A family member gave me an old convertible Chromebook, which I (of course) installed Linux on for the fun of it. It has convinced me there’s a place in my life for a Linux tablet, though it’s not quite the right device for me.
The Surface Go 2 seems about right with less size and more memory than the Chromebook, but I figured I should ask if people like anything else. Here are some preferences:
- 500-600g weight seems about right; the Chromebook is 1100g and that’s a bit much
- 10" or so, 3:2 or 4:3, nothing more oblong
- Pressure-sensitive stylus support
- Expandable storage - an SSD I can swap without a heat gun is ideal, but an SD card slot will do
- Headphone jack
- x86-64, not ARM
- 8gb RAM
- $100ish for used B-grade
Get something else. Surface machines have issues with firmware because of their proprietary drivers.
Get something for free, or elect to buy something used that you know doesn’t have these issues.
Do you have something concrete to recommend?
The recommendation I’ve seen for Surface products is to update everything under Windows before installing Linux. That’s probably sufficient for firmware updates on a five year old tablet as I don’t expect there will be many new ones in the future. I’m not going to be a free software purist here, especially buying used.
That’s what I did with one of mine. It worked fine for me, until I replaced that laptop.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to choose a Surface again, but I had a good experience, after being very careful with my install and upgrade process.
If I recall correctly, Bluefin has surface specific builds that address these issues