A friend whom I installed Fedora some time ago wants to switch from a normal notebook to a tablet. She asked me if and which tablets work with Fedora.
I have myself no experiences as I don’t use tablets. Therefore, I would like to ask if anyone can tell about some tablets that work properly with Fedora.
Generally, she uses it for average use cases (browsing, emails, texting, etc.) and nothing special. It should get the job done, the battery should survive some time, and if possible, it should have 5G, but at least 4G mobile communication.
Pricing should be at the best below 500 USD/EUR/CHF, but suggestions up to 1000 are appreciated as well.
I expect Intel and AMD based tablets offer the best experience for normal users, but if the experience is that ARM works fine as well, that’s appreciated as well. As long as it is stable, all three fit her use cases.
However, I can set up the Fedora for her, but she has to be able to manage it herself smoothly and reliably over time. This means, patching the system, third party repos or such is not an option, as this can become error prone over time as it is not officially supported.
Any experience about this is appreciated, even if you don’t know a specific model or so (I have no experience with tablets & Fedora at all) Thanks in advance
For a tablet i would say just get a good Android one, they just work™. It really isn’t the worth the headache trying to run a ‘real’ linux distro on a tablet. The existing Android tablet offerings and the ecosystem itself are great, there are lots of options at all price points.
However, Android ain’t an option, and if it is worth a headache to avoid Android is a matter of the emphasis I guess Let’s keep the Android issues box closed but add that this tablet is intended to become the sole machine of the user, and shall thus also be integrated in (if possible) existing backup solutions and shall get a lot of configurations/metadata transferred, but also keep the user experience as preferred by the user with KDE. The migration with android would be a mess in this specific case. Yet I agree that there are (many) cases where android is fine and its issues sufficiently mitigable, but I promise in this specific case: the choice for Fedora has not just “I want open source” or “real linux” as justification (I understand your point though, and agree in many use cases!)
GrapheneOS is wonderful for myself, but keeping it running and managing issues with apps and such needs experience and solid knowledge of sandboxing, linux, etc. This is unfortunately not appropriate here. It’s not a system for beginners who primarily want their system to run - especially if its their sole machine.
But the list of linux tablets looks nice. I check them in detail! So far the only issue I found is the US keyboard, but I’ll check the configuration options, quite sure some are intended for international distribution. I just have to check which exist with 4g/5g.
There are often lots of driver and compatibility issues, poor 3rd party software support, poor battery life, poor development and end-user support (since almost nobody uses them), etc etc.
The Minisforum is a nice looking machine at roughly €1000,- but running a Ryzen 7 on it with a 50W battery is probably going to give you poor results in terms of performance and battery life. The reason almost all tablets are ARM based is because of the battery issue: to get decent battery life in a single enclosure with a screen, compromises need to be made. Another reason is that x86 cpu’s get hotter and consequently will need to throttle down all the time due to thermal constraints.
You will probably have a much better time running Fedora on a convertible laptop with a touchscreen - if the touch part is what your friend is looking for specifically.
Indeed, thats why I ask. But I have seen several reports, up to some evaluations which firmware packages have to be available, about machines that work fine. So it seems to be no longer as messy as it was several years ago when I last checked anything about tablets. The only issue is that all I found was without 4g/5g.
the very “u” model is ok for the use case, I have a predecessor of it, and with the kernel, it offers many possibilities to reduce energy (AMD just introduced a change that adjusts screen output to save another ~1W in power saving mode). Its power use can be kept low and predictable. Not perfect though, but ok for the use case. The issue is more that the minisforum does not yet offer anything with 4g/5g.
Most 4g/5g tablets are ARM, and this is where your point seems to apply in the cases that had been tested so far and which I found here and in other forums:
However, people who are satisfied with their tablet tend to not open topics about it. Its the same as with notebooks. Therefore, the question sometimes leads to some unknown but successful tests to become available
Yeah, we were considering that as alternative. But with that also in most cases 4g/5g + compatible hardware is an issue.
Slightly more expensive at around €1250, but this Acer Travelmate Spin P4 might tick all the boxes. It has a 14" touchscreen with pen and a 4G/LTE simcard slot.
I indeed didn’t know that one before. Unfortunately, it seems not available with 4g/5g in our area
That one is on the “alternatives” list.
We hope to get something smaller / more compact, but the Yoga is indeed an alternative if we cannot find something more in scope. Yet I consider Lenovo generally as a worst case solution given the interwoven / intransparent contracts in Europe, which can become a mess if one needs support (my current T16 was shipped with broken firmware and is the most unreliable notebook I have ever had)
Yet we keep that one in mind, and I might check if there is some indication if the Acer one is to become available with 4g or so in our area.
I have to also check if a power plug for Switzerland is available for it. But getting it from another location might be indeed interesting. As I said, I will have a deeper look into that one
My experience with tablets and Linux is that they suffer from not being able to have the main features of a tablet, work on Linux for whatever reason. Tablet style laptops, Powerbooks or Slates all suffer from not accessing the Pen properly or not being able to rotate, flip and overall function as a tablet should.
I think $500 USD is reasonable for a second hand tablet and seeing if the latest Linux kernel and drivers will fix these long standing issues.
It would be nice to have these things, but they are indeed no major issues as long as the touch screen itself works fine.
100%. If functions like rotating or using the pen on screen are not yet supported, that is on itself not an issue in our use case, but the touchscreen itself should work reliably and without issues. The same for the remaining “parts”.
For what it’s worth, i did find some positive comments about the linux support of the Acer Travelmate models:
I’ve had good use of my Spin 5 with Ubuntu. I haven’t configured it extensively, and I won’t pretend it’s completely quirk-less, but I can’t say what parts of the quirks come from the hardware and what from software (apart from a few build quality issues).
Anyway, the convertibility works fine, as far as I can tell. Keyboard gets turned off after bending it past 180 degrees or so, and the touchscreen works well.
Interesting one. But I have to be careful to rely on Ubuntu reports, as its kernel is heavily patched. But in such cases it is worth to verify if the very hardware has drivers contained in the vanilla kernel. I’ll put it on the list.
I have my own tablet and have had Linux, Windows tablets over the years. It’s a frustrating experience, because the use case for a tablet is the flip, rotate, touch, battery life. It literally breaks workflows and is a huge maintenance issue.
I have a drawing workflow and my current tablet is bugged since mesa/nvidia issues recently breaking my note taking, drawing workflow completely.
There are some reviewers on Youtube mentioning some new drawing tablets recently but they are pricey. . .
Thanks in advance 
Let’s keep the Android issues box closed but add that this tablet is intended to become the sole machine of the user, and shall thus also be integrated in (if possible) existing backup solutions and shall get a lot of configurations/metadata transferred, but also keep the user experience as preferred by the user with KDE. The migration with android would be a mess in this specific case. Yet I agree that there are (many) cases where android is fine and its issues sufficiently mitigable, but I promise in this specific case: the choice for Fedora has not just “I want open source” or “real linux” as justification 
(I understand your point though, and agree in many use cases!)
