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?
Ah damn yeah, I was just thinking that this device might be something I’d consider blowing my budget for, if it can replace multiple devices. But the lack of stylus on a device like this is huge let down.
How hard would it be to make it work with a third party stylus?
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.
Sure, because the Yoga has the extra screen layer to support active pens. Linux isn’t the problem.
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Interesting. You’d think they’d make that obvious somewhere.
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 genuinely dont see the reason for a windows tablet without a stylus. Note-taking is nice with a stylus but for just holding it and watching videos or browsing a surface is honestly too unwieldly and the windows touch interface is also not great.
Agreed. Although I do use the stylus that came with my Galaxy Tab S7 for note-taking, that’s the only time I use it. 95% of the time I just use the tablet for browsing the web or watching videos.
My thoughts exactly.
They do have a generic MPP active pen as a configuration option though
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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.
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.
Gnome shell works well on my vivo as either a tablet or with the keyboard.
I am of the opinion that if we keep waiting for the “perfect” Linux tablet, it will never exist. The specs of this unit are head and shoulders above any other Linux-dedicated tablet thus far.
I plan on buying one once I see a product review, and if it’s as good as I hope it will be, I hope that Linux users will support it with their wallets so we get more and better devices like this.
It seems like Star Labs is pivoting away from making superheroes and finally decided to use their technology more responsibly!
Was looking for this comment.
I see soo many people complain about the CPU but if your CPU use too much power, your battery is going to take a big hit on battery life, unless the tablet now start at much higher prices. So the 6W form factor makes a lot of sense.
People complaining about it not being AMD. AMD just doesn’t make good 6W CPU (other then custom one but that would cost a fortune for such a little company). Intel has been really experienced in this market.
To the people scared about video decoding, Intel has really good HW decoding so 4K isn’t an issue. It’s better then AMD’s one on Linux from my own experience.
Finally this is a $600 tablet, so don’t expect a workstation to run Blender. Linux runs well on weaker CPU. My school computer runs KDE Plasma with a few apps open without much trouble and it has a Intel Celeron N5100 and 4GB of RAM.
The problem is that tablets like this generally can’t take advantage of the turbo boost on the CPU due to thermal throttling. I’ll wait and see, but I expect it to perform worse than an N5100 laptop.
Wait and see
Always wanted to try a star labs product. What always stops me are the specs. Not enough ram or storage or CPU to justify the price. Even though I know the premium is there because they aren’t just white labeled clevos like every other Linux focused PC company
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?
Gnome has a strong touch interface. You just don’t see it when used in a desktop.
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.
Same here. I’ve got Debian stable on a Dell Latitude 2-in1 (can’t remember the model number) and it works great with Gnome and I can flip the keyboard backwards and use it like a tablet. Although it is bulkier because it has a keyboard attached.
Interesting. Might give that try some time. I’d love to have a tablet with Linux.
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.
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.
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.
You haven’t read
to the endpast literally the first subsection of the list, have you?
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Android
Would absolutely get if it had a pen for drawing and notetaking, but otherwise I feel it’s just a somewhat underpowered laptop in a neat form factor.
Oh damn, I may actually get it then
Great RAM and SSD, but at the cost of a quad core processor at 1Ghz. Still, I’d consider it a bargain, especially at 500 with the keyboard, as it is right now.
I mean what high processing thing could you do on a tablet?
I wish I would have known about this before buying the Pinetab2. I didn’t realize (completely my fault) that the Pinetab2 was a development unit without working wifi, bluetooth, camera and other issues. Once again, my fault, not Pine64’s.
Damn this might be an easy buy for $600
I didn’t see anything in the article, but will it have stylus support?
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.
Gnome is not so bad. It has a decent on screen keyboard that’s very useable. I occasionally use it on my Dell 2-in-1 laptop.
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!
Does anyone have on-screen keyboard experience with Linux tablets?
GNOME Mobile should have a good one after purism started pushing it, right?
Any more info on this?
It’s ok, but you really need the “improved OSK” gnome extension so you can have things like arrow keys, Ctrl, etc at all times. The keyboard is usually very good about popping up on it’s own when you tap on a text field. If it does fail to auto show itself you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pull it up that way. There is no swipe to type but other than that and with the extension I mentioned before, it works well enough. Now there are issues on Wayland that makes it unbearable though so I would recommend you use X.
