Was wondering what tablets you run Linux on.
- What’s good?
- What’s not so good?
- What’s worth mentioning?
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I have the PineNote by Pine64. I really like it but there are a lot of caveats to consider, mostly related to the limitations of an e-ink display.
Pine64 states
The first batch of the PineNote will be great to write software for, but not great to write notes on. Wait for a later batch with better preinstalled software if you just want to use the device as an e-reader, e-note, or your everyday computing device.
What’s good?
Open source software and hardware, cool e-ink screen.
What’s not so good?
E-ink screen has many severe limitations. Any animations work terribly on it. Not just video but page scrolling, navigation, and banner ads are all painful. I often use a wireless keyboard and make ample use of various shortcuts. It is best used to look at static images such as text.
It also has phantom battery drain, losing around 15% per day while suspended.
What’s worth mentioning?
The price seems to have gone back to normal. For a bit they were going for over $600 but they should be around $460 with shipping. Speaking of, Pine64’s default shipping from Hong Kong is unbearably slow. You may want to consider express shipping.
The PineNote is not just not for everyone, it’s actually not for almost anyone. It’s a Linux-based (Debian <3 ) tablet with an e-ink display, which has a single-digit refresh rate and is only black-and-white. It uses only FOSS software and you’re expected to know how to customize it yourself.
If you are like me and that sounds amazing, then yes it is great. Just be sure that you know what you’re buying.
Final thought: the actual warranty is listed as only 30 days - that is ridiculously short. It’s hard to recommend the PineNote because it will be terrible for most people, but if you’re a Linux enthusiast who likes to use cutting edge tech which respects your privacy and freedoms then it is really great
i don’t know if you count this as a mobile* tablet, but i’m running arch on a m$ surface go 1 that i got mainly for art
hell there’s a whole kernel fork just for surface devices
ETA: *added this because i realized what comm i was on. what i’m talking about isn’t considered a tablet in the sense of one that runs a mobile operating system. oops.
An old Thinkpad Yoga. Everything works.
Surface Pro 3 running Fedora
- The fact that it runs is good
- Gnome is not good
- The linux-surface kernel is a cool project, though I think I need to try a different distro
It just blows my mind that Gnome isn’t good on a tablet, when the whole damned UI seems to make compromises with multi-monitor capability so that it can be consistent across tablet and desktop/laptop. Gnome has such a nice look and feel, too bad the devs are hell bent on making it unusable for the majority of users in an effort to make it suitable for a majority of users.
Yeah everyone said it’s great for tablets but the on-screen keyboard just doesn’t seem to work properly
I’m running CachyOS KDE on my Surface Pro 6. Cachy screams on it. If you don’t need the touch screen, you don’t need the linux-surface kernel and can get all the benefit out of hte Cachy kernel.
Is “screams” good or bad? Could be either!
It screams as in a sports car flying past you, not as in someone being stabbed to death. :)
Excellent!
Joining the chorus of not-a-phone tablet with Linux. I’ve got PopOS installed on a Motion J3600 tablet that originally came with Windows 7. Modern Linux doesn’t appreciate the single-point touchscreen - I find I need to adjust most apps individually to play nice. And I can’t figure out how to disable the default on-screen keyboard so I can use a different one.
But it runs faster than it did on Win10, and I can keep using it, as opposed to Win11.
Try Phosh perhaps, there you can easily enable docked mode, which disables the on-screen keyboard.
I have a Lenovo 10e Chromebook tablet running Postmarket Os.
- Setup was straightforward and relatively easy.
- The only major hardware failure was the built-in camera. Though I have much better cameras on multiple different devices. So it wasn’t a big loss. USF pen support worked out of the box. No issues, no special instructions. It was just there.
- The octocore four large arm cores, four small arm cores, provide a solid experience under KDE plasma. You aren’t going to win any CPU drag races, but it gets you where you want to go most of the time.
- The major downfall of this system is probably the four gigabytes of RAM. If you are a tab whore like myself. Or painting large documents, et cetera, in Krita. You will hit swap quickly, which degrades the experience a bit.
- the only other knock against it. I seem to remember was widevine support. (Netflix HBO Max etc) It’s not supported as well on many arm devices, but it is there if I remember correctly. However there were hoops to jump through.
When I was looking into Linux tablets I think dell latitude tablets were a possibility. But they weren’t 100% comparable.
I currently have a Dell Venua 8 Pro 5855, which is nice, but really old. I like 8", nice form factor.
Issues:
- camera does not work with Linux (at least not out of the box, never bothered as I don’t care)
- some kernel module always crashes and battery percentage stops working (bit more of an issue)
- it often wakes up from suspend, so the batters is always empty when I want to use it… or I power and down and will have to boot it
Everything else just works, including LTE.
That’s probably not what you’ve been asking, but I have a Intel i7 tablet here with Windows 10 on it. I don’t really use it because Windows sucks, but I could try to install a good OS on it.
