Any good Linux Tablet recommendations?

AstroLightz@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 142 points –

Been trying to find a good tablet for productivity and recreation. Something that can be used for programming (Not web), and something that can play DRM content.

Ideally, something under $1000.

I've already looked at the Librem 11 and am considering it, but I want to know other (ideally, cheaper) options available.

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there are no good linux tablets, for any price; by "good" I mean it works as good as an Android or iOS tablet. everything is from not-as-good to way worse and there are things that are downright unusable.

whichever platform you choose (Gnome, Plasma or any of the derivatives like Phosh, Plasma Mobile, etc.) the experience beyond the first 15 minutes (hey, this actually works!) is pretty bad. it's certainly not usable as a main device that you depend on and use for actual work; as a dicking-around kinda project, sure, have at it.

before you spend that kind of money, my recommendation is to get an older Surface Pro or Dell Latitude 2-in-1 in the $150-200 range and see if that functionality is something you can live with. those can be had with up to 16 GB on-board and the SSDs are replaceable (Dells are more serviceable). kernel support is spotty, not all of the features work for all devices, mainly cameras and such; consult the linux-surface github.

edit: just saw this comment, my experiences are similar. the rest of the comments where people think what a device might work like you should disregard.

idk about op, but if i asked about a good linux tablet, i would mean the hardware not the software

for me a good linux tablet means i can take my favorite linux distro, install it without big hassle and have a good performing computer with all components working afterwards

while good performing can be interpretable

granted, but they are inextricably linked and you have to consider the software that does or doesn't allow you to utilise said hardware.

like, I've waited years for kernel devs to catch up to the proprietary hardware in my 2-in-1, namely the drivers for the ipu3 cameras. they are now obsolete and the focus is on ipu6 models. kinda important if you want this to be your main device.

and as to software, it's important to note that the touch-friendliness was an afterthought, so it isn't propagated through the system. like, in Gnome's own system settings app, you can't initiate dropdowns with touch! that's a pretty significant UI element that's been around since forever. another common stumbling block is initiating "right-clicks" on elements, by long-pressing stuff; sometimes it works, other times not. the on-screen keyboard usually appears when an input is focused, but it doesn't often enough that it's annoying.

speaking of, Gnome's OSK is only somewhat usable (and less so if you're on a non-US layout). if you're used to Android or iOS keyboards, it's pretty basic. however bad that is, Plasma's maalit keyboard makes Gnome's look like advanced alien tech, it's broken on so many levels you're better off disabling it. I didn't follow development in the past year or so, but one default "feature" of Gnome OSK was that it remembers everything you type - that includes passwords! - and helpfully offers them on the suggestion strip, with no way of turning it off!

obviously, the OSKs don't work if you need to unlock your disk on boot and I'm not sure they work on the login/lock screen; someone please correct me if I'm misremembering.

OK, screw OSKs, you're gonna use the cover keyboard. except, it's prone to just not work half the time. then you rip it apart (pardon, you disconnect it) and attach it again to have it working, maybe.

you're used to reading stuff, books, comics, whathaveyous, for hours. well, those screens aren't super power-efficient and the batteries aren't humongous either. plus, that thing is heavy and thick (easily twice my Samsung Tab) so maybe don't hold it up ABOVE YOUR FACE WHILE LYING DOWN - ask me how I know! speaking of screens, they aren't the greatest - try scroll-flinging a long page and watch this stuttering-flashing mess; you're gonna need new eyes if you keep this up.

I tried to make one work as a 3-in-1 solution. why have a desktop, a laptop, and tablet when I can have a single device and forego the constant copying and syncing and stuff. semi-decent specs, i5, 16 GB, 500 GB NVMe more than enough for my needs, so I got me a USB-C Dock, attached a huge 4K monitor, LAN, sound, mechanical keyboard, mouse... when I'm needed in the field, just detach it and off I go with all my shit on the drive AND I got a free iPad out of the deal, I just have to marvel at how smart I am!

yeah, nah. bottom line, they are bad as desktop replacement (throttled all over the place on account of anaemic cooling + whiny fan holler), bad as a laptop (on account of the kickstand, you hafta use it on a desk only, plus the keyboard is pretty bad and so is the tiny touchpad) and very bad as tablet (for reasons galore, some mentioned above).

so, like I said, as a fun project to play with - by all means, it's super fun trying out different OSs/apps (I haven't touched on Waydroid, Android x86, FydeOS, note-taking apps, etc.) but, as a daily driver, one that your livelihood and/or education depends on - hard pass.

if the hardware is not working with the linux kernel, its bad hardware

gnome not opening the keyboard when i focus an input, has nothing to do with the hardware

One caution on older Surface Pros: They are generally not serviceable, and when the batteries eventually go, you will have to replace the device. The 9th gen and later may be better. I am dealing with this right now in a 2017/5th gen Surface Pro. While it's nice hardware (as a user), apparently the battery is glued-in in such a way that you cannot replace it without destroying the tablet. I'm currently looking to replace it with either a Lenovo ThinkPad X12 detachable or a Dell Latitude 7320 detachable, both of which are similar but (purportedly) much more repairable.

I have a Surface Pro 4 (I think from 2015) and the battery life now is awful. I might be able to get an hour or two depending on the performance mode, I usually just plug it in while using it now. If I forget to plug it in between uses, it will definitely be dead the next time I go to use it.

Plus it's starting to feel pretty slow. I do still have Windows on it, perhaps installing Linux would help make it faster but it sounds like it takes some work to get everything working properly so I haven't bothered.

That's about where I am. If I'm doing really light duty stuff (web browsing, no video) I can get maybe an hour. Any more than that, the clock is ticking pretty fast.

what they said. surfaces are serviceable to a degree (battery and SSD, screen replacement) even though they're glued shut, but in the sense "this is a fun project to do at a leisurely pace", not "I got shit to do with it tomorrow, clock is ticking".

Dells are way more serviceable, they got screws and easily accessible components instead of cement glue from hell. if you're going that way, make sure the camera sensors are supported, ipu3/6 camera support is spotty.

I've done several repairs and battery replacements on various tablets, but as an amateur, I won't touch this one. I'm sure if you crack these things regularly you can get proficient at it, but given the complexity, I'm not sure it's worth the labor.

imo android and iOS tablets are not even in the same league because they lack tiling WMs. I also think that transparent windows are a pretty important feature although I won't be surprised if you could find some hacky solution on android. I guess my priorities are different then.

Some Microsoft surface models can run surface-linux pretty well

Surface Go 1 running Fedora for me. It runs perfectly even if booting from a USB to install Linux can be tricky and the Bluetooth is slow to puck up my mouse on startup.

It’s linked by usb-c to a monitor for when I’m home.

I've got a SP8 which I've been running PopOS on since the start of the year. The cameras don't work but this isn't a deal-breaker for me, it runs smoothly and is perfect for my needs as a media consumption device (music, movies, comics) with some browsing. There were some issues I had on installation but nothing that couldn't be resolved. Many thanks to the Linux surface team!

I threw Ubuntu LTS on an old Surface 3 and it worked without having to use the Surface-linux kernal.

My dads been using it for a year and Gnome works super well with the touchscreen.

Don’t know how these are now, but my buddy had a Surface Pro 4, and that thing made me regret buying what i had at the time. Ran like a dream, especially considering the form factor. Very unexpected

Have an SP4 now, running Nobara KDE, because I'm too lazy to install the surface Linux kernel on a different distro. It's pretty great. I bought a cheap one, and it has some issues unrelated to Linux. In fact it runs a lot better and the hardware issues are alleviated slightly after removing windows.
Long story short, would highly recommend buying a not borked Surface and slapping Linux on it.

Does Nobara have surface kernel built in?!?? This is news to me, might reinstall due to this.

Sure does pal! There's a non-surface version, but as far as I know it's the only distro that includes it stock. And on my SP4 it's been absolutely butter smooth.

Ublue has variants with the surface kernel by default. Really, just use their hacky stuff instead of getting all the errors on your device.

I am sure their gaming focused bazzite variant has a surface version. Ublue fedora is way more secure than Nobara. Fedora doesnt support Apparmor by default, so SELinux will be more secure. There are tons of things wrong with nobara, and the performance increase is really not important (TheLinuxExp tested it and its like 5%)

Fair enough, I hadn't known about Ublue. Give it a go tonight. That said, running Nobara, I've not had any unexpected errors. And it's not like I actually do anything that puts any of my info to exposure on my SP4. No email, banking, messaging, don't even log into my Firefox account. I basically use it for retro gaming, reading manga, and not a whole lot else tbh.

Having a device just for fun stuff... is interesting. The threat is not big but it is always possible. And in my honest opinion, after having broken every other distro model, rpm-ostree is just awesome.

Sorry, it sounds like you're poopooing having something purely for fun? I spent less on it than I would a night out with the wife, and it's got hardware issues that make it not a great candidate for a daily driver. So it's a toy. shrugs

That would be a sweet replacement for an iPad. Is there a distro that gives a more tablet experience?

Anything that offers gnome should be touch ready 😇 I’d go for openSuse TW with gnome

https://fedoraproject.org/spins/phosh/

Fedoras kernel doesnt run well on surface and to my knowledge phosh is not well maintained

Bummer. This seemed like a good solution

Try ublue silverblue surface images

Here are all the images

Thanks! I don't currently have a Surface. But this is opening up an interesting alternative to getting another iPad once my current one dies

I was not even able to test onscreen keyboards on KDE as there seems to be no way to force it. didnt try on GNOME. It may be able to work as an ipad replacement, but not always.

I wouldn't get the Librem 11, I don't trust purism after the librem 5.

It's Linux-based hardware, so any OS could be installed easily if PureOS isn't a good fit for OP. And, unlike the phone, it's basically a computer, like one of their laptops (which have been fine).

If we are talking about Pinephone, Fairphone, Librem 5, etc. -- they all suffer uniquely. Modems drop on all these devices often enough, battery life sucks based on tasks, app support is sundry, screens are left wanting, and more. Phones are hard to make.

I might class Linux-based hardware phones differently from Linux-based hardware tablets.

I thought about buying a Starlite by Starlabs. It looked pretty cool, but I just don't need a tablet.

It does look cool, but it’s quite expensive for what it is.

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I am interested in this as well. I currently have an iPad Pro and while I won't be upgrading right now, I have been looking in the space for the future. I'd prefer something more powerful than and M1/M2 iPad to even consider switching. I haven't seen much in the tablet space that is not Apple orAndroid, but while being performant. I saw that Minisforum has announced the V3, but it isn't out yet. Has an AMD 8840u, 14" 165hz display. Looks promising, but I'd be worried about battery life.

I bought a second hand Surface Pro 5 (2017), running Fedora gnome

I've started to write a review because I couldn't really find one, and most of the comments are overly positive (as it often goes on Linux forums I've come to realize). It's not done yet

But I can summarize it: as a tablet it's not great but it mostly works. It's certainly not for someone not ready to troubleshoot, and many problems have no, or no great solutions. Also gnome used with touch controls has a major bug (which, again, nobody ever mentions for some reason. It will be in my review)

As a 2 in 1 with little touch use it could be alright. The pen is quite good if you want to draw or write, even though there's a small delay. The cover is okay, but you'd be better off with a quality laptop keyboard and big trackpad

I bought it mainly for reading, mostly European format comics (bandes dessinées). The resolution is great for that, and the size is good with a reader that removes white margins

Edit: to give you an idea I bought it for 190€ two months ago, with all accessories, good condition and good battery health (which does not mean battery life is good)

It's not out yet, but there is a kickstarter from German company Volla, coming in the next few days for a 12" tablet running a Mediatek soc that will be capable of running Ubuntu Touch - for which you can use UT native apps, webapps, some Linux desktop apps via their "Libertine" container, and some Android apps via "Waydroid." And Volla has an excellent track record of delivering on their product promises - in contrast to Purism.

https://volla.tilda.ws

Have you taken a look at the pinetab? Its probably the most Dev oriented Linux tablet. Librem-11 might be the only Linux native x86 tabket but if you don't mind flashing a new OS a refurbished/used microsoft surface would be cheap and powerful. (Need the linux-surface kernal for all functionality)

I wouldn't recommend the Pinetab2 at this time. It isn't fully functional.

Well, I picked up a Lenovo Duet 3i for fairly cheap so I could run FreeCAD on a device in my wood shop. It's an Intel machine, one of those that the keyboard snaps off of. I've got Fedora Gnome on it, and it's not too bad. The biggest issue I have with it is sometimes it comes out of suspend in portrait mode, and there's no getting it into landscape mode with the keyboard attached, so you have to detach it, tip it a couple times, and it's back.

It's an x86 laptop, software is pretty compatible. You might go for a Yoga rather than the Duet if you're looking for programming; the tablet flop hinge plus kickstand is a bit more of an afterthought than I'd like for coding.

Check out the "Screen Rotate" gnome extension (by shyzus). It adds a button in the gnome quick settings menu that allows you to disable auto rotate, and has the option to add a button to manually switch between portrait or landscape rotation.

That's one of the biggest things I hate about Gnome, it aims to be as unfinished and feature barren as it can be while still booting to a desktop, and you're supposed to install the rest of it from third parties.

I purchased the Star Labs Starlite and am hyped. It holds long and is x86.

I wanted to have a convertable to also draw which makes it perfect for me and making me write this comment. Maybe its irrelevant to you. Starlabs also has a normal Laptop I think but I have no experience with both.

Currently with my chromebook duet 3 I can't really code without making it freeze or unable to execute code because its ARM.

If you don't mind waiting a few months to get it delivered, the StarLite V sounds like it will be a great device (I'm currently waiting for mine).

I have a Surface Pro 9 and it runs like a charm. I would recommend it even if it is a little pricey

I've been pretty happy with my Pixel Tablet running GrapheneOS. I don't know everything you're hoping to do, so maybe Android won't work for you. However, I've been using Plex, Newpipe, Termux, Roon, and other apps, and it's working well for me.

The stand still works as a speaker when connected as well, which is nice.

not sure for what purpose you want a tablet, but I had a fujitsu 2 in 1 in college that was pretty solid for linux support. no problems with pen drivers or anything. the screen swiveled around and it folded down into a tablet. it was pretty bulky compared to an android tablet or similar, but it worked well for taking noes and had a full keyboard when I wanted it

I bought a chuwi ubook x and it is nice. I installed endeavour os gnome on it.

I develop on emacs with same PC config, run sql servers locally, maintain servers, office and mail stuff, all kind of communications, file operations, casting screen to a TV or projector, very good stylus and note taking abilities on my samsung tab 9 ultra dex mode with 4 days of battery life. You may think as an alternative

Probably not what you wanna hear but a Galaxy Tab S6 with Termux, Dex and Keyboard is pretty great.