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Surface Go 2 with Ubuntu 20.04 first impressions

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Eli the Bearded

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Jul 6, 2021, 9:10:40 PM7/6/21
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My tiny notebook computer recently died. Dunno what happened. Worked fine
on one day, next day screen wouldn't show anything and could not ssh in.
Attempts to reboot did nothing. Soldered in boot disk, with any logs
that might exist, means I can't disagnose further. (Someone else could,
I can't.)

So I had a sudden need for a replacement. Not wanting to do a ton of
comparison shopping, I decided to risk a Microsoft Surface. I had heard
they run Linux well, and have both the tiny size I like (~ 10" diagonal
display) and an 8GB RAM option.

That's how I have a Surface Go 2 now even though I'm a cheapskate and
it cost more than I wanted to spend.

TL;DR: Installing Linux was tricky, but worked; size is excellent,
keyboard cover is not as good as a real keyboard.

Direct from Microsoft:
Surface Go 2 - Wi-Fi, Intel Pentium 4425Y, 8GB, 128GB $550
Surface Go Sleeve free
Surface Go Type Cover (black; other colors more $$$) $100
Surface Pen (red; other colors more $$$) $ 66
Total with all taxes: $781

Replacing a 2018 Asus Vivobook that cost $303 with all taxes (from
Newegg; Asus would not sell one to me directly). The pen was not a
required purchase, but I decided to try it out. Oddly the pen was the
first part to arrive -- same day I ordered it.

Pluses:
* Perfect size for me.
* This is smaller and cheaper than a Surface Pro.
* Screen has less bevel and more pixels than the Vivobook.
* Keyboard layout and selection isn't perfect, but is acceptable. It
has pgup/pgdn/home/end and del; I'd prefer ins to del if only
getting one of them. Up/down arrows are small.
* 8GB RAM. I have not seen that as an option in any of the cheap
things I've looked at, but I wasn't looking hard before the
sudden need. (In theory the Vivobooks had an 8GB option, in 2018
I cound not find one such actually for sale.)
* 128GB soldered in disk; microsd slot for expansion. The microsd
slot is much better protected than the ones (sd or microsd) I've
had on previous devices. Lots less chance of it being accidentally
ejected. Even knowing about where it is, I had trouble finding it:
it's hidden behind the fold out hinge, instead of on an edge.
* Early days, but so far the touch pad is better than the one on
the Vivobook. I usually kept that one disabled and used a mouse.
Out of the box, no special config, it works as a three button
device.
* Touch screen and pen work in Linux.

Downsides:
* Holy fuck was booting and installing Linux difficult. I did it, but
the directions I followed for Arch totally went no where. Ubuntu
did install, but so many reboots. Until Linux is running and you can
run `efibootmgr --bootorder`, it only boots Windows. You have to
enable USB in bios (one time), disable secure boot (one time), boot
into Windows (and first time after disable secure boot: connect to
Microsoft website for a unlock key), then in Windows hold down shift
while selecting "restart" from power item in start menu, then select
"use a device" from restart options menu, and (finally) hope that
the usb-c thumbdrive or the new Linux install shows up in the list
of devices. I found it did only ~40% of time. I could not boot from
the microsd card nor from a usb-3 device in a usb-c hub.
* Given boot troubles, I still have Windows installed, so I've got
50GB of the 128GB disk dedicated to that. I'll probably wipe it at
some point, but not yet.
* Cameras in Linux are still a work in progress and only one of them
works on this device, with a special kernel module and boot options.
(Not so important for me, but would be a nice-to-have.)
* Keyboard is ... springy. Feels odd. Placed on a non-flat surface
it doesn't work well, and trackpad mouse clicks work very poorly.
In particular, I was using it placed on top of a closed Mac Book
Pro (Mac provided by $WORK and loaded with tracking software) and
having a lot of trouble clicking on things and the keyboard
not working great. The Mac Book Pro top is rigid and approximately
flat, but not flat enough. There's a definite side-to-side wobble
typing and clicking.
* Backlight works, via shell options eg:
echo 600 > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness
but not via Ubuntu packaged `xbacklight`. This apparently works
in the standard window manager controls, but I'm using Icewm.
* There's just one USB port at all, a USB-C one. Apparently it _can_
charge via that port, but it includes a separate incompatible
port and cable for charging. Why not USB-C charging and two USB-C
ports (or a USB-C and a USB-3)?

My standard practice of late has been OS on soldered in drive, /home on
removable media. This meant up-to-the-last second $HOME contents were
easy to transfer to a new microsd card. I went with a 0.5TB one this
time, double the size of my last one. This is such a huge step up from
the 32GB cards I was using a few years ago but it also means my ~2TB
backup drives seems cramped now. I have a backup from not too long ago
of /, but I haven't even tried to recover anything from it yet. I
will want my /var/www directory at some point, but most of / is OS
and not really something I want to restore.

Elijah
------
the pen uses a regular (if obscure: AAAA) battery, not a rechargable

FifthRootOfPi

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Jul 6, 2021, 11:13:53 PM7/6/21
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On 07/06/2021 09:10 PM, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> My tiny notebook computer recently died. Dunno what happened. Worked fine
> on one day, next day screen wouldn't show anything and could not ssh in.
> Attempts to reboot did nothing. Soldered in boot disk, with any logs
> that might exist, means I can't disagnose further. (Someone else could,
> I can't.)


Hardware breaks. Could have been something as simple
as the little power-management chip. Oh, for fun,
remove the battery and plug in the power adapter ...
Ubuntu 20.04 is pretty good. I've had issues installing
Ubuntu and derivatives on notebooks/subnotebooks in the past
however. MX Linux has a "smarter" grub which DOES detect MMC
memory boot 'disks' - and is an extremely nice system too.
I have two subnotebooks, both with MX.

For desktops I tend to stick with vanilla Debian. Solid,
no BS. OpenSuse/Tumbleweed are nice too if you crave the
RPM universe. I did get Tumbleweed to boot on a rPI3 ...
although it's a bit pokey.

Eli the Bearded

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Jul 7, 2021, 1:18:22 PM7/7/21
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In comp.os.linux.misc, FifthRootOfPi <5thRtOfPi.net> wrote:
> Ubuntu 20.04 is pretty good. I've had issues installing
> Ubuntu and derivatives on notebooks/subnotebooks in the past
> however. MX Linux has a "smarter" grub which DOES detect MMC
> memory boot 'disks' - and is an extremely nice system too.
> I have two subnotebooks, both with MX.
>
> For desktops I tend to stick with vanilla Debian. Solid,
> no BS. OpenSuse/Tumbleweed are nice too if you crave the
> RPM universe. I did get Tumbleweed to boot on a rPI3 ...
> although it's a bit pokey.

I use Ubuntu for $WORK these days, so I know it well. I have found that
Ubuntu (or a Ubuntu derivative tailored for a specific peice of
hardware) is always the easiest to install. But then I have to disable
a bunch of Ubuntu-isms (or Debian-isms) to get a system I like. Debian
derived distros are pretty friendly to a lot of that once you know the
methods to use. Redhat derived stuff always wants selinux, which is
great in theory but such a nightmare to configure once you start to
breakout into non-standard disk usage. I tend to create new
subdirectories in / which then don't have any inherited rules.

Arch seemed intriguing so I wanted to try it out. I've used "RPM
universe" systems at home (not recently) and $WORK (a few years ago).
They always seem a bit more of a pain in the ass than Ubuntu without the
full flexibility of Slackware, which I last used in the early Slack 14
days. My interests tend to be in the direction of "Unix is a tool to
display xterms and a web browser" and the fancier the GUI the more I
dislike it.

It's been a while since I used a SUSE system, maybe twelve to fifteen
years. I liked it well enough then. MX sounds a bit more interesting
than Tumbleweed. I don't want to relearn yast after all these years.

Elijah
------
would also consider non-Linux like Freebsd or Open Indiana

Bobbie Sellers

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Jul 7, 2021, 3:39:54 PM7/7/21
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On 7/6/21 6:10 PM, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> My tiny notebook computer recently died. Dunno what happened. Worked fine
> on one day, next day screen wouldn't show anything and could not ssh in.
> Attempts to reboot did nothing. Soldered in boot disk, with any logs
> that might exist, means I can't disagnose further. (Someone else could,
> I can't.)
>
Wonderful to read about. I hope you post more about
your experiences with the Surface. Sorry for your old computer
but I think you learned some valuable things from it.
Oh that is a "-1".
The home on removable media is a good idea.
Thanks Eli for your remarks so far
bliss

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

Eli the Bearded

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Jul 7, 2021, 4:58:53 PM7/7/21
to
In comp.os.linux.misc, Bobbie Sellers <bl...@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> On 7/6/21 6:10 PM, Eli the Bearded wrote:
>> My tiny notebook computer recently died. Dunno what happened. Worked fine
>> on one day, next day screen wouldn't show anything and could not ssh in.
>> Attempts to reboot did nothing. Soldered in boot disk, with any logs
>> that might exist, means I can't disagnose further. (Someone else could,
>> I can't.)
> Wonderful to read about. I hope you post more about
> your experiences with the Surface. Sorry for your old computer
> but I think you learned some valuable things from it.

All hardware fails eventually. Ideally it doesn't happen while critical.
I knew that before this happened, and didn't gain this knowledge from
painful failures. It's reasonable foresight and years of observed
issues. I do regular (but not daily) backups, so data loss wasn't a
critical concern, but the computer loss was a definite nuissance.

I had been vaguely looking for a replacement under the general notion
that 4GB of RAM was a bit tight and a faster processor would be nice.
I just kept running into (screen size is nice, but specs are not) or
(specs are nice, but screen size is too big). Increasing the budget
got me my sweet spot of small screen and nice specs without spending
time scouring all available options.

> The home on removable media is a good idea.

My original goal was to make it portable as I change computers. I've
since found it has backup / replacement benefits.

Elijah
------
has been aiming to replace the cheap notebooks every year or two

NSquared

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Jul 10, 2021, 12:07:26 AM7/10/21
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On 07/09/2021 02:11 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> I'm running NoScript on my web browsers and have things
> locked down pretty tightly. Lately, though, more and more
> web sites have stopped working. It seems that JavaScript
> has become so pervasive that any attempts to block it cause
> many sites to fail. I use Seamonkey as my browser, since
> I don't like the way the Firefox user interface has been
> evolving - but more and more I find I have to grit my teeth
> and fire up a copy of Firefox (to which I haven't added any
> security options) in order to access sites that do (e.g.)
> online billing.
>
> From time to time I'll take a look at what NoScript is
> doing, and the ubiquitous Google comes up all over the
> place. I'm trying to opt out of the surveillance state -
> is this becoming an impossible dream?
>


Ubuntu can be a bit annoying ...you've got to murder all
their cloud crap for starters. They also seem to think
they have a "better way" for a lot of little, basic,
stuff. Apply the whip ....

I always put good old LXDE, not LXQT, on UServer - with
as much --no-install-recommended's as possible. I see
Lubuntu is switching to LXQT now - so much for them ...

BUT, on the whole, Ubuntu Server is a good hard-working
distro.

For general-purpose desktops though, plain Debian is
by far the easiest to set up and tune the way you want.
MX has a number of little lucky charms however ... I
tend to recommend it for newbies. I see it's been at
or near the top distro for quite awhile now.

My Tumbleweed box has gotten uppity though. While
the theoretical eternal updates are attractive
they've pissed me off lately. FFMPEG switched
to a version that doesn't support H264 - basically
every IP camera in the universe - and after spending
a couple of hours trying to compile the better version
but coming up against the dependency wall, well to
hell with it. Doesn't even have hddtemp anymore.
Sure you can FAKE it with smartctl and a python
script and a symlink, but why SHOULD I ?

And SELinux ... basically a firewall behind a firewall
where ONE should almost always be enough. Gotta do
battle with SELinux just to get ANYTHING to work right.

DID get MX to run on a Pi-3 the other day ... just a
tad pokey, not as bad as TWeed - I'd say "usable".
On a Pi-4 it'd be pretty ok.

BSD ... I've just never had good luck with any of
them. They're very bossy about how they want to
set up the disk and don't always want to install
a GUI no matter how much you kick them. As a pure
terminal system however, well, they'd be fine and
maybe offer even a little more security than any
Linux you can get.

Centos - RIP. IBM ruined that. I think Scientific
Linux is still around, another RPM distro that
at least used to be pretty nice. OpenSuse/TWeed
is still a Cadillac system, so long as whatever
YOU want to do with it doesn't run contrary
to what the DistroLords have in mind these days.
OpenSuse/YAST is still the most helpful distro
I've ever encountered - you can do in a minute
with their tools what you'd spend hours doing the
hard way in any other system.

And hey, there's always Plan-9 ... which IS a real
working OS that saw a fair bit of action ... but
it's not compatible with anything. You can also
emulate a Z80 and run CP/M. I remember when the
first IBM-PCs came out ; you got an IBM-DOS disk
AND a CPM/86 disk. I think the CPM/86 disk would
boot up through the P4 chips (the core2-quads
still ain't awful). Turbo Pascal - all hail ! -
came in a CP/M version up through v3 as I recall.
I like Pascal ... still use Lazarus/FreePascal
quite a bit - THE quickest easiest way to put
a GUI program together by FAR.
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