10 ms·

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 Micro

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 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.

jlkuester7 4y ago
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...).
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Not true. Linux on BayTrail hardware is pretty much rock-solid by now (at least if you're running Fedora-derived distros). The thing is it can take many years to get to that level of support. It's absolutely normal for newly released hardware to be broken in many ways.
- Agamus 4y ago
  Untrue. I'm no expert, but I have never had a problem setting up LineageOS on a Samsung - works like a charm, and I love it.
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    Lineage is not Linux in the sense that Debian is. They share the kernel and that's it.
- mrbuttons454 4y ago
  It's pretty broken on the Pinephone too
- solardev 4y ago
  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?
  - linmob 4y ago
    Android is running a Linux kernel, yes. But, as an enthusiast GNU+Linux desktop user you'll find that you can't do your linuxy stuff on Android - sure, termux does a lot, but it's just not the same. 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.
    - csdvrx 4y ago
      > 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. 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 https://github.com/quo/ithc-linux
      - linmob 4y ago
        Some distros do, and GNOME has been good to me too on many distributions with delivering a working virtual keyboard OOTB. KDE Neon, however, which I wanted to try after reading that KDE Plasma 5.25 has better tablet support, comes without a virtual keyboard (and AFAIK does not come with an easy option to install one, you need to know that it you have to install maliit-keyboard).
- fomine3 4y ago
  I wonder what tablet is used by GNOME developers.
sph 4y ago
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 adjectives in reviews have lost most of their meaning.
- pxmpxm 4y ago
  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 year-of-linux-on-x circle of life continues...
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    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.
    - retcon 4y ago
      Your WiFi module in any ThinkPad should be a M2 card and there's a wide selection of alternatives for about thirty bucks.
rob_c 4y ago
Yeah, have to agree, wish they actually made half of that it work because it can, as they say it requires _effort_ to setup properly,... 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.
dwighttk 4y ago
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.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Most Dell equipment supports Linux well, out of the box.
- pizza234 4y ago
  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, 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.
  - kreetx 4y ago
    AFAIK Macbooks are slso mostly supported, albeit with a lag (e.g ATM graphics supporton M1's GPU is not ready yet). 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.)
makeitdouble 4y ago
I agree with you, but also think for a linux experience on a device that wasn’t meant for it, it’s par for the course. Of the above, the only critical flaw would be the camera not working, the rest is manageable. 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.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Sometimes these issues can be fixed by adjusting process priorities. Try giving Pulseaudio a higher priority.
  - vanviegen 4y ago
    Giving pulseaudio a higher priority to avoid it bringing the system down... ?
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
      No... if videoconferencing software runs slow, with choppy audio and low framerates, try prioritizing the sound daemon and whatever videoconferencing software you use so that the scheduler makes sure those processes run in a timely manner.
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
hardwaresofton 4y ago
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/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/
- squarefoot 4y ago
  > 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.
fortran77 4y ago
This is what Linux true believers put up with, no matter what laptop or tablet platform.
linmob 4y ago
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 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 https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.flxzt.rnote [2]: https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ [3]: https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/05/30/towards-gnome-shell-on-mobile/ https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/05/30/towards-gnome-s...
- mkesper 4y ago
  Debian supports UEFI with secure boot too so this must be some specific quirk.
- benlivengood 4y ago
  Have you noticed a big problem with ZFS on 8GB of RAM? I've successfully ran fairly large (2TB, thousands of snapshots) zpools out of 4GB of RAM, with dedup off of course.
  - 4y ago
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Agreed, this is why I find Chromebook, with its great Linux container support, so nice. I know the author mentioned he tried this on a Lenovo Chromebook and said it was dog slow. I have it running on my Pixelbook and with maxed out RAM it worked well. Soooooo sad there hasn't been much news on a new Pixelbook, was such a great device.
- jshen 4y ago
  Can you properly install a browser other than chrome on a chromebook these days?
  - 0des 4y ago
    you can install firefox on linux and run it as an app in chromeos but the performance isn't great on pixelbook i7. I ran into a lot of issues with regard to networking between the chromeos layer and the linux layer, its like they're nat'd or something rather than bridged, so good luck running a test environment for some things without extra steps.
31835843 4y ago
This is my experience with every “Linux works on…” post. It’s always caveated down to an unreasonable definition of working.
caycep 4y ago
that's pretty good for Debian!

jlkuester7 4y ago

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...).

zozbot234 4y ago
Not true. Linux on BayTrail hardware is pretty much rock-solid by now (at least if you're running Fedora-derived distros). The thing is it can take many years to get to that level of support. It's absolutely normal for newly released hardware to be broken in many ways.
Agamus 4y ago
Untrue. I'm no expert, but I have never had a problem setting up LineageOS on a Samsung - works like a charm, and I love it.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Lineage is not Linux in the sense that Debian is. They share the kernel and that's it.
mrbuttons454 4y ago
It's pretty broken on the Pinephone too
solardev 4y ago
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?
- linmob 4y ago
  Android is running a Linux kernel, yes. But, as an enthusiast GNU+Linux desktop user you'll find that you can't do your linuxy stuff on Android - sure, termux does a lot, but it's just not the same. 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.
  - csdvrx 4y ago
    > 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. 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 https://github.com/quo/ithc-linux
    - linmob 4y ago
      Some distros do, and GNOME has been good to me too on many distributions with delivering a working virtual keyboard OOTB. KDE Neon, however, which I wanted to try after reading that KDE Plasma 5.25 has better tablet support, comes without a virtual keyboard (and AFAIK does not come with an easy option to install one, you need to know that it you have to install maliit-keyboard).
fomine3 4y ago
I wonder what tablet is used by GNOME developers.

sph 4y ago

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 adjectives in reviews have lost most of their meaning.

pxmpxm 4y ago
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 year-of-linux-on-x circle of life continues...
- goosedragons 4y ago
  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.
  - retcon 4y ago
    Your WiFi module in any ThinkPad should be a M2 card and there's a wide selection of alternatives for about thirty bucks.

rob_c 4y ago

Yeah, have to agree, wish they actually made half of that it work because it can, as they say it requires _effort_ to setup properly,... 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.

dwighttk 4y ago

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.

29athrowaway 4y ago
Most Dell equipment supports Linux well, out of the box.
pizza234 4y ago
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, 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.
- kreetx 4y ago
  AFAIK Macbooks are slso mostly supported, albeit with a lag (e.g ATM graphics supporton M1's GPU is not ready yet). 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.)

makeitdouble 4y ago

I agree with you, but also think for a linux experience on a device that wasn’t meant for it, it’s par for the course. Of the above, the only critical flaw would be the camera not working, the rest is manageable. 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.

29athrowaway 4y ago
Sometimes these issues can be fixed by adjusting process priorities. Try giving Pulseaudio a higher priority.
- vanviegen 4y ago
  Giving pulseaudio a higher priority to avoid it bringing the system down... ?
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    No... if videoconferencing software runs slow, with choppy audio and low framerates, try prioritizing the sound daemon and whatever videoconferencing software you use so that the scheduler makes sure those processes run in a timely manner.

JohnHaugeland 4y ago

hardwaresofton 4y ago

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/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/

squarefoot 4y ago
> 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.

fortran77 4y ago

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

linmob 4y ago

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 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 https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.flxzt.rnote [2]: https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ [3]: https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/05/30/towards-gnome-shell-on-mobile/ https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/05/30/towards-gnome-s...

mkesper 4y ago
Debian supports UEFI with secure boot too so this must be some specific quirk.
benlivengood 4y ago
Have you noticed a big problem with ZFS on 8GB of RAM? I've successfully ran fairly large (2TB, thousands of snapshots) zpools out of 4GB of RAM, with dedup off of course.
- 4y ago

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Agreed, this is why I find Chromebook, with its great Linux container support, so nice. I know the author mentioned he tried this on a Lenovo Chromebook and said it was dog slow. I have it running on my Pixelbook and with maxed out RAM it worked well. Soooooo sad there hasn't been much news on a new Pixelbook, was such a great device.

jshen 4y ago
Can you properly install a browser other than chrome on a chromebook these days?
- 0des 4y ago
  you can install firefox on linux and run it as an app in chromeos but the performance isn't great on pixelbook i7. I ran into a lot of issues with regard to networking between the chromeos layer and the linux layer, its like they're nat'd or something rather than bridged, so good luck running a test environment for some things without extra steps.

31835843 4y ago

This is my experience with every “Linux works on…” post. It’s always caveated down to an unreasonable definition of working.

caycep 4y ago

that's pretty good for Debian!