I’m looking for a convertible laptop to use for school and doing some stuff while on the move.
What’s your experience with convertible laptops such as Thinkpads in terms of pen and touchscreen support under linux?
My requirements would be:
I primarily plan on using the pen to take handwritten notes.
I only know of Starlite
Pen and touchscreen support under Linux can be quite finicky. Are you planning to take handwritten notes or draw for your program of study?
As for the laptops, the coreboot requirement limits you to older, potentially non-touchscreen Thinkpads. You may need to look at other companies like Star Labs or System76 instead.
I plan on using the pen to take handwritten notes.
Starlabs seems interesting, I’m going to look into that some more.
I also decided to throw out the coreboot requirement to open up to newer devices, for more frequent BIOS and micro-code updates.
Framework 12
Definitely looks interesting and framework is a great company when it comes to repairability, but it ships in Q3 which is to late for me.
I’ll probably go with a used Thinkpad X1 from what it looks like right now.
I think Coreboot is getting more frequent updates then most other BIOS’s and Micro-Code shouldn’t that not be the same?
There is also NovaCustom. they will probably be the first Linux/Coreboot vendor with Intel boot guard.
I’m biased, but chrultrabooks (aka chromebooks with ChromeOS wiped for a pure Linux distro) might be an overlooked sweet spot for a sleek, modern convertible if you don’t mind a bit more research on the front-end.
You’d have to cross-reference supported devices and confirm 100% whether all chromebooks can upgrade wifi cards (I’m unsure but this video insinuates so). If that checks out, the most research will be finding one that has upgrade-able storage… It otherwise checks the boxes re: coreboot and/or secure boot, has many popular models w/ touchscreen + pen support and all of them have USB-C charging nowadays.
You’d likely want a Chromebook Plus model I’m guessing to increase the odds of an upgrade-able SSD
I like System76 support, their hardwares and their progress with Cosmic. I don’t like that they only support officially PoPOS and Ubuntu on their devices, they don’t push firmware updates via LVMS and require secure boot to be disabled to install PoPOS. For other distros, they recommend keeping a PopOS live USB around, both for firmware updates and general troubleshooting. For most their device the fwupd security grade is HSI:0, like the Dart Pro that I was personally considering LVFS: HSI Device
If they would consider changing those drawbacks I’d recommend them.