Advise Tablet

[Bogomips]

Know next to nothing about Tablets. May very soon be in a position to fork out for one:

• Preferably A4 size. Suppose that's 14 inch.
• Tablet capable of running Porteus, if any.

All tips gratefully received.

[jssouza]

Hi Bogomips,

Tablet capable of running Porteus, if any

This would mean that the tablet has to be x86 based and not arm based since porteus has not yet been ported to arm.

I have checked porteus 3.2 rc5 and porteus 3.1 KDE on a Surface Pro 3. Apart from the touch screen and the pen input, it works out of the box (even Wifi). I guess it is some kernel configuration or a patch absent in the porteus kernel that prevents the touchscreen from not working.
Elementary OS (Luna) and Linux Mint 17.3 works fully (with a patched kernel), even the touchscreen and the pen. In fact feels better than the pre-installed windows 10.

So, suggesting the "Microsoft" Surface Pro 3.

Specs if you are interested:
Processor: i5-4300U dual core Haswell
RAM: 4GB
SSD: 128GB

PS: I haven't checked porteus on any other tablets so there could be other better options.

[Bogomips]

Thanks jssouza. What about the screen size?

[jssouza]

Think it is around 11 inches. It is branded more as a hybrid (2-in-1: laptop+tablet) , rather than a tablet.

But have to say, the top tablets (samsung galaxy tabs, ipads) are within 7 to 11 inches.

[Bogomips]

It would appear need to get Bay Trail Tablet and make better job of setting up Porteus on it than they did back in February (See P7/8). 8)

[francois]

@bogomips:
Very nice initiative.

I would like to be of some help, but I am tablet allergic for now.

[francois]

But maybe this disease that you caught might become contagious. Once you get a tablet to run with porteus.

[Bogomips]

Carrier already appeared. Contagion has started. http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... 2ae#p50907


P.S. Don't have no mobile, no iphone/pad. Will be giant leap into computing on the move.

[brokenman]

Will be giant leap into computing on the move.

I bought one. It facilitated the move from my desk to the couch. I somehow always end up back at the desk though. For me, the tablet is merely an electronic newspaper.

[francois]

The main problem for me is with the input. The input interface is really archaic. I hate the feeling of the touchscreen keyboard, I really need the keyboard feeling.

[Bogomips]

^ Detachable keyboard for me. Then can take it with me when I go riding on my eBike to process GPS info. 8)

[Bogomips]

Tried to see if could boot cinnamon on surface pro. Cinnamon screen came up, but no go with pointer (to be expected). Also keyboard combination for console did not work. After a while surface went to sleep, but could not be woken up, just a black screen. Thought Porteus had clobbered the bios. Repair under warranty possible as ms would not discover any alien software.

Three days after being registered for 'Device repair', no response of any kind. So, after scanning many posts on surface support, mainly 2013 and pessimistic, it seemed a final resort was the support chat. Found myself 2nd in line and was informed wait would be longer than average of 1 minute, owing to more than usual amount of chat requests. After 20 mins got to a 'User Agent', and I put the question of how long it takes to get a response for a device registered for repair. Serial number given, reason for repair, then as to what else done for recovery, provided link of page with all the recovery procedures tried.

Then was asked if I could spend thirty to forty minutes to trouble shoot, and if this was unsuccessful there would be replacement of surface. Must say that concern was voiced that I should be having such a problem, and she would try her best to resolve the issue. Anyway after some two hours of troubleshooting the surface finally sprang to life. Apparently there is a power distribution issue, and some components were not receiving any juice. Wonder if Porteus could have triggered this issue. Quite impressed with the quality of support, or did I just get lucky?

Also had a problem with Edge giving me a small window over a larger one, and she was quite enthusiastic to help. Needed screenshot and informed this was done by 'snipping tool' (trust m$ to make something like this so opaque!). Already getting past my bedtime, so called it a day, gave five stars for support which reckon she deserved for pleasant manner and eagerness to resolve issue. Now dusted off my 3.1 MSDOS reference and installed PaleMoon, rather than struggle with Edge. Will see how PM performs when I get to a hotspot. Also sorted out hosts file. Working with Command Line find that M$ now have tab completion, although not always working correctly. Next on agenda now to try out the windoze Ubuntu Linux.