Re: [X1 Tablet] How does it work with Plasma and Debian
chris - 22.12.22, 20:57:34 CET:
> On Thursday, 22 December 2022 09:16:50 CET Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > I made an interesting experience regarding the current Qt
> > transition: I updated a ThinkPad X1 Gen 1 Tablet with "apt upgrade"
> > yesterday.
> Did you manage to have your tablet fully functional in keyboard free
> mode? I've experimented with an old Portege Tablet and many
> applications couldn't be used without a keyboard or a mouse. I want
> to use the tablet as a reader and Okular couldn't be used without
> "mouse right click" or "keyboard control keys" which Maliit doesn't
> (didn't) have. Example: you can go to full screen mode but you can't
> leave it, because it would require a right click which I couldn't
> manage neither by touch nor by stylus.
No. Already LUKS encryption password at boot requires a keyboard. AFAIR
I briefly researched whether that could be done with an on screen
keyboard, but quickly gave up on it.
Additionally after replacing the internal battery with a new lithium
polymer replacement battery and a full hardware reset the time was gone
and the UEFI firmware asked to hit F1 to continue. The firmware menu can
be used by touch, however the engineers seem to have forgotten about
that "no time is set" error.
I made sure I have a working attachable ThinkPad X1 tablet keyboard.
I can comfortably read PDFs on the tablet without keyboard, but for
special functions in Okular, I am not so sure. However there is a
"okular-mobile" package in Debian. So that might help.
> On the hardware side, everything was fully functional with pure
> Wayland install. I use GDM3 instead of SDDM because the latter still
> rely on X11/Xorg, when GDM3 can do without.
>
> Touch screen and stylus (plain Wacom) fully functional.
This tablet is still an experiment at getting a fully functional tablet
with Linux. It is not that we have a plethora of options here.
There are several rough edges. Trackpoint on keyboard does not work
after boot, you need to detach and attach the keyboard once or hibernate
the machine.
I am using Wayland and some times the display just hung for whatever
reason. Thing is, that then I can not just hit the power button long
enough for a hard power off. That does not work on the tablet. Instead I
have to stick a straightened paper clip into the emergency reset role.
So I made sure I always have one of those with me when I am using the
tablet somewhere. Once I had a HID related boot time kernel oops and was
not able to enter the LUKS password. That also required that paper clip
procedure to recover from.
> But the applications were not ready to be used with tablet mode,
> specially Maliit, imo, which is fine to insert text but doesn't do
> keyboard shortcuts at all, which could atone for absence or right
> click. Touchscreen longpress-is- rightclick is on a per application
> basis, so you (did) have it with Dolphin, but not with Okular. Same
> goes for stylus button configuration.
I installed Maliit and tried it out, however I did not try to enter
keyboard shortcuts with it.
> It was a few month ago so I'd be happy to hear how you solved it or if
> you stick with the physical keyboard.
The later. I use the physical keyboard.
> Note, integrated Firefox pdf reader, and FF generally, was what was
> best tuned for pure tablet mode use, but it was both not very stable
> at the time, and it was killing my fanless "Y"-series i5.
I really like to look into okular-mobile. Also… I think for some other
applications there are mobile alternatives in the Debian repository.
Like for example kalender as a replacement for Okular. Meanwhile there
are also some tablet form factor related settings in Plasma's system
settings. Additionally I wonder whether it might be good to switch
Plasma to a different form factor mode. I think I tried around with it,
but then went back to regular desktop mode.
> I've tried Phosh: couldn't insert my password. Gnome: no better.
> Actually I did find some (old) extension of some Gnome keyboard that
> did provide control keys, but maybe it was not working with all
> applications, and also it was getting all Rube Goldberg, so I gave it
> back to the cupboard.
I did not dig into Phosh or GNOME.
> But I'm still interested in an open source e-reader working with plain
> device as the portege, and I don't want to use outdated technologies
> like X11/Xorg, unmaintained for years when Wayland is doing great.
I think this tablet currently is the only device that I run with Wayland
these times. With my main laptop I often enough tried and then switched
back due to various issues I do not remember at the moment.
On my music laptop I had it for a while but then there was a strange
issue as well that I do not remember.
Maybe I try again when Plasma 5.27 is available to see whether it works
with the package versions intended for next stable.
I just hope that additional software that I install as Flatpak will also
work and so on.
Ciao,
--
Martin
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