Hi! There’s no Surface on Linux Lemmy community (yet), but I didn’t feel like asking on reddit, so I thought that this community is my best bet.

I was thinking about getting a surface go, since I really like the form factor and have fond memories of my old Surface Pro 3 in Uni.

Now, there’s a deal going on, where they’re selling the tablet for under 300€, but it’s the low-spec one with 4GB RAM and the weakest processor. I was wondering if I would be doing myself a favor by getting a tablet with these low-end specs.

My usecases would be: Note taking with rnote/xournalpp, surfing, reading, youtube and maybe some light coding.

A FOSS system with encrypted home directory is essential for me, which is why I’m not even considering Android/Apple tablets.

I think I’d give Fedora Silverblue a shot, because Gnome is supposedly great for tablets and it seems more stable to fuck-ups. But maybe the meager storage space (64GB) makes this infeasible

Do any of you have any experiences with these low specs? Or even with a Surface Go 2 in 2023 daily use?

  • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
    11·
    11 months ago

    Not sure I’d recommend getting anything resembling a computer with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage nowadays, but it’ll certainly still work.

    I’d probably start with a minimal Debian installation (or Arch if you prefer being on the bleeding edge I guess) and then add GNOME desktop and whatever else I need afterwards. I don’t recommend checking the box that says “GNOME” in the Debian installer, as that installs a whole bunch of packages you’ll probably never use, and disk space is at a premium here.

    Performance should be doable as long as you don’t multitask a lot, but don’t expect any wonders as 2 physical cores really isn’t a lot these days.

    • Prunebutt@feddit.deOP
      2·
      11 months ago

      Thanks for the tips. I guess it’s really a bad idea after all.

      Here’s hoping that the pinetab will be in stock sometime in the future. :)