In regards to the tablet, I’m thinking about buying an Amazon Fire HD 8 though I’m open to any and all recommendations.

As for the distro, I’m fine with Ubuntu or Linux Mint (or for that matter anything that you may recommend).

For the ebook reading software, I’m leaning towards using Foliate since it supports kindle, epub, and pdf formats, not to mention that the UI is great and intuitive.

  • fart_pickle@lemmy.world
    351·
    9 months ago

    Linux on a tablet is not a good idea. I’ve been using 2-in-1 laptop and it sucks as a tablet. If you want a device to read books get an ebook reader. I’m using kobo elipsa 2e and it’s amazing. However if tablet is a must have get pixel tablet and install grapheneos.

    • krash@lemmy.ml
      111·
      9 months ago

      Of of curiosity, what is it that you dislike? I have Linux on a surface go gen 1 (which works flawlessly) and use gnome for the tablet mode. The only thing that sucks is the on-screen keyboards, but it works surprisingly well otherwise.

      • fart_pickle@lemmy.world
        73·
        9 months ago

        Here’s the list of things that suck in tablet mode:

        • depending on a day virtual keyboard doesn’t type capital letters (it has something to do with flatpacks)
        • there’s no way to decrypt disk without physical keyboard. Same goes for selecting different option in grub (there are some hacks but I’ve never was keen to tinker with it)
        • my 2-in-1 has pretty nice resolution which makes it unusable in tablet mode. I cannot count how many times I’ve missed a close button
        • the ui (both gnome and plasma mobile) is clunky. It feels like early days of touch screens.
        • stylus is one big misunderstanding
        • I’m biased because I’ve been using iPads for may years and for me it’s how tables should work
        • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          9 months ago

          Well I got a Lenovo Yoga with a touchscreen and I somewhat disagree. I use the Gnome desktop. And it follows most of the design principles you’d have on other devices like Apple or Android. Sure, it’s not a 1:1 copy of Apple. And the high-dpi auto-configuration and -detection may not be there yet. So you’d need to configure it yourself. You can set the UI scaling in the settings app and all the buttons become (for example) twice the size. This works really well.

          The on-screen keyboard has annoyed me to no end. But it got better and maybe most issues will be solved once we switch to Wayland and it’ll pop up at the right moment. (I advise against installing important system apps via Flatpak, this generally leads to issues and incompatibility. And it’s not Linux’s fault.)

          The full disk encryption is a bit of an issue. You’d need to put the key into the TPM module and the tutorial to do it is really long. I don’t see a good solution there, aside from putting the device into standby and not rebooting it that often.)

          I don’t think Gnome is clunky at all, given the on-screen keyboard pops up… Auto-rotate works, the button sizes are configurable, the stylus from Lenovo works out of the box. You have a full screen app launcher that is nice… And it’s super responsive on my device.

          I agree that sometimes the experience get’s interrupted by software that isn’t adapted for touchscreens. Most of the desktop is. And some browsers are annoying and we’d be right to criticise that. But if Visual Studio Code lets you down if you start developing a Rust application… I’m not sure how that compares to an iPad, because you wouldn’t be able to do it at all on such a device. So I wouldn’t include desktop software.