I have a nice 11inch Chromebook with a touchscreen.
Lenovo Flex 3, intel i3-11th gen
Corebooted with MrChromebox firmware, so it has UEFI and works like a charm.
I tried Almalinux 9 (HeliumOS) on it and GNOME was pretty nice for touch, but the old version of GNOME was kinda bad.
I then reinstalled, used Kinoite instead, as I really like KDE, and it runs well. KDE is not great on mobile though, the keyboard is pretty bad, and I remember Dolphin being better?
I planned on adding plasma-mobile to it, and I have the Kinoite image pinned, but it seemed a bit rough in reviews, so I am currently rebasing to Silverblue.
I will try GNOME and Phosh on there and report my findings. To my knowledge, GNOME wants to become fully convergent so that phosh is no longer needed?
Keyboard
The GNOME keyboard is very small, in comparison the KDE maliit keyboard fills the entire screen. None are good at my current resolution and there seem to be no settings for any of those 2.
A keyboard extension I used on Alma 9 probably doesnt work on GNOME 47, hopefully that gets ported.
I installed squeekboard and phosh and will see what these can do.
Phosh
Interesting but I tink GNOME is better?
The keyboard is kinda worse, and the quicksettings a bit slim.
Some apps spawn behind the top panel, making them unusable.
The lockscreen only PIN support, which can lock you out.
But the touch support in Nautilus is great. Apps work fine.
Anyways, I rebase back to kinoite and try out Plasma mobile.
Plasma Mobile
Hmm, very buggy.
Interesting experience, the onboarding is nice (but it doesnt fulfill the same role as on Android)
A ton of stuff is like on Android… until it isnt.
Dragging stuff to the desktop works, but takes a long time. Folders are kinda buggy, the panel doesnt allow folders and has huge padding (horizontally and vertically).
The virtual keyboard has an interesting mode that allows scrolling and arrow buttons. Interesting, still kinda messy.
The power menu doesnt show, instead I get logged out.
KDiskMark displays weirdly in front of the app launcher, runs but cannot be normally closed.
As these things dont happen on regular Plasma, and as Dolphin is the same, I will try to use Plasma.
plasma-camera
The plasma-camera app is interesting too. On my main Laptop (Fedora Kinoite 41, 14in screen, Plasma) it looks normal and is quite nice! On Plasma mobile the image was extremely squeezed together horizontally.
It does not dynamically allow to switch between cameras (like Snapshot), and detecting my android webcam requires a relaunch (but works).
Oh, and unlike GNOMEs convergence, the “mobile” seems to be hardcoded? So this app has no decorations, can be dragged around though, and closed from the tray.
Interesting!
Squeekboard
Cannot be used on phosh or Plasma (mobile or not). Any idea why?