I Tried Installing Linux on a Windows Tablet

Windows is famously mediocre for tablets. What about Linux? I found out by installing Fedora Workstation on my HP Tablet 11.

[jayrome]

You did exactly what I've been thinking to do for months now! After I installed Gnome Garuda on my Thinkpad L490 I was so impressed with the fluidity of the gestures and intuitive navigation that I'm convinced it would work great on a tablet (at least better than Windows). I'm looking to buy a tablet with a lot of ram and an i7 processor so I can do something special.

[paulhernaus]

I'm using Fedora Linux on my Microsoft Surface Go 2. I have to admit that none of the cameras work, and now I always have to type a password to log in, instead of using Windows Hello, but there are some things that work much better on Linux. The main thing is that I can use Bluetooth headphones to watch videos with the video and audio always being in sync. That I never achieved on Windows. Furthermore, on this "machine" the performance with Linux is noticeably better compared to windows.

[bubbleemoji]

Your fade out transition freaked me out a little lol felt like i was blinking against my will 😮

[Roosader]

I just got one of these puppies on eBay for 190 USD new with the keyboard. Listed as refurbished but still sealed. I am veryyyy pleased with it, especially at that price. Probably like the best deal ive ever gotten on a piece of tech

[deanspanos]

Fedora is the best for x86 tablets in touch mode. The issue is always onscreen keyboard support and holding down your finger for right clicking.

[atomictransfusion]

3:34 don't know if you found this out, but there's a program called gnome tweaks that you can use to set the ui scale to 150%

[peppefailla]

I'm happy you've had a fine experience with linux on your tablet! Both the companies and the community are making a great job making the linux desktop viable for most of the people. We need more videos like this

[geezergeek]

Thanks for sharing your story!
Difficulty getting to bios/uefi... blame windows vs hp.
Earlier versions didn't have such an arcane system to get there.
My Dell tablet came with Windows 8... settled on ubuntu for it after trying a few others.
Pulled the original m.2 ssd, and installed a new one - installed linux on it. 5 years ago or so.
Now I am fully linux. Just mess with Windows when others need help.
Seldom use the tablet now ... mostly a Ryzen tower build, and a laptop. Both Linux.

[ContantContact]

I Am running Linux Mint, now for over a year, on an HP X360 laptop. It also can be used as a tablet, though I do not. But the touchscreen works.
Not going back to windows.

[Robospidera]

It would definitely be much better if you installed without the flash drive. Flash media is still too slow to boot an OS nowadays I personally think.

[BoopyTheFox]

Bought used Surface Pro 4 (in 2022) specifically to try linux on it and DAMN it is good!
Cameras not working is a major drawback for something like face-detect unlocking, but other than that i haven't had any issues!

Now my challenge is to make a usable awesomeWM installation with gesture control in mind.

[JustAPersonWhoComments]

Congratulations, you just created the ultimate tech paradox, turning a Windows tablet into a Linux machine

[worldhello]

@4:49 It runs almost 100% on a non-standardized configuration of proprietary hardware out of the box. That is a win.

[MissMissMM]

I am so glad you made this video. i had the same problem trying install linux because you cannot get to the bios. I want to dual boot my hp laptop. So I have ordered Pop os to try.

[TheDefaultgameer]

I ended up installing Pop Os on a Surface Pro 4, works great, but the battery is near shot, so it doesn't live very long on battery. Kinda kills the reason to use it as a tablet.

You might like Pop Os on this, it has some solid built in features you may like. Same DE as Fedora, but it's more customized, and a nice tiling feature that auto fills the space with any windows you have open.

[yeet]

im using surface pro 9 on arch linux with linux-surface kernel. the boot process was easy as i did not want windows and the surface pro 9 firmware settings supports swipe-to-boot. i installed without the linux-surface kernel, and using archinstall. after some commands of syncing pacman and adding linux-surface repositories, it has worked well. the only thing i dont like is the battery life, but i am amazed the touch screen works. i get low cpu and ram usage during browsing the web and running commands. i did have to reinstall the custom kernel as a update messed up the touchscreen, but i did not need to reinstall after that.

[smellymala]

Damn, my bro, I was programming MUDs in 1993, but I am also a working artist and you just are not going to beat the iPad.

[swaroopchirayinkil]

Cool, this is one nice thing I saw after a long time, related to Linux installation and review 👏👏👏

[stephenanthony]

Liked the video BUT, to my knowledge you can't accurately or meaningfully compare performance of an OS installed to bare metal to one on a flash drive.

Via USB, Your OS data has to process through more bridges with narrower bandwidth to make it to CPU and RAM than it would via the direct PCIe connection on your SSD. And the storage architecture of a USB can't compare to that of a SSD as the micro controller protocols and bandwidth of the media far outstrips anything on a USB no matter how fast the port is.

It's also possible that in the power save profile also reduced power to the I/O, which is why you saw slow down on the OS on the USB.

I'm not sure what you have to do to install Fedora to bare metal on this model. I think HP has a write protection screw to remove before you can turn off secure boot. If you get it running, I have no doubt Linux will run circles around Windows on bare metal. It always does.

[arkvsi]

I just bought it to do the same. This is Moore important than buying food