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1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 17-Jun-2024 22:43:31 JST Aral Balkan

   Oooh, ooh, ooh… look what just arrived! I’ve been waiting almost a year for it and boy was it worth the wait. My new Linux laptop is a… tablet? Yep. The StarLabs StarLite.

   Oh and the screen on this thing! 😍

   https://ie.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite

   #linux #tablet #StarLabs #StarLite

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:01:16 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • JackTheSeparatistCat 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

     @JackTheCat Haha, thanks 💕

   • JackTheSeparatistCat 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (jackthecat@mastodon.scot)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:01:17 JST JackTheSeparatistCat 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

     in reply to

     @aral If you're happy I'm happy.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:02:01 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • DansLeRuSH ᴱᶰ

     @danslerush Sure :)

   • DansLeRuSH ᴱᶰ (danslerush@floss.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:02:02 JST DansLeRuSH ᴱᶰ

     in reply to

     @aral My gosh, there's even a French keyboard (something that never normally happens). I need some feedback after a bit of use 🤓

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:04:19 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Professor_Stevens

     @Professor_Stevens It’s got Ubuntu on it from StarLabs (just wanted to make sure everything was working. I’ll likely put Silverblue on it. Although I first want to see if the bug with popovers not showing is a GNOME issue or an Ubuntu issue.

   • Professor_Stevens (professor_stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:04:20 JST Professor_Stevens

     in reply to

     @aral

     Sweet.

     Which distro did you choose?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:04:35 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • djohngo

     @djohngo Will do :)

   • djohngo (djohngo@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:04:36 JST djohngo

     in reply to

     @aral Very enticing! Definitely check back and let us know how you like it.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:05:07 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Basyl

     @basyl I’ll let you know once I’ve had a chance to put it through its paces :)

   • Basyl (basyl@kafeneio.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:05:08 JST Basyl

     in reply to

     @aral looks very slick! Curious to know how it deals with temperature: does it get too warm when used intensively?

     #linux #tablet #StarLabs #StarLite

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:05:49 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Petit Suisse

     @petit_suisse Will do :) Give me a little time to break it in :)

   • Petit Suisse (petit_suisse@toot.community)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:05:50 JST Petit Suisse

     in reply to

     cheers @aral

     a review, a review, a review!

     You can already skip anything about gaming perf, we don't care about that sh**.

     But
     - responsivness
     - active pen?
     - batterylife
     - heating
     - audio

   • Lukáš Kotek (trilobyte@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:06:29 JST Lukáš Kotek

     in reply to

     @aral At first, I was confused few moments 🙂 So... they re-used name "StarLite" for the tablet. We have the previous StarLite Mk IV at home, which is quite nice small laptop. Interesting move, but this one looks pretty cool too 😉

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:06:29 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Lukáš Kotek

     @trilobyte Yep. And it’s basically supposed to be laptop-level. Let’s see; haven’t really done anything with it yet (it’s charging and I cooked lunch) :)

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:46:29 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Professor_Stevens

     @Professor_Stevens Just tap the hamburger menu or a drop-down menu in Settings. None of them appear.

   • Professor_Stevens (professor_stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:46:30 JST Professor_Stevens

     in reply to

     @aral

     I'm using GNOME on a Manjaro install I did over the weekend. Can you tell me how to reproduce the bug? I'll let you know what happens on my setup.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 00:58:12 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Professor_Stevens

     @Professor_Stevens (This is not an issue I have on non-touchscreen; wondering if it’s a touchscreen issue or a touchscreen on Ubuntu issue… or…?)

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 01:07:48 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Professor_Stevens

     @Professor_Stevens Ah, looks like a three-year old GNOME/GTK 4 issue: apparently popovers don’t work in GTK 4 on touchscreens. I guess I have to install KDE Plasma on this if I want a working tablet? (Unless that has issues on tablets too…)

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 01:10:59 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     So, first issue, popovers (eg., drop-down menus, app menus, etc.) don’t work on GTK 4 apps (like System Settings in GNOME) on touchscreen devices. Three-year old bug: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1523

     I guess that means tablets are not currently supported under GNOME.

     Going to see if KDE Plasma works on touchscreen Linux tablets.

     *sigh!*

     #gnome #linux #tablet #gtk4 #kde #plasma #popovers #mutter

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 01:15:41 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • JackTheSeparatistCat 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

     @JackTheCat It means Ubuntu (and likely any other distribution that defaults to GNOME) is broken on tablet computers.

     But things like this happen in the Linux world. Basically all major Linux distributions are also currently shipping with a broken screen reader, making them inaccessible to people who rely on one to use a computer.

     🤷♂️

     #linux #gnome #tablet #pc #computer #accessibility #a11y

   • JackTheSeparatistCat 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (jackthecat@mastodon.scot)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 01:15:42 JST JackTheSeparatistCat 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

     in reply to

     @aral Literally no idea what any of this means. 🤷♂️

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 01:38:54 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Sonny

     @sonny The bug’s still listed as open but, sure, I will test with latest Fedora. Starlabs is shipping with latest Ubuntu and a number of other operating systems. Will let them know to at least not ship Ubuntu until they update.

   • Sonny (sonny@floss.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 01:38:55 JST Sonny

     in reply to

     @aral it should be fixed in a recent GNOME version, complain to your distro

     Fedora 40 should work just fine

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 02:14:17 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • uzayran
     • Professor_Stevens

     @uzayran @Professor_Stevens Thanks, that’s good to know :)

   • uzayran (uzayran@cyberplace.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 02:14:18 JST uzayran

     in reply to

     • Professor_Stevens

     @aral @Professor_Stevens Plasma on my Steam Deck running Bazzite (Fedora-based atomic distro) seems to work fine with touch. Touch targets seem a bit small, but it's also just a 7-inch, 800p screen.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:14:47 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Sonny
     • Professor_Stevens

     @Professor_Stevens All good. @sonny informed me that the bug has been fixed and I can confirm that it is in the latest Fedora Silverblue.

   • Professor_Stevens (professor_stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:14:48 JST Professor_Stevens

     in reply to

     @aral This worth anything? This is on my Asus with a touchscreen.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:35:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Sonny
     • Professor_Stevens

     @Professor_Stevens @sonny A big part of the problem is hardware vendors who don’t understand what resolution to implement for different screen sizes.

     Case in point: the display on my new StarLite is 12.5" and supports a resolution of 2,880×1,920 which is absolutely perfect at 200%. Just gorgeous. (I believe StarLabs had an issue with sourcing this panel so future panels will be slightly lower resolution sadly, at least for the moment.)

   • Professor_Stevens (professor_stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:35:04 JST Professor_Stevens

     in reply to

     • Sonny

     @aral @sonny

     Cool.

     Now, I realize FOSS is all someone's passion project, so I don't want to be a pest. But I was kind of stunned to see that GNOME only supports two zoom sizes, 100% and 200% (which might as well be labeled "much too small" and "way too big").

     A workaround is to use the "large type" setting in Accessibility. But people are telling me I can get more zoom levels if I turn on some "experimental" flag.

     Seriously? Zooming is experimental for GNOME in 2024?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:43:17 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     Oh, man, so I’ll be writing a proper review of the new #StarLite #Linux #tablet but initial thoughts…

     Emotional brain: I love this thing! The screen alone is amazing. Just gorgeous! 2,880×1,920 @ 200% is perfect. Feels amazing in your hand in portrait orientation.

     Rational brain: Has basic usability issues.

     • Can’t use encrypted drive without external keyboard
     • GNOME on-screen keyboard unusable
     • Front camera is crap
     • Back camera not recognised (?)

     But amazing this even exists… more soon.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:49:53 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • rsp

     @rspfau Not that you should install Windows on anything but Microsoft have Surface tablets that run some mutation of the OS. You’d likely have issues just installing stock Windows on a tablet. (See first point.) MacOS is proprietary as all fuck so, no, it won’t run on anything but a Mac without much hackery (but Apple will happily sell you an iPad).

     Both GNOME and Plasma, however, follow a responsive approach and support touch so they will run on tablets like this one. (To various degrees.)

   • rsp (rspfau@ecoevo.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:49:55 JST rsp

     in reply to

     @aral This may reveal my ignorance, but can Windows or MacOS be installed and run on a tablet? Or do tablets have to run a tablet-specific OS?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:50:36 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Asta [AMP]

     @aud I should before I get too attached to my familiar environment and start being productive or something :P

   • Asta [AMP] (aud@fire.asta.lgbt)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:50:38 JST Asta [AMP]

     in reply to

     @aral@mastodon.ar.al (if you do end up trying KDE Plasma I’m very curious how well it works!)

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:52:10 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Sonny

     @sonny I’m not complaining to anyone. I’m sharing my experiences. *breathe, breathe*

     OK, thanks for your help.

     Take care + all the best.

   • Sonny (sonny@floss.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 04:52:11 JST Sonny

     in reply to

     @aral thanks for the update

     Please complain to your operating system or hardware vendor in the future 🙏 Really anyone who makes money of this product.

     Not to a community of (mostly) volunteers.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:14:36 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.

     @MichaelTBacon It’s actually quite amazing how good it is. Until it isn’t. It gets so much right but also fails at basic things like stuck keys and the backspace key corrupting input on the on-screen keyboard which make it unsuable.

     But it won’t get all the way there until they address the culture of taking every piece of feedback as a personal attack.

     If people care enough to point out issues and make suggestions, that’s good. What any project should fear the most is silence.

   • Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D. (michaeltbacon@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:14:37 JST Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.

     in reply to

     @aral

     Putting GNOME on a tablet seems like . . . a really bad idea.

     Tablets are just screaming out for a for more restrictive, prescriptive UI framework. And GNOME is very much not that.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:19:27 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Tris

     @triskelion I am planning on trying it out but certain issues will affect both (like not being able to decrypt the drive without an external keyboard which is a LUKS issue).

   • Tris (triskelion@floss.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:19:28 JST Tris

     in reply to

     @aral I find KDE Plasma workflow better on tablets :P

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:22:16 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • cameronbosch :endeavourOS:

     @cameronbosch Ah they’re sold out of those options. Wow, first time getting in early seems to have paid off (usually, I get stuck with expensive paperweights) :)

     Sorry I don’t know any comparable tablets at the moment but I’ll boost your post in case anyone else does.

   • cameronbosch :endeavourOS: (cameronbosch@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:22:17 JST cameronbosch :endeavourOS:

     in reply to

     @aral Shame they got rid of the 3k option. Looks like I'll have to get a Windows option and put Linux on it... Now there's no 1 TB or 2 TB of storage option. Looks like I'll have to pass... Any other good options that are functional with Linux?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:35:55 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • elementary
     • uzayran

     @uzayran @elementary Yeah, getting it in the hands of display environment devs would be a smart move on their part. Glad to hear she’s getting one.

   • uzayran (uzayran@cyberplace.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 05:35:56 JST uzayran

     in reply to

     • elementary

     @aral I hope those basic usability issues will get resolved when some maintainers will have access to the device as well. I know @elementary's founder is expecting hers soon at least :)

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 21:35:35 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Fred

     @laubblaeser Well, there’s always the chance I got a lemon but, given my experience with the StarLabs MKIV, the video camera and microphone are on par with that; which is to say unusable (crackly, tinny audio; low-quality video. Although, I guess the video would still be usable if the audio wasn’t so bad. But you can use a headset/mic, I guess. And an external web cam.) I’ll post a recording when I get a moment.

   • Fred (laubblaeser@ruhr.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2024 21:35:36 JST Fred

     in reply to

     @aral Eagerly awaiting mine but in the meantime, could you elaborate a tiny bit on the crappy front camera? I want to use the device for some video calls with friends and this would be a real downer.

     #starlabs #starlite

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 17:42:23 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     Another observation, having charged it to capacity twice now and let it discharge fully once:

     The battery only charges up to 96% and dies at 2%.

     Not the worst possible thing but I would expect a new device to charge to 100% and die at 1%. The former likely more important than the latter.

     Hope the battery doesn’t have the same journey that the one on my StarLabs Mk IV did – it dies at around 65% or so after two years.

     #StarLabs #StarLite #mkIV #linux #laptop #tablet #battery

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 17:59:04 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     So I spoke to the StarLabs folks and the 96% max charge is apparently by design to protect the battery.

     #StarLabs #StarLite #mkIV #linux #laptop #tablet #battery

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 18:05:01 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Dźwiedziu

     @dzwiedziu Well, yes, we all know it’s a dark art – just saying that if someone sees their fully-charged battery at 96%, they’re going think something is wrong whereas if they see it at 100% they’re going to think everything’s all right :) It’s more about communicating well ;)

   • Dźwiedziu (dzwiedziu@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 18:05:02 JST Dźwiedziu

     in reply to

     @aral Well… <inhales for a rant about measuring batteries capacity can be only done indirectly by non-linear voltage drop measurements>

     …

     …

     <exhales>

     …better not…

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 19:20:14 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Peter :antifa:🧷

     @pludikovsky Thanks, I’ll have a look :)

   • Peter :antifa:🧷 (pludikovsky@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 19:20:15 JST Peter :antifa:🧷

     in reply to

     @aral Does `tlp-stat -s` return somehing? In that case you should be able to change the max charge threshold, and fix the cutoff point by running `tlp recalibrate`.

     Details: https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html

   • Dźwiedziu (dzwiedziu@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 19:21:30 JST Dźwiedziu

     in reply to

     @aral I have a new fidget toy ^_^

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2024 19:21:30 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Dźwiedziu

     @dzwiedziu Haha, oh boy, they really are very precise in their estimates ;)