anyone using a surface tablet?
anyone using a surface tablet?
Hi
I'm thinking about getting one and was looking at YouTube videos but none really showed it in use.
Like how keyboard works and all that.
Does anyone here have experience?
Thanks
I used a pro 7+ for a while with Fedora on it and it ran just fine. The stylus worked generally well, too. Eventually I put Win 11 back on it to be able to use the camera (it was not yet supported by the linux-surface project and still may not be?) and it worked well enough with WSL that I kept it that way. I generally spent my time in firefox and windows terminal with little to no trouble at all (after de-clawing windows the best I could).
Note that the keyboard is about what you'd expect for such a flat thing. I'm pretty sure it's rubber dome and not butterfly switches. It's not a great experience but it's no worse than your average laptop.
I have a surface pro 7 running arch and plasma desktop. Everything but camera works. It is pretty sweet. I mostly use it in touch mode with virtual keyboard, pinch to zoom, etc.
Which virtual keyboard do you use?
I have a Surface Laptop Go running debian. This model is a laptop not a tablet, but it works fine for me.
I have one running manjaro gnome. Works great for me, but sometimes i have trouble with the onscreen keyboard showing up over the browser (both firefox and chrome). Other than that, it works just fine.
Can you tell me more about the typing experience of the onscreen keyboard?
I believe it's just the built-in wayland keyboard. It works just fine, but looks a little ugly for my tastes. If an app doesnt automatically bring up the keyboard, just swipe up from the bottom of the screen and itll come up
Other than that, its a pretty standard touchscreen keyboard. Youre not gonna be doing any "homerow typing" but its easy enough to use, especially in portrait mode. Landscape is a bit long for my thumbs.
Surface pro 5 running Pop_OS. Aside from the battery life, I love it. Works fantastically.
How is the on screen keyboard?
I barely if ever use it since I use the flip cover keyboard but it shows up and is usable.
I've tried Linux on my Surface Go. It was awful but not in the way you'd think it would be.
Pros: Honestly Linux made the anemic processor on it feel snappy again. I couldn't play the newest games, linux is not a miracle worker. But compared to the bloated experience its better than Windows 10.
Cons: The smallest features didn't work. SD reader never worked. Needed the Surface firmware to get the webcam to work and even then it was worse than it was on Windows. No good on screen keyboard software, and from my testing no DE had a good tablet mode.
Plus the giant red "unsecured" bar on boot was an eye sore.
I know Linux is has more compatibility on different Surface models so maybe it was just my Go. Or perhaps it was Manjaro. Either way if you don't have a machine yet maybe look at other laptop/tablets