N3M

The tablet and 2 in 1 surface devices are pretty much laptops (at least same architecture and bootloader) amd they’ve been easy to boot other stuff with in my somewhat limited experience.

A month or so ago I picked up an 8gb model and it’s been really nice, I wrote a blog post about it if you’re interested and have been really happy with it. 4gb is enough for note taking & code writing, web browsing, reading, and YouTube watching (at low/mid resolutions) and I actually got away with those on a 2gb RAM 16gb storage Chromebook + Debian for a while. Still though, if you can spring for 8gb of ram that will be helpful, and a necessity if you want to do things like run waydroid.

Gnome works great, just be sure to set up the on screen keyboard and run the custom hot corners plugin to make it work everywhere. Also, I know that chromium doesn’t have the best reputation in these parts, but you’ll probably need to use either a WebKit or chromium browser for their touch controls and PWAs.

I went with Debian, but I can’t imagine Fedora offering a much different experience. Mine worked fine without a surface specific kernel, but results may vary from device to device.

Last, I bought mine used for $99 US on EBay. Not sure how it varies from country to country but at least in the states you can find older surface models in decent condition starting at $70 US or $100 US for ones in like new condition with a keyboard & charger.

Edit: beyond Surfaces, if you’re deal hunting and don’t mind more research I believe most 2 in 1s running Windows or ChromeOS will accept a custom OS.

I’m on the standard LTS kernel (if I properly remember Debian defaults). I did check out the Linux Surface project before setting it up, though the standard kernal and Gnome config seems to work great out of the box. Even little things like the gyroscope and automatic brightness worked from the start, though it probably varies from model to model.

Edit: only thing that didn’t work out of the box is the camera. Going to tinker around with that at some point, not a super high priority personally but still nice to have.

I recently picked up an older MS Surface model and it has been really good. I don’t know where tablet bleeds into 2in1, but it’s a tablet that has a magnetic keyboard that pops on and off and accepts USB connections for stuff like mice with a USB to USB-C adapter or via a surface dock. Prices start at around $70 on ebay for older models in decent condition and run up to around $2k for the highest end models directly from Microsoft. Being x86 they accept any compatible OS (including Linux) and installs just as easy as any laptop (minus the later models that need the touch driver installed manually on Linux or a Windows re-install). If you go with a surface and buy an older model make sure you get 8gb of ram instead of 4.

As far as setup goes, I went with Gnome, enabled the on screen keyboard, then added the “custom hot corners” Gnome plugin to get a working on screen keyboard everywhere (without the plugin it only works in Gnome and Gnome apps). Afterwards (since I went with an older model that didn’t need the touch drivers) it’s fully ready for use like any other device.

There’s also the PineTab2, though from the sounds of it it’s not really ready to be used as a tool, more so just for development and experimentation. I did find two good blog posts about it’s state when researchign devices which would be worth reading if you were considering buying a PineTab2 and wanted to know what to expect:

https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/pine64-pinetab2-review/

https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/after-3-months-of-daily-driving-pinetab-2/

Privacy or security hardening?

If you’re just using Windows for gaming, and you’re only on game markets like Steam and maybe video/audio streaming services while gaming then you’re probably pretty secure. As far as if you’re just installing games, then there’s not really too many inroads for malware outside of a market like Steam or the particular game company getting compromised, which would have issues regardless of which OS you’re using them on. Windows 10 already has anti-virus built in and UAC so you’re probably just about there already. I say this as a die hard Linux advocate: the idea that Windows is wildly insecure when compared to Linux/Mac/BSDs is incorrect as far as I know and is just a myth from back when nobody cared about writing malware for anything other than Windows.

If you’re also web browsing, I’d say having a well configured browser would be good to do, and making sure you are regularly updating/auto updating Windows and other software. Also, if you play a lot of online games and end up opening up port forwarding or something similar just be conscious of it and make sure to do something like that right and limit what kind of attack surface you’re opening up.

If you’re thinking privacy, I did just do a blog post about Win 11 which is similar, but I have a feeling if you’re on Lemmy you’re already familiar with what the basics the post includes: get a decently configured browser, toggle off as many privacy invasive settings as you can, disable the telemetry service, and try to limit the bloat Microsoft likes to include during or after installation.

I’d also very carefully vet any sort of scripts, custom ISOs, and the like if you choose to use them. You’d be putting a lot of faith on whoever made them. And probably don’t worry about VPNs and such, they’re not going to do anything to hide the fact that you (presumably) purchased games under your name and you’re using your account to play them.

I’m typing this up on the fly and by no means the leading expert in the field, but these would probably get you a good 95% there. Happy gaming

Thanks, just ran my latest post through grammerly and it caught a few.

Sorry I’m a bit late to reply, I don’t disagree, virtual desktops are great in a business setting. Microsoft already offers that for businesses, but the proposed product in the works I was talking about was for regular consumers. I doubt that they’ll force it anytime soon in the sense that they’d quit offering local versions of Windows, but I still didn’t wanna pass up a chance to complain about it :)

Nice catch, and thanks for the feedback. I’ll have to try to remember to edit that too next time I regenerate the site

Thanks!

Thanks! Yeah I’m under no illusions I’ll change the world, or anybody’s mind about much. I’m perfectly happy just having a mini soapbox to share my thoughts. But yeah, lol, as a Debian user running LibreWolf (a Firefox fork) on my personal machines I’m probably preaching the choir here.