Oooh, ooh, ooh… look what just arrived! I’ve been waiting almost a year for it and boy was it worth the wait. My new Linux laptop is a… tablet? Yep. The StarLabs StarLite.
Oh and the screen on this thing! 😍
Oooh, ooh, ooh… look what just arrived! I’ve been waiting almost a year for it and boy was it worth the wait. My new Linux laptop is a… tablet? Yep. The StarLabs StarLite.
Oh and the screen on this thing! 😍
@JackTheCat Haha, thanks 💕
@aral If you're happy I'm happy.
@danslerush Sure :)
@aral My gosh, there's even a French keyboard (something that never normally happens). I need some feedback after a bit of use 🤓
@Professor_Stevens It’s got Ubuntu on it from StarLabs (just wanted to make sure everything was working. I’ll likely put Silverblue on it. Although I first want to see if the bug with popovers not showing is a GNOME issue or an Ubuntu issue.
Sweet.
Which distro did you choose?
@aral Very enticing! Definitely check back and let us know how you like it.
@djohngo Will do :)
@basyl I’ll let you know once I’ve had a chance to put it through its paces :)
@aral looks very slick! Curious to know how it deals with temperature: does it get too warm when used intensively?
@petit_suisse Will do :) Give me a little time to break it in :)
cheers @aral
a review, a review, a review!
You can already skip anything about gaming perf, we don't care about that sh**.
But
- responsivness
- active pen?
- batterylife
- heating
- audio
@trilobyte Yep. And it’s basically supposed to be laptop-level. Let’s see; haven’t really done anything with it yet (it’s charging and I cooked lunch) :)
@aral At first, I was confused few moments 🙂 So... they re-used name "StarLite" for the tablet. We have the previous StarLite Mk IV at home, which is quite nice small laptop. Interesting move, but this one looks pretty cool too 😉
@Professor_Stevens Just tap the hamburger menu or a drop-down menu in Settings. None of them appear.
I'm using GNOME on a Manjaro install I did over the weekend. Can you tell me how to reproduce the bug? I'll let you know what happens on my setup.
@Professor_Stevens (This is not an issue I have on non-touchscreen; wondering if it’s a touchscreen issue or a touchscreen on Ubuntu issue… or…?)
@Professor_Stevens Ah, looks like a three-year old GNOME/GTK 4 issue: apparently popovers don’t work in GTK 4 on touchscreens. I guess I have to install KDE Plasma on this if I want a working tablet? (Unless that has issues on tablets too…)
So, first issue, popovers (eg., drop-down menus, app menus, etc.) don’t work on GTK 4 apps (like System Settings in GNOME) on touchscreen devices. Three-year old bug: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1523
I guess that means tablets are not currently supported under GNOME.
Going to see if KDE Plasma works on touchscreen Linux tablets.
*sigh!*
@JackTheCat It means Ubuntu (and likely any other distribution that defaults to GNOME) is broken on tablet computers.
But things like this happen in the Linux world. Basically all major Linux distributions are also currently shipping with a broken screen reader, making them inaccessible to people who rely on one to use a computer.
🤷♂️
@aral Literally no idea what any of this means. 🤷♂️
@sonny The bug’s still listed as open but, sure, I will test with latest Fedora. Starlabs is shipping with latest Ubuntu and a number of other operating systems. Will let them know to at least not ship Ubuntu until they update.
@aral it should be fixed in a recent GNOME version, complain to your distro
Fedora 40 should work just fine
@uzayran @Professor_Stevens Thanks, that’s good to know :)
@aral @Professor_Stevens Plasma on my Steam Deck running Bazzite (Fedora-based atomic distro) seems to work fine with touch. Touch targets seem a bit small, but it's also just a 7-inch, 800p screen.
@Professor_Stevens All good. @sonny informed me that the bug has been fixed and I can confirm that it is in the latest Fedora Silverblue.
@aral This worth anything? This is on my Asus with a touchscreen.
@Professor_Stevens @sonny A big part of the problem is hardware vendors who don’t understand what resolution to implement for different screen sizes.
Case in point: the display on my new StarLite is 12.5" and supports a resolution of 2,880×1,920 which is absolutely perfect at 200%. Just gorgeous. (I believe StarLabs had an issue with sourcing this panel so future panels will be slightly lower resolution sadly, at least for the moment.)
Cool.
Now, I realize FOSS is all someone's passion project, so I don't want to be a pest. But I was kind of stunned to see that GNOME only supports two zoom sizes, 100% and 200% (which might as well be labeled "much too small" and "way too big").
A workaround is to use the "large type" setting in Accessibility. But people are telling me I can get more zoom levels if I turn on some "experimental" flag.
Seriously? Zooming is experimental for GNOME in 2024?
Oh, man, so I’ll be writing a proper review of the new #StarLite #Linux #tablet but initial thoughts…
Emotional brain: I love this thing! The screen alone is amazing. Just gorgeous! 2,880×1,920 @ 200% is perfect. Feels amazing in your hand in portrait orientation.
Rational brain: Has basic usability issues.
• Can’t use encrypted drive without external keyboard
• GNOME on-screen keyboard unusable
• Front camera is crap
• Back camera not recognised (?)
But amazing this even exists… more soon.
@rspfau Not that you should install Windows on anything but Microsoft have Surface tablets that run some mutation of the OS. You’d likely have issues just installing stock Windows on a tablet. (See first point.) MacOS is proprietary as all fuck so, no, it won’t run on anything but a Mac without much hackery (but Apple will happily sell you an iPad).
Both GNOME and Plasma, however, follow a responsive approach and support touch so they will run on tablets like this one. (To various degrees.)
@aral This may reveal my ignorance, but can Windows or MacOS be installed and run on a tablet? Or do tablets have to run a tablet-specific OS?
@aud I should before I get too attached to my familiar environment and start being productive or something :P
@aral@mastodon.ar.al (if you do end up trying KDE Plasma I’m very curious how well it works!)
@sonny I’m not complaining to anyone. I’m sharing my experiences. *breathe, breathe*
OK, thanks for your help.
Take care + all the best.
@aral thanks for the update
Please complain to your operating system or hardware vendor in the future 🙏 Really anyone who makes money of this product.
Not to a community of (mostly) volunteers.
@MichaelTBacon It’s actually quite amazing how good it is. Until it isn’t. It gets so much right but also fails at basic things like stuck keys and the backspace key corrupting input on the on-screen keyboard which make it unsuable.
But it won’t get all the way there until they address the culture of taking every piece of feedback as a personal attack.
If people care enough to point out issues and make suggestions, that’s good. What any project should fear the most is silence.
Putting GNOME on a tablet seems like . . . a really bad idea.
Tablets are just screaming out for a for more restrictive, prescriptive UI framework. And GNOME is very much not that.
@triskelion I am planning on trying it out but certain issues will affect both (like not being able to decrypt the drive without an external keyboard which is a LUKS issue).
@aral I find KDE Plasma workflow better on tablets :P
@aral Shame they got rid of the 3k option. Looks like I'll have to get a Windows option and put Linux on it... Now there's no 1 TB or 2 TB of storage option. Looks like I'll have to pass... Any other good options that are functional with Linux?
@cameronbosch Ah they’re sold out of those options. Wow, first time getting in early seems to have paid off (usually, I get stuck with expensive paperweights) :)
Sorry I don’t know any comparable tablets at the moment but I’ll boost your post in case anyone else does.
@uzayran @elementary Yeah, getting it in the hands of display environment devs would be a smart move on their part. Glad to hear she’s getting one.
@aral I hope those basic usability issues will get resolved when some maintainers will have access to the device as well. I know @elementary's founder is expecting hers soon at least :)
@laubblaeser Well, there’s always the chance I got a lemon but, given my experience with the StarLabs MKIV, the video camera and microphone are on par with that; which is to say unusable (crackly, tinny audio; low-quality video. Although, I guess the video would still be usable if the audio wasn’t so bad. But you can use a headset/mic, I guess. And an external web cam.) I’ll post a recording when I get a moment.
@aral Eagerly awaiting mine but in the meantime, could you elaborate a tiny bit on the crappy front camera? I want to use the device for some video calls with friends and this would be a real downer.
Another observation, having charged it to capacity twice now and let it discharge fully once:
The battery only charges up to 96% and dies at 2%.
Not the worst possible thing but I would expect a new device to charge to 100% and die at 1%. The former likely more important than the latter.
Hope the battery doesn’t have the same journey that the one on my StarLabs Mk IV did – it dies at around 65% or so after two years.
So I spoke to the StarLabs folks and the 96% max charge is apparently by design to protect the battery.
@dzwiedziu Well, yes, we all know it’s a dark art – just saying that if someone sees their fully-charged battery at 96%, they’re going think something is wrong whereas if they see it at 100% they’re going to think everything’s all right :) It’s more about communicating well ;)
@aral Well… <inhales for a rant about measuring batteries capacity can be only done indirectly by non-linear voltage drop measurements>
…
…
<exhales>
…better not…
@pludikovsky Thanks, I’ll have a look :)
@aral Does `tlp-stat -s` return somehing? In that case you should be able to change the max charge threshold, and fix the cutoff point by running `tlp recalibrate`.
Details: https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html
@aral I have a new fidget toy ^_^
@dzwiedziu Haha, oh boy, they really are very precise in their estimates ;)
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