This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the market for a new laptop or perhaps a Microsoft Surface-like tablet style system?
Well, Star Labs have turned their StarLite laptop into a tablet.
I have to admit, I love the form factor on this giving you the best of both worlds.
You get a sweet fully Linux supported tablet, and you can hook it up to a magnetic keyboard to get a full laptop experience too.
This is a proper Linux system too with open-source firmware powered by coreboot and edk II with updates via LVFS.
They support and test many different configurations, and you get a decent warranty with it too allowing you to to take your computer apart, replace parts, install an upgrade, and use any operating system and even your firmware, all without voiding the warranty.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Seems like no stylus? If so it makes the starlite not very surface-like in my mind. Ain’t a stylus the reason for something like this?
it wouldn’t be hard at all you just buy a stylus that works like a finger
With the catch that it works like a finger meaning fat and imprecise. A stylus like the surface has is more like a pen and needs hardware in the tablet to function.
It depends.
You can basically always use the crappy ones made for general touchscreens to replicate your finger. You can’t use a real one with features like Apple Pencil/surface pen/wacom without an extra layer built into the screen to recognize them.
FWIW, my daily driver is a Lenovo Yoga with Ubuntu and the active pen works just fine with that. That support is definitely there.
I have a surface and I love it. At the same time, I hardly use the stylus.
I’m sure it’s the reason many get it, but I also think there’s a large audience for a tablet without one.
I’m not sure on Starlab’s background or people’s stance on them, but I think this looks pretty nice.
Coreboot, 3:2 aspect ratio, magnetic keyboard, aluminium finish, I’d say makes this a pretty compelling alternative to a surface. Specs aren’t super beefy, but I don’t think they need to be in this form factor. Introductory price on this seems nice, too.
I’d say makes this a pretty compelling alternative to a surface.
And like a Surface, it puts a desktop OS onto a tablet, basically repeating Microsoft’s mistake.
Specs aren’t super beefy, but I don’t think they need to be in this form factor.
There’s a difference between “not beefy” and a super crappy 1.00GHz Intel N200. A hardware OEM just needs to go to AMD and pick off the shelf whatever is the closest thing to Steam Deck’s CPU.
I’d definitely prefer to have gone the AMD route for these, but N200 isn’t that awful, no? At least comparable to some Skylake gens? Not that that’s amazing in the modern day, but I’d say still capable enough with the included specs to not be too bogged down by some of the lighter distros.
Better off with a Chromebook 10/10 times if you need something low powered, but I think it’s an interesting entry to the hardware space.
I’d definitely prefer to have gone the AMD route for these, but N200 isn’t that awful, no?
I doubt it’s powerful enough to play back 4k videos smoothly and 1080p stretched to the native resolution doesn’t look super great. If AMD didn’t offer a vastly better alternative at similar cost, fine, but Ryzen Z1 and such are available.
Desktop OS on a tablet is fine and even preferred depending on what you want it for.
I have a surface and don’t mind using full windows that way.
Desktop OS on a tablet is fine and even preferred depending on what you want it for.
If the use case is to use a tablet as a tablet, then a desktop OS is not fine. Source: Me and my Surface Pro 7 which is unusable without the type cover.
I agree with you. I got a surface go for some time because I wanted to travel with a mini computer that could do some coding with my preferred IDE, document editing, web browsing and a couple other tasks like a computer, even if it was slower.
At the same time it being a tablet was also very useful to watch movies in other rooms!
I used the stylus only because I was curious, but didn’t used it more than a couple of weeks
Very appealing for a travel device running a Linux kernel. On the product page, they also mention Open Warranty, which makes me believe it will be easily serviceable - this would be a big plus, especially for a travel tablet, being able to switch the disk easily.
The point of a tablet is to be secure to use it with a touch interface. If you install just some vanilla Linux distro, that won’t work. Is there any touch based interface for Linux that’s worth using?
Is there any touch based interface for Linux that’s worth using?
Plasma should detect automatically when the keyboard is detached and then apply some changes to its desktop layout. There’s also Plasma Mobile but I think that would not work well on the larger screen.
If I were StarLabs, I would probably default to BlissOS which is based on Android-x86 which means all regular Linux distributions are still feasible to install.
If only there was another group of touch first devices, preferably with even smaller screens, oh wait…
Yeah, I know I could just use Android or ChromeOS. But there’s a reason why I prefer Linux.
If you install just some vanilla Linux distro, that won’t work.
My Surface 3 Pro with Debian Stable would disagree. The Gnome desktop does pretty good without a keyboard.
Gnome is actually amazing on a tablet. The touch gestures work well and it even does fancy stuff like pushes the content on your screen up when the on screen keyboard is active so you can see what you’re typing. The only thing that really needs work is the on screen keyboard, however it is greatly improved by using the “Improved OSK” Gnome extension. If only it had swipe type.
Source: I recently acquired a hand me down Dell latitude 5175 which is an x86 tablet (can be found for cheap on eBay) so of course I had to install Linux on it. If anyone happens to be interested in using Linux on a Dell latitude 5175/5179 do note that deep sleep does not work and neither do the cameras. I also recommend Ubuntu LTS and using X11 instead of Wayland.
