I recently was able to acquire an older Dell Venue 11 Pro 7130 with an Intel i3-4030Y and 4GB of RAM.

I installed Fedora GNOME spin thinking GNOME might be the right DE for touch interfaces. Sadly it behaves sluggishly and the touch capabilities are lacking. Nautilus for example can’t deal with long clicks to simulate right clicks, making file browsing a chore since I need to plug in a mouse and keyboard.

Does anyone have any experience with older convertibles? What distro do you use to make use of the touch interface while keeping a snappy system?

  • tubbadu@lemmy.kde.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    I use KDE plasma with this plasmoid and this kwin script that I wrote to navigate between apps. Basically, each window is placed in its own virtual desktop, and the plasmoid allows to switch between desktops by sliding the finger on it. It’s in a early development phase, so don’t expect it to be perfect, but you can give it a try :)

      • Pantherina@feddit.de
        2·
        11 months ago

        Also KDE Connect and CUPS for security and probably battery. KDE connect needs to be uninnstalled or an empty desktop starter with touch ~/.local/share/applications/kdeconnectd.desktop afaik.

        Cups is a systemd service so sudo systemctl disable --now cups.service && systemctl mask cups.service revert that with unmask and enable respectively. Cups is also as big security risk as Printers suck, printing from USB sticks is often a better solution.

        pcmanfm-qt is a good replacement for Dolphin which is way slimmer and runs on Wayland natively, its simply the best filemanager for KDE or similar systems apart from Dolphin.

        Debloating Fedora KDE is very much needed, Kinoite doesnt need to be.

        I didnt test Video players but Celluloid is a modern MPV GUI that supports Wayland (literally the only video player it seems).

        Browser have to be all fine because they are both pretty hard on resources.

  • dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    it’s a lackluster experience which ever way you turn. plasma has a better touch experience and consistency but its keyboard (maliit was it?) is horrible. GNOME’s keyboard is better but still crap.

    everything feels like a proof-of-concept, something that was shipped in this sorta-works state and left. if you’ve ever used an android tablet, this is a long, long way off.

    GNOME terrorized us for a decade with those comically gigantic UI elements because it’s supposedly touch friendly but the moment you start touching them it feels like utter crap.

    try running android x86 on it, I had some good experiences with bliss OS. old kernels there, so hardware support is hit n miss.

  • SSUPII@sopuli.xyz
    1·
    1 year ago

    Try KDE Neon, it bundles Plasma that has nice touchscreen support and has a virtual keyboard installed that just needs to be enabled, if even necessary.

  • sado1@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    Mobile Linux distributions for smartphones might offer some hints on how to tackle your problems - these apps are created in a convergent way, which makes them work well on laptops, tablets and PCs alike. Look for an alternate file manager, for example, to replace Nautilus. Check out https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/