8 ms·

Review of Linux on Minisforum V3 AMD Ryzen Tablet

114 points by transpute 2y ago

ofrzeta 2y ago
"Until recently, if I wish to do some programming in a coffee shop or during a family trip, my only options are the corporate-provisioned MacBook or my iPad Pro 2020, neither of which is ideal." - why not buy a Macbook Air? It's more or less the same price and form factor as the iPad but has a keyboard. You can get a Macbook Air M1 for around 800 USD now.
- rty32 2y ago
  Touch screen and pen support seem to be very important to the author, based on the article. Taking company device for personal use is also apparently a no-no.
  - nolok 2y ago
    My Lenovo Carbon X1 has a touch screen option and is quite awesome. The Dell XPS serie also offers touchscreen options. Overall it feels like the author is not much aware of the higher range in the non Apple laptop class beside Surface. Not a big problem per se, but article like that are always following a journey / story so it sort of should be mentioned.
    - neon_44 2y ago
      Not the Author, but I am currently also looking at a new 2-in-1 for myself. And by far the biggest Factor pushing me to a minisforum v3 is the Price. I am currently looking at a old 3rd gen lenovo x13 yoga or the Minisforum While I personally would love the new Qualcomm Surface Pro, It's just not worth the price.
    - transpute 2y ago
      Looking forward to Linux touch-enabled Dell XPS Arm 2-in-1 based on Qualcomm Oryon.
    - AshamedCaptain 2y ago
      The author is complaining about the 2K of the minisforum being on the lower end. Most lenovo tablets/convertibles still ship with 1080p or worse screen except for the >3k$ variants. Lenovo is, for some reason, a friggin joke when it comes to screen resolution and quality. Their consumer laptops tend to have better resolutions on-paper than their pro lines. Good luck finding anything better than 1080p on 12 inches... I am perfectly aware of the non-Apple tablet market and I also think Surface is literally the best there is, as crappy MS is. Because no one else is even trying. The screen, aspect ratio, writing feel, builtin kickstand, ...
      - transpute 2y ago
        Does Apple have exclusive deals, investments or IP licensing with tablet display vendors? Apple is also the only vendor with 4:3 aspect ratio tablet displays.
        chrisco23 2y ago
        The 4:3 thing as you say. I've been wanting a tablet just for displaying sheet music. I asked some forum once but was told pretty much the same, only Apple. Why?
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Android manufacturers not understanding market.
        transpute 2y ago
        When your largest competitor for 10+ years has 4:3 screens, why not copy?
        Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
        People got sued last time they copied apple's rectangle
- etra0 2y ago
  I have my org's macbook pro, a personal macbook air, and a tablet. I wish the later two could simply be merged. I like how performant and silent the MBA is but there are lots of situation where simply using a tablet is more comfortable, and carrying all three devices is simply not feasible. The Surface has always been in my eyes but from what I've seen the linux support is not as trivial with newer models.
  - nolok 2y ago
    If what you want is a good 2 in 1 I personally heard only good things about the Lenovo Yoga that my SO is using.
    - rcarmo 2y ago
      I have one of those for work. It's pretty amazing, but I have to run Windows on it. My IdeaPad, though, runs Fedora for three years now, and I am typing this on it: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400
    - LorenDB 2y ago
      I daily openSUSE Tumbleweed on a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, and while I don't use the 2-in-1 functionality a lot, I've found it to be a solid experience.
  - transpute 2y ago
    > a personal macbook air, and a tablet. I wish the latest two could simply be merged Un-crippling of Apple Silicon iPads with Magic Keyboards, which have a superset of MacBook Air features, can happen via: - Competition from Linux on Qualcomm Oryon tablets and 2-in-1 - New Apple leadership - EU regulation to unlock dual-boot of other operating systems, like Linux/BSD - Future jailbreak
    - etra0 2y ago
      That's also my wish. The Asahi project somehow gives me a bit of hope but I remember the authors saying that porting it to an iPad is simply not possible because of some booting mechanisms, and dev'in on a jailbroken device was not its preference, which is understandable.
jwells89 2y ago
This is a highly intriguing device, but if it's to replace a MacBook or especially an iPad, battery life is going to have to be a great deal better. I'd be willing to sacrifice some raw muscle if that's what it takes to achieve that – even if it "only" performed as well as the original M1, that'd be more than enough if that meant also life north of the 12 hour mark. Though it's not mentioned in the review, good standby time is also important. Not only is it irritating to find one's tablet/laptop dead when pulled out for use, the sleeping battery drain typical of x86 laptops since the advent of "modern" standby runs through your battery's cycles much more quickly than necessary.
- robotnikman 2y ago
  It would be great to have more ARM devices which support linux, but until there is a common ARM boot process that everyone follows and the situation with device trees and propriety driver binaries gets solved, x86 is going to have to be the way to go for most Linux first devices. With x86 you can basically load any distro you want with ease no matter what the CPU.
  - transpute 2y ago
    Perhaps 2024 is The Year (tm) of Arm SystemReady laptops based on Qualcomm.
    - p_l 2y ago
      Given how Qualcomm is responsible for ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... ... I won't hold my breath for Qualcomm to be bringer of SystemReady. I might end up too blue.
      - transpute 2y ago
        > ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... 2024 Microsoft Surface?
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> I’ve experimented with Asahi Linux on my iMac, and while it offers a generally great experience, the ARM Linux ecosystem, especially with 16K pages, doesn’t quite meet my daily needs. I would be interested in hearing more - I was given to believe that most open source software was fine on any of the major architectures[0], and I've not heard of the 16k thing at all (is Asahi doing something nonstandard with memory pages?) [0] Albeit with POWER somewhat weaker and SPARC mostly lost. But I thought ARM was in good shape, and MIPS has been weirdly resilient.
- dji4321234 2y ago
  The IOMMU on Apple Silicon only supports 16K pages. The page allocator on Linux only supports unified page sizes. Ergo, to make both IOMMU mappings and userland software work, everything needs to have 16K pages (on OSX, this isn't an issue, because XNU supports mapping both 4k and 16k pages). It's not really non-standard so much as it is new-standard or different-standard. Aarch64 officially supports 4K, 16K, and 64K pages. This flexibility in the aarch64 ABI means that most compilers already produce 64K aligned load segments for aarch64, so it's not a huge deal except for software that works at a low level and makes assumptions about mmap (for example). The main software that's truly affected beyond just needing recompilation or tweaks is x86/x86-64 emulation software, since x86 is pretty tightly coupled to 4k pages.
jeffchien 2y ago
It's too bad that the portable display mode doesn't support touch. That was what stopped me from getting one.
- e12e 2y ago
  Little odd too, since the keyboard is supported.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
They don't even mention that it's made by a Chinese company.
- halJordan 2y ago
  Granted it's not exactly Lenovo, but do you make these same comments on the new thinkpads?
- darthrupert 2y ago
  They never do, because it's a massive red flag. Pun nonwithstanding.
- nsonha 2y ago
  By default most computer technology is assumed to be manufactured in Asia, if anything needs to be mentioned that is if it's made in a western country.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
karunamurti 2y ago
I was planning to buy this + nuphy keyboard for portable workstation. Maybe +egpu for home usage.
- seltzered_ 2y ago
  I've done this with an HP tablet for about three years ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/s6k1qr/raised_tablet_pc_setup/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/s6k1qr... ). It works mostly fine, the nuphy keyboard has been a bit glitchy in humid environments and the battery doesn't hold a charge well but it manages. Having a keyboard+trackpad that does both wired and wireless is helpful when batteries run low and in dual boot scenarios.
getcrunk 2y ago
So glad to see minis on here so I hopefully can find a receptive audience to my rant: None of these super cheap Chinese devices come with bios or firmware support or updates. Minisforum, topton, qotom, beelink etc all have like maybe 1 or 2 bios updates AND EVEN THAT MANY IS RARE! In the post spectre age, just look at amd security bulletins! Every few months there’s major bios/firmware/cpu vulnerabilities And all the tech bloggers happily continue to showcase these devices (ltt, level1techs, sth) without any mention of the bios. People recommend them as firewalls!
- neon_44 2y ago
  Don't they use off-the-shelf parts? Can't I just use the update of the manufacturer?
- luyu_wu 2y ago
  I'm a bit confused? Most security issues can be solved with microcode updates, kernel-level mitigations, or compilation level mitigations? I'm not exactly sure why this is as big of an issue as you make it sound? Realistically, anyone who cares about security should turn off SMT, which fixes speculative vulnerabilities (which is most of the serious ones). Additionally, a lot of the headlining vulnerabilities these days seem to require physical access of some kind, more relevant for portable devices. Edit: the best solution of course would be to have Coreboot.
  - getcrunk 2y ago
    Most != all Os level microcode updates only address a portion of these vulns, same for disabling smt. One unpatched vulnerability is too many let alone numerous. Not all require physical access either
- numpad0 2y ago
  Firmwares shouldn't need that many updates in the first place. Frequency of updates should be taken as inverse of its code quality. Sadly there are too many low quality firmwares and even more below and below the floor, but that should be the theory.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Had my eye on this. Looks like such an amazing, compact, powerful system. Minisforum has been doing an amazing job with small PC systems & this is a very compelling new form factor for them to be going into. Awesome seeing such an excellent Ryzen made so mobile, on a great screen. I'd love to see what folks can do with power tuning on it. For good or for bad there's quite the rabbit hole of options. It'd be excellent to see a write-up from a pro on undervolting & tuning the performance profiles. Seeing what kind fo gains are possible. There's efforts like Tuned (which is replacing the abysmally limited power-profiles-daemon in Fedora https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-41-Goes-Tuned-PPD https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-41-Goes-Tuned-PPD) which can get far. But there's so many different options! And it just doesn't feel like we have good shared working knowledge on what people do and especially on what the net results are.
- getcrunk 2y ago
  I wouldn’t recommend it. Minisforum has non existent bios updates/support. Go take a look at amd security bulletin. They have cpu vulns monthly! And these cheap manufacturers don’t give any bios updates
sirn 2y ago
My Minisforum V3 arrived a few days ago. I like the overall package, but there are a few things I would like to add, after using it for the past few days (running NixOS with Plasma 6): - The screen panel QC seems very inconsistent. My unit got at least 2 dead pixels and over 6 bright pixels and a horizontal faint line across the screen, possibly caused by coating. I don't notice the dead pixels that much during the normal use due to the screen PPI being quite high (215 PPI), but it has way too many. (I'm trying to arrange a replacement with Minisforum, and JP store seems to have better support than the rest, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.) - The overall pen experience is quite good for writing. There's no perceivable lag in Krita as far as I can tell. I would still prefer Wacom Cintiq or iPad Pro for any serious drawing/painting session (the V3 pen pressure detection doesn't feel accurate enough to me). - Everything mostly working out of the box as of kernel 6.6 (LTS). Sleep works great. The only thing that seems broken so far is the audio, which lacks any volume control. A lot of people suggest setting pipewire to use soft-mixer, but this caused the device to be muted during the machine startup. My workaround to this is to have a soft mixer Virtual Sink in pipewire and leave the audio device as-is. - Tablet experience is suboptional. As mentioned in the article, if you happen to use more than one language, and have to use Fcitx5 for text input, then you're likely going to manually have to switch between Maliit and Fcitx5 every time you detach a keyboard (because Plasma only allow one Virtual Keyboard to be used). - Also, Maliit lacks Ctrl/Alt/Cursor Keys, making this very unsuitable for an emergency console during travel/transit unless you also pack a keyboard, which adds thickness/weight. At this point, ThinkPad may have been a better choice. (I'm looking into possibly adding at least arrow keys to Maliit). (Also, Maliit Japanese keyboard uses a flick layout, which is broken because Maliit also uses a downward-drag gesture to dismiss itself... so you can't type any letters that require a downward flick) - Battery life is, as mentioned in the article, 6 hours if I use powersave with power EPP, and around 4 hours if I use powersave with balance_performance EPP. Under Linux, battery drain during sleep is only around 1-2% over 8 hours (tested by charging to full before bed and leaving it unplug). - The touchpad experience is fine. They're not amazing, but good enough to get the job done (there are certain angles that the touchpad sensor will stop registering touch events).
- 3abiton 2y ago
  I am very intrigued by this tablet, did you ever try to dual boot Android X86 along side linux? 3years ago I could play wonderfully some nice games with HW support and take advantage of the Android ecosystem. Can you update us with a review if you can?
sureglymop 2y ago
The tablet looks absolutely amazing! But: does it support multi touch and palm recognition? Can it be purchased with international keyboard variants? Or is it just a prototype at this point.
- e12e 2y ago
  > Can it be purchased with international keyboard variants? As far as I can tell on mobile, the eu store has choice between German and English (UK?) keyboards. I don't see us as an option there however - which I would prefer if Norwegian isn't an option.
- sirn 2y ago
  It has multi-touch, but I don't think it has any special hardware for palm rejection.

114 points by transpute 2y ago

"Until recently, if I wish to do some programming in a coffee shop or during a family trip, my only options are the corporate-provisioned MacBook or my iPad Pro 2020, neither of which is ideal." - why not buy a Macbook Air? It's more or less the same price and form factor as the iPad but has a keyboard. You can get a Macbook Air M1 for around 800 USD now.

rty32 2y ago
Touch screen and pen support seem to be very important to the author, based on the article. Taking company device for personal use is also apparently a no-no.
- nolok 2y ago
  My Lenovo Carbon X1 has a touch screen option and is quite awesome. The Dell XPS serie also offers touchscreen options. Overall it feels like the author is not much aware of the higher range in the non Apple laptop class beside Surface. Not a big problem per se, but article like that are always following a journey / story so it sort of should be mentioned.
  - neon_44 2y ago
    Not the Author, but I am currently also looking at a new 2-in-1 for myself. And by far the biggest Factor pushing me to a minisforum v3 is the Price. I am currently looking at a old 3rd gen lenovo x13 yoga or the Minisforum While I personally would love the new Qualcomm Surface Pro, It's just not worth the price.
  - transpute 2y ago
    Looking forward to Linux touch-enabled Dell XPS Arm 2-in-1 based on Qualcomm Oryon.
  - AshamedCaptain 2y ago
    The author is complaining about the 2K of the minisforum being on the lower end. Most lenovo tablets/convertibles still ship with 1080p or worse screen except for the >3k$ variants. Lenovo is, for some reason, a friggin joke when it comes to screen resolution and quality. Their consumer laptops tend to have better resolutions on-paper than their pro lines. Good luck finding anything better than 1080p on 12 inches... I am perfectly aware of the non-Apple tablet market and I also think Surface is literally the best there is, as crappy MS is. Because no one else is even trying. The screen, aspect ratio, writing feel, builtin kickstand, ...
    - transpute 2y ago
      Does Apple have exclusive deals, investments or IP licensing with tablet display vendors? Apple is also the only vendor with 4:3 aspect ratio tablet displays.
      - chrisco23 2y ago
        The 4:3 thing as you say. I've been wanting a tablet just for displaying sheet music. I asked some forum once but was told pretty much the same, only Apple. Why?
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Android manufacturers not understanding market.
        transpute 2y ago
        When your largest competitor for 10+ years has 4:3 screens, why not copy?
        Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
        People got sued last time they copied apple's rectangle
etra0 2y ago
I have my org's macbook pro, a personal macbook air, and a tablet. I wish the later two could simply be merged. I like how performant and silent the MBA is but there are lots of situation where simply using a tablet is more comfortable, and carrying all three devices is simply not feasible. The Surface has always been in my eyes but from what I've seen the linux support is not as trivial with newer models.
- nolok 2y ago
  If what you want is a good 2 in 1 I personally heard only good things about the Lenovo Yoga that my SO is using.
  - rcarmo 2y ago
    I have one of those for work. It's pretty amazing, but I have to run Windows on it. My IdeaPad, though, runs Fedora for three years now, and I am typing this on it: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400
  - LorenDB 2y ago
    I daily openSUSE Tumbleweed on a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, and while I don't use the 2-in-1 functionality a lot, I've found it to be a solid experience.
- transpute 2y ago
  > a personal macbook air, and a tablet. I wish the latest two could simply be merged Un-crippling of Apple Silicon iPads with Magic Keyboards, which have a superset of MacBook Air features, can happen via: - Competition from Linux on Qualcomm Oryon tablets and 2-in-1 - New Apple leadership - EU regulation to unlock dual-boot of other operating systems, like Linux/BSD - Future jailbreak
  - etra0 2y ago
    That's also my wish. The Asahi project somehow gives me a bit of hope but I remember the authors saying that porting it to an iPad is simply not possible because of some booting mechanisms, and dev'in on a jailbroken device was not its preference, which is understandable.

jwells89 2y ago

This is a highly intriguing device, but if it's to replace a MacBook or especially an iPad, battery life is going to have to be a great deal better. I'd be willing to sacrifice some raw muscle if that's what it takes to achieve that – even if it "only" performed as well as the original M1, that'd be more than enough if that meant also life north of the 12 hour mark. Though it's not mentioned in the review, good standby time is also important. Not only is it irritating to find one's tablet/laptop dead when pulled out for use, the sleeping battery drain typical of x86 laptops since the advent of "modern" standby runs through your battery's cycles much more quickly than necessary.

robotnikman 2y ago
It would be great to have more ARM devices which support linux, but until there is a common ARM boot process that everyone follows and the situation with device trees and propriety driver binaries gets solved, x86 is going to have to be the way to go for most Linux first devices. With x86 you can basically load any distro you want with ease no matter what the CPU.
- transpute 2y ago
  Perhaps 2024 is The Year (tm) of Arm SystemReady laptops based on Qualcomm.
  - p_l 2y ago
    Given how Qualcomm is responsible for ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... ... I won't hold my breath for Qualcomm to be bringer of SystemReady. I might end up too blue.
    - transpute 2y ago
      > ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... 2024 Microsoft Surface?

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

> I’ve experimented with Asahi Linux on my iMac, and while it offers a generally great experience, the ARM Linux ecosystem, especially with 16K pages, doesn’t quite meet my daily needs. I would be interested in hearing more - I was given to believe that most open source software was fine on any of the major architectures[0], and I've not heard of the 16k thing at all (is Asahi doing something nonstandard with memory pages?) [0] Albeit with POWER somewhat weaker and SPARC mostly lost. But I thought ARM was in good shape, and MIPS has been weirdly resilient.

dji4321234 2y ago
The IOMMU on Apple Silicon only supports 16K pages. The page allocator on Linux only supports unified page sizes. Ergo, to make both IOMMU mappings and userland software work, everything needs to have 16K pages (on OSX, this isn't an issue, because XNU supports mapping both 4k and 16k pages). It's not really non-standard so much as it is new-standard or different-standard. Aarch64 officially supports 4K, 16K, and 64K pages. This flexibility in the aarch64 ABI means that most compilers already produce 64K aligned load segments for aarch64, so it's not a huge deal except for software that works at a low level and makes assumptions about mmap (for example). The main software that's truly affected beyond just needing recompilation or tweaks is x86/x86-64 emulation software, since x86 is pretty tightly coupled to 4k pages.

jeffchien 2y ago

It's too bad that the portable display mode doesn't support touch. That was what stopped me from getting one.

e12e 2y ago
Little odd too, since the keyboard is supported.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

They don't even mention that it's made by a Chinese company.

halJordan 2y ago
Granted it's not exactly Lenovo, but do you make these same comments on the new thinkpads?
darthrupert 2y ago
They never do, because it's a massive red flag. Pun nonwithstanding.
nsonha 2y ago
By default most computer technology is assumed to be manufactured in Asia, if anything needs to be mentioned that is if it's made in a western country.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

karunamurti 2y ago

I was planning to buy this + nuphy keyboard for portable workstation. Maybe +egpu for home usage.

seltzered_ 2y ago
I've done this with an HP tablet for about three years ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/s6k1qr/raised_tablet_pc_setup/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/s6k1qr... ). It works mostly fine, the nuphy keyboard has been a bit glitchy in humid environments and the battery doesn't hold a charge well but it manages. Having a keyboard+trackpad that does both wired and wireless is helpful when batteries run low and in dual boot scenarios.

getcrunk 2y ago

So glad to see minis on here so I hopefully can find a receptive audience to my rant: None of these super cheap Chinese devices come with bios or firmware support or updates. Minisforum, topton, qotom, beelink etc all have like maybe 1 or 2 bios updates AND EVEN THAT MANY IS RARE! In the post spectre age, just look at amd security bulletins! Every few months there’s major bios/firmware/cpu vulnerabilities And all the tech bloggers happily continue to showcase these devices (ltt, level1techs, sth) without any mention of the bios. People recommend them as firewalls!

neon_44 2y ago
Don't they use off-the-shelf parts? Can't I just use the update of the manufacturer?
luyu_wu 2y ago
I'm a bit confused? Most security issues can be solved with microcode updates, kernel-level mitigations, or compilation level mitigations? I'm not exactly sure why this is as big of an issue as you make it sound? Realistically, anyone who cares about security should turn off SMT, which fixes speculative vulnerabilities (which is most of the serious ones). Additionally, a lot of the headlining vulnerabilities these days seem to require physical access of some kind, more relevant for portable devices. Edit: the best solution of course would be to have Coreboot.
- getcrunk 2y ago
  Most != all Os level microcode updates only address a portion of these vulns, same for disabling smt. One unpatched vulnerability is too many let alone numerous. Not all require physical access either
numpad0 2y ago
Firmwares shouldn't need that many updates in the first place. Frequency of updates should be taken as inverse of its code quality. Sadly there are too many low quality firmwares and even more below and below the floor, but that should be the theory.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

Had my eye on this. Looks like such an amazing, compact, powerful system. Minisforum has been doing an amazing job with small PC systems & this is a very compelling new form factor for them to be going into. Awesome seeing such an excellent Ryzen made so mobile, on a great screen. I'd love to see what folks can do with power tuning on it. For good or for bad there's quite the rabbit hole of options. It'd be excellent to see a write-up from a pro on undervolting & tuning the performance profiles. Seeing what kind fo gains are possible. There's efforts like Tuned (which is replacing the abysmally limited power-profiles-daemon in Fedora https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-41-Goes-Tuned-PPD https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-41-Goes-Tuned-PPD) which can get far. But there's so many different options! And it just doesn't feel like we have good shared working knowledge on what people do and especially on what the net results are.

getcrunk 2y ago
I wouldn’t recommend it. Minisforum has non existent bios updates/support. Go take a look at amd security bulletin. They have cpu vulns monthly! And these cheap manufacturers don’t give any bios updates

sirn 2y ago

My Minisforum V3 arrived a few days ago. I like the overall package, but there are a few things I would like to add, after using it for the past few days (running NixOS with Plasma 6): - The screen panel QC seems very inconsistent. My unit got at least 2 dead pixels and over 6 bright pixels and a horizontal faint line across the screen, possibly caused by coating. I don't notice the dead pixels that much during the normal use due to the screen PPI being quite high (215 PPI), but it has way too many. (I'm trying to arrange a replacement with Minisforum, and JP store seems to have better support than the rest, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.) - The overall pen experience is quite good for writing. There's no perceivable lag in Krita as far as I can tell. I would still prefer Wacom Cintiq or iPad Pro for any serious drawing/painting session (the V3 pen pressure detection doesn't feel accurate enough to me). - Everything mostly working out of the box as of kernel 6.6 (LTS). Sleep works great. The only thing that seems broken so far is the audio, which lacks any volume control. A lot of people suggest setting pipewire to use soft-mixer, but this caused the device to be muted during the machine startup. My workaround to this is to have a soft mixer Virtual Sink in pipewire and leave the audio device as-is. - Tablet experience is suboptional. As mentioned in the article, if you happen to use more than one language, and have to use Fcitx5 for text input, then you're likely going to manually have to switch between Maliit and Fcitx5 every time you detach a keyboard (because Plasma only allow one Virtual Keyboard to be used). - Also, Maliit lacks Ctrl/Alt/Cursor Keys, making this very unsuitable for an emergency console during travel/transit unless you also pack a keyboard, which adds thickness/weight. At this point, ThinkPad may have been a better choice. (I'm looking into possibly adding at least arrow keys to Maliit). (Also, Maliit Japanese keyboard uses a flick layout, which is broken because Maliit also uses a downward-drag gesture to dismiss itself... so you can't type any letters that require a downward flick) - Battery life is, as mentioned in the article, 6 hours if I use powersave with power EPP, and around 4 hours if I use powersave with balance_performance EPP. Under Linux, battery drain during sleep is only around 1-2% over 8 hours (tested by charging to full before bed and leaving it unplug). - The touchpad experience is fine. They're not amazing, but good enough to get the job done (there are certain angles that the touchpad sensor will stop registering touch events).

3abiton 2y ago
I am very intrigued by this tablet, did you ever try to dual boot Android X86 along side linux? 3years ago I could play wonderfully some nice games with HW support and take advantage of the Android ecosystem. Can you update us with a review if you can?

sureglymop 2y ago

The tablet looks absolutely amazing! But: does it support multi touch and palm recognition? Can it be purchased with international keyboard variants? Or is it just a prototype at this point.

e12e 2y ago
> Can it be purchased with international keyboard variants? As far as I can tell on mobile, the eu store has choice between German and English (UK?) keyboards. I don't see us as an option there however - which I would prefer if Norwegian isn't an option.
sirn 2y ago
It has multi-touch, but I don't think it has any special hardware for palm rejection.