a laptop. Audiobooks are pretty well suited to an e-ink tablet again.
The iPad has a great size and depth for this. When I use my wife's the thickness is not bad. If I want to annotate a PDF, I can sit on the couch and it's super easy and not heavy or too thick.
Videos, I can easily remove the keyboard, prop it against something and it doesn't take more space. However, I rarely do this for long periods. My main use to watch videos is to figure something out and take notes.
I want to be able to take handwritten notes, highlight and annotate PDF's, and research using a full featured browser. So it's an in-between. I think the iPad is close. Hardware is there (same CPU/architecture). Just needs software support.
We also have leaned towards mac's just for the UNIX tools but also it has a ton of nice things so that's why I think that the OS would be great. Copy from your computer, paste it on your ipad, keep going or open it through Files.
I'm pretty happy with the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi. That's 13.3". There are 10.3" and 8" devices as well.
Have you actually tried using an e-ink device for taking notes? Sluggish and not nearly good enough compared to Goodnotes (iPad), OneNote (Windows), Xournalpp (Linux).
>Video and audio capture are more flexibly and usefully achieved with a dedicated camera or recorder, and both can be extremely inexpensive.
Can not work as well for making instructional videos as a tablet with screen recording.
>Audiobooks are pretty well suited to an e-ink tablet again.
Phones or an mp3 player.
I really wouldn't call iPadOS 16 a major update for anything but the M1 iPads.
>Yes running external systems is cheating but the actual end result is insanely functional.
Now go somewhere without great internet connectivity and attempt to do work.
If you end up in a situation where you are suddenly without internet connectivity, the solution is simple: you stop working or you move somewhere that has internet connectivity. If you are knowingly going somewhere without internet and want to do work, you're obviously going to make arrangements to ensure that you can work. Maybe that means bringing a different device with you or maybe you find a workaround. For example, this youtuber/developer uses a raspberry pi connected directly to the iPad as a development server [1]. I think it's a tad silly, but it seems to work well for him to complete his work.
The whole "what if you don't have an internet connection?" argument just seems like needless FUD-spreading. I don't see it as a realistic problem for the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time.
I personally don't think Microsoft quite got it right with using Windows on a tablet, though it was certainly a lot better with Windows 8, which is what the surface pro 2 (I think the first one as well?) shipped with. There's way too many compromises on usability because it's running Windows, and there's no meaningful impetus for developers to create their applications specifically with touch in mind.
Apple's been much more antagonistic to developers yet they still get people making apps specifically for iPadOS in a way that neither Google nor Microsoft have managed. I think this is the advantage to their totalitarian strategy; they get less applications built for iOS/iPadOS overall and their restrictions make it significantly harder or impossible to create some things you can find easily on Windows, Android, or even MacOS, but because they control the platform they can impose minimum requirements for applications on the platform and as a result you actually get programs that run with that device's UX paradigms in mind. It probably also helps that their platform makes more money and that the iPad is already in a position of dominance in this market, but I digress.
If Microsoft wants to fully realize their Surface tablet vision, they need to pump a ton of money into getting developers on board and building apps that fit the UX paradigms of Surface tablets.
Plus I can read books or watch videos, take notes, etc, in tablet mode.
> building apps that fit the UX paradigms of Surface tablets
I kinda don’t want this. A major selling point was that I have a full OS with the same applications on my desktop and laptop (ie, PyCharm, other python-related stuff, Firefox, custom python, bash, powershell scripts). No need to have completely different apps because the tablet maker hobbles the OS, making using a tablet in laptop mode useless.
It can be awkward for sure in tablet mode, but it does kinda work.
Regarding that use case, the only thing I don't like about Surface 7 Pro is its screen which is very much reflective. Other then that, its totally awesome.
I personally use both a laptop and an iPad regularly enough in their own contexts that I find it worthwhile to have both.
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/
Besides shortcuts between Windows and Mac, I can type on any of them.
Of course, I prefer my Kinesis, but, it's not an issue really switching.
I do wish there was a better option available on keyboards but alas the market is quite niche. Separating the keyboard from the laptop seems to be the only realistic option for people with those needs.
It's been reasonable for what I use it for, mainly SDR applications, such as CubicSDR and GNU Radio X11 apps, and multiple CLI apps like rtl_433. Audio is good, screen is fine, and WiFi works. It's nice to have a laptop if I want to use an antenna outside.
Don't even bother using the tiny trackpad on that model's type cover. Bluetooth works so I use that for an external mouse.
Bonus: I never even thought to try the built-in video cam, and after reading the article, I installed VLC and to my surprise the camera worked!
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 having stuff like proper multitasking, being able to use apps like VS Code or my preferred PDF reader, and actual desktop Firefox with all the extensions does outweigh that jankiness for me.
I don't understand the purpose of the "big phone" tablets when phones themselves have now gotten as big as my first tablet.
I think future iPhones may provide similar docking and software, so, who knows, maybe in five years a phone will be good for everything as long as docking setups are available.
As I said elsewhere in this thread, to use iOS or iPadOS for general use, I need a SSH/Mosh client app and a remote server. This may seem like a huge constraint but I often use SSH/Mosh on my laptops and work on remote servers. This is likely an age thing: I am 71 years old and it seems natural for me to work with remote Emacs, etc. setups.
I end up stripping DRM off mine with Calibre's tools, then reading them on calibre-web.
Or just get an actual Kindle.
I want to replace paper books and notebooks. The iPad is unrivalled for that. If I need a machine to type on, I need a full OS on a full laptop. I just pack both.
There still isnt an easy way to give an ipad an SSH identity and sync arbitrary folders for example.
Only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader.
There was a better writeup from someone using debian on a surface pro 6 to run their law firm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29199395
ACPI S01x done right is great: it can consume less power than S3 suspend and resume faster! (though after a few weeks, I think your surface may have gone into S4 hibernate)
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.
Things have steadily gotten better in terms of support via linux-surface, but it's definitely on the wild-west edge of the linux universe; current issues:
1) The wifi driver isn't in the mainline kernel yet for whatever reason. After doing a dist upgrade you have to copy the driver into two locations. This is documented on linux-surface's site; I wrote a script to do it, and it's not that bad.
2) Camera doesn't work. Gives me a good excuse to do off-camera zooms while travelling. :)
3) PopOS specific issue: cannot run their system updater with the linux-surface PPA active. This is really annoying, and probably enough reason for me to just switch back to Kubuntu on it. (Also, I don't like Gnome's insistence on switching to lodpi mode, despite my having set up fractional scaling).
That's a very Debian issue. It's the only distro where I've ever had to do silly things like that.
Uh? That's HUGE!
I recommend instead a AOHI GaN USB-C PD charger: the 30W is much smaller and sufficient to charge most laptops https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097BWY4WG
The chubbier AOHI 65W I got when I thought I may need it now sits at home. I also got a USB-C cable with an integrated display to monitor how much the devices are drawing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MS545VF
Even the M1, which is praised for it's power efficiency can hit 40-50W under load. Such a charger will let the battery run down if you actually use your laptop for intensive tasks while charging. I don't think that qualifies as "most laptops" (and forget high end Intel laptops that are more than a generation old, they'd draw more than that watching a 4k movie)
I've sometimes seen high draws thanks to the small display on the cable, but I rarely do very intensive task at a coffeeshop.
The small charger is mostly for the peace of mind.
At home, I've got the chubby 65W if needed.
In Europe, there is a company that does decent custom chargers, but it's nowhere on Amazon (wonder why): https://www.promate.net/collections/wall-chargers
Don't you have some with retractable or switchable prongs? That's a very nice feature of some of our North American adapters!
Wrong, they have the smallest chargers (for the same wattage). They seem to be bragging about some "new tech" that makes it possible to pack so tightly.
The UK plugs are ugly no matter what :) regardless of manufacturer. Fortunately I have Type C plug.
MrChromebox currently publishes only RW_LEGACY firmware (not full ROM, only replacing the stock SeaBIOS) for AMD Picasso/Dali and Intel Tiger Lake devices, but a) that's enough to boot whatever you want and b) you can build your own full ROM.
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.
Instead of constantly accusing people of being religious zealots (in order to associate them with irrationality), how about just doing an hour of research before making your next attempt?
My friend did the same thing and in the end the Wifi didn't work.
> Instead of constantly accusing people of being religious zealots
Many people are religious about one thing or another, Linux is no exception, it's a fact of life.
> how about just doing an hour of research before making your next attempt?
Needing to research whether the hardware supports Linux is a clear indication that it shouldn't be used! Linux has been around for 30 years! if in 30 years the project has not solved the problem of drivers, it is a shame and a total failure in this area, because billions are invested in Linux per year.
That said, I lucked out with my Linux experience. Everything I need works well, and I don't tinker with it more than I did with Windows. The main difference is that I have much more control over the situation, compared to Windows' typical unhelpful messages and opaque environment.
Yes, without doubt, Microsoft make a lot of bad things to Windows being the primary pc platform.
> That said, I lucked out with my Linux experience. Everything I need works well
My friend who uses a USB dongle for Wifi says the same thing!
I reckon you may have not tried a recent Linux kernel. Network hardware support is definitely better than MacOS at this point, and is creeping up on Windows in the consumer segment. I've used 5 different devices from 5 different manufacturers on Linux. Only one of them had a WiFi issue, which was only because the distro I was testing didn't ship with the specific driver for it (FWIW it was also a Surface product).
It is curious though, I do see people who share your sentiment but, like the parent comment, I legitimately have no problems with it. My OEM Lenovo desktop from 2014 worked just fine. My new custom-built gaming PC with proprietary everything seems to work fine, too. I genuinely struggle to find devices that run Linux poorly, outside of maybe the gaming laptop space and Macbook market. It's probably one of those Paretto principle things: 80% of people will be offended by the 20% of drivers that are missing from your kernel.
I do wish you luck in the future. Nobody deserves to be saddled with telemetry/adware just because their hardware is unsupported on other OSes, but blind-box reverse-engineering the drivers for all your esoteric Chinese WiFi cards is oftentimes not really worth the trouble. Like I said in the other post, Linux never claims to have driver parity with Windows (nor can it, really). However, informed consumers can pretty easily source hardware with excellent Linux support. HP and Lenovo sell first-party machines with Linux preinstalled and guaranteed driver support, as well as many other smaller manufacturers. With cheap, cobbled-together gaming laptops, that's often not possible.
This is why I'd like to see the following things in the technology space. Linux, Libreoffice, GIMP, etc being the default software they teach in schools. Them being used as defaults in governments. Linux coming preinstalled on computers by default, with Windows coming with an extra price tag. If these would magically happen somehow, the tables would have been turned - now it's up to Microsoft to adhere to a standard, and people would be confused as to why someone would bother tinkering with Windows and Office when the forms, submissions, contracts and presentations are expected in the libre formats anyways.
- Developers, sysadmins and power-users who intend to exploit the depth of it's featureset
or
- Crypto nerds, privacy advocates, free-software puritans, and other alt-software niches
To that end, I think it holds down both bases quite well. Linux is the #1 server operating system in the world by an insurmountable margin, and the alt-software crusaders are fat and happy. Linux isn't a panacea, it's a piece of software that was made to solve a problem. To this day, it continues to solve that problem (and people still misconstrue it's goals).
Also, Linux is pretty much a panacea. We have it demonstrated currently. It works perfectly well in server, desktop, laptop and mobile environments. It continues to prove itself as a viable alternative to whatever else these platforms run.
The crux of people's Linux issues is not a technical one. Linux, as a platform, doesn't have the clout the alternatives do have. This means that the tinkering that comes with integrating systems falls on the Linux people, and the end users. Neither of them have the information, which often doesn't leave the manufacturer, and the adequate time and know-how to keep up - so the systems end up working less reliably. Which, of course, works out well in favor of the companies that offer end-to-end integrated systems - Apple, Google, Microsoft.
When I say that everything I need works well, I do mean it, but the "I need" part does a lot of work. I don't need the fingerprint scanner, or the built-in sound card, or the bundleware that comes with the rgb gaming mouse.
> linux doesn't support the motherboard wifi chip
Some drivers are included with the kernel and have 1st class support due to their importance but most wireless and video depends on manufacturers due to changing hardware and licencing issues.
You are a software developer, you know this should read "the manufacturer didn't release a Linux driver".
Probably many Linux problems are not just technical problems, but political problems or other types of problems, but the result is the same: A terrible user experience.
I'm sorry, this is a bald-faced lie. Every motherboard I've ever purchased has worked just fine with Linux networking out-of-the-box. If you bought a motherboard that doesn't support Linux, then I'm sorry to hear. That doesn't apply to everything though, so I'd recommend revising your wording in the future.
It's kinda like complaining that your new Nvidia GPU won't get recognized by your Mac Pro, therefore all GPUs are incompatible with MacOS!
I another thing people say: You're a liar.
> That doesn't apply to everything
I never said that. And I never said that every GPU is incompatible with Linux.
You've never used XPS 13 Developer's Edition. It ships with Ubuntu. The hardware runs 100% on Linux.
I even checked with the intel GPU command that measures whether it's actually using accelerated video. Everything works on Firefox and Chromium. Well, except those Reddit videos that use the web blob API, but those seem to buffer and screw up on every OS I've ever used.
Reddit videos are something, it is horrible on all systems/networks I've tested. :D
Never had a single issue on Lenovo think pads or Dell xps.
Desktop had an issue when I bought a ryzen 3700x processor at launch, due to a bug in the cpu. A patch was released within a week iirc.
What I found was that it's a cool way to play Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Playing that game on a tablet gives the feeling of playing an interactive board game. It runs smoothly in Wine. A pretty important thing in the game is the ability to right click, which didn't work, and I would assume Windows have the same problem (I don't think Windows tablet support would be sufficient), so I wrote a mouse hook in win32 c that enables long press to right click.
There's lots of annoying nuances, like the Gnome 42 icons in the activity list is really small, the on screen keyboard is small and almost unusable in landscape mode (but big in portrait mode) and camera works for gstreamer apps only so no browser support (and the suggested fix doesn't work for Fedora 36).
I removed Windows and have locked the boot order so it won't be altered.
All in all 10/10 as a tablet for someone looking for excuses to tinker with Linux (and win32!).
I've switched to KDE (Arch) on mine. The on-screen keyboard is vastly better.
I bought one of these recently but the keyboard is making me very sad. Especially the arrow keys are almost too small for my fingers.
- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - Login screen showed the on screen keyboard (OSK) after enabling it in the accessibility menu, but had annoyances like shift staying on after hitting a key - Gnome was okay as a tablet interface, but OSK didn't work in non GTK apps, including Firefox - Autorotate worked once, but then never worked again - After waking up from sleep, the device would go back to sleep after 1 minute, regardless of what I was doing. - Kubuntu 22.04 LTS was like using a desktop OS with only a mouse. No autorotate or OSK - Fedora ran so poorly I gave up on it before testing it thoroughly - Manjaro had a working OSK throughout the OS, but autorotate was busted. It had the same sleep issue after Ubuntu.
In addition, the camera didn't work in every OS I tried. I eventually just put W10 back on them.
I'm considering getting one of these as they seem like ideal travel devices, but uneasy about having to rely on a small community for basic driver support. Official Linux support would be much better.
I don’t think official support will ever happen, but the Linux Surface project is very good and has lots of users internally at Microsoft who are very committed to helping report bugs/contribute back because they use it for work and for play. There’s a whole community of Linux enthusiasts at Microsoft and unsurprisingly, many use Surface devices, including the Surface Go line.
If I were to buy a Surface Go again — maybe the next model will be a little speedier (that was my main gripe with the 3), I think I would primarily use it as a Linux box, with Windows installed just in case , just as OP has.
Everything works except for the cameras. I mean the cameras can be made to kinda work, but in their current state don't produce a very good picture.
Anyway, with a fresh Void install and EFI fuckery-duckery, it somewhat resembles a working tablet now. I'll have to get a new battery for the pen but that's a minor detail.
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.
Windows is way more configurable than Linux. To this day, there's nothing like AHK on Linux! Also, Windows offers the best terminal experience.
I've tried foot on Wayland, it's ok, but I want better than ok. I've spend too much time trying to squeeze a good experience out of xterm (https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm)
How are you using terminals in Windows? Like you want to SSH from a fresh install, what do I do? (I find Linux superior here, but interested to learn why you're the opposite; maybe I'm doing it wrong)
No, but because it lets me do remaps, like having Caps be both Control and Esc - and I do the same with Enter being both Control when used with another key, and Enter alone. My Alt keys are Alt keys when used with another key, or Home/End when used alone.
My physical Esc key is a "jump to terminal" key that takes me from wherever to my fullscreen terminal, then back. For example, from the browser: one press of Esc gets me to the terminal, another press gets me back to the browser - and likewise for every app (not just the browser). That's even better than quake-mode!
I have other sequences to copy/paste images as base64enc and other crazy things that make my life easier: like changing the system and app theme to dark (or back to light), applying a color inversion +- red filter (late at night, no white: it's all just red), an OLED-black filter (to convert bad greys to pure black)
> How are you using terminals in Windows? Like you want to SSH from a fresh install, what do I do?
Install openssh from the windows settings: check https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrati...
I'd recommend the latest Windows terminal from the Microsoft store, or mintty from msys2, but that's just for comfort :)
> I find Linux superior here, but interested to learn why you're the opposite; maybe I'm doing it wrong
I like sixels, so I prefer mintty, but even without sixels, I find the Windows experience better. Yes, I want sixels and cute fonts with ligatures in my terminal. But I want proper support of bold, underline, italic. I want multiple tabs. I want to map key actions to everything - like, I want my terminal to change its color profile and font with just 1 key. I want keyboard shortcuts to different profiles with different shells or ssh hosts (with color or other titlebar/tab indicators to know at a glance which is which)
That's very hard on Linux, and sometimes just impossible. That's easy on Windows.
https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm#why-did-you-make-cutexte...
Anyone know if y/n?
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Surface-...
>The LTE version of the Surface Go 2 features the same Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 modem as the Surface Pro 2017 with LTE and the original Surface Go with LTE. The following thread is dedicated to enabling the LTE modem of those systems on Linux
https://kepi.cz/surface-go-2-lte-modem
Edit: I'm not using the Surface Linux kernel, just the stock Debian Testing kernel.
Any issues with the first generation?
Edit: sorry, my bad, I meant surface Go 1, not surface pro 1, which is too old I think.
This was meant in response to the people complaining about build quality
I've done most of my recent coding work on a Go, like, most of my sixel stuff!
The size is just right, so it followed me everywhere, and by spending 5 min on it here and there, I could get a lot of work done!
Also LTE is great: I don't want to waste even a minute looking for Wifi password. That's another productivity multiplier!
After that, I got a X1 nano, it's a great device but a bit too big for me, even it's just about 1 inch larger in both dimensions and about the same thickness.
More recently, I've moved to a X1 Fold, and it's even smaller than a Go when folded so it's now my favorite device! There were a few drivers problems I had to tackle, but now it's rock solid on Windows 11. Also, the OLED screen is ideal to use at night!
Cellular internet is the bees' knees