gzrrt

Not being able to run Signal on my Android tablet feels really inconvenient. That would be no. 1 on my wish list

Kitty, but most commands are probably happening in eshell. Feels more easily scriptable to me

I use Fedora Silverblue personally (feels rock-solid and borderline impossible to mess up), but you might want to get more familiar with the basics before getting into immutable distros. I’d echo what everyone else is saying and do Linux Mint first

Just mpv for me. Simplest and most versatile option

The Pixel Tablet can run GrapheneOS, which is the best stock Android alternative IMO

Minus the sandboxing and security improvements, apparently

What’s the advantage vs. the current version?

Also looks like it’s removing an important visual affordance (i.e., which areas you can click to drag the window), unless I’m misinterpreting it

Usually it’s just one program per virtual desktop, and maybe a second (briefly) for one-off terminal commands, etc.

The whole point for me is to avoid wasting time moving a mouse around or manually manipulating anything.

I keep a .dotfiles folder in my home dir, use syncthing to back up those files on a couple of other computers, and then (on a new install) just make the actual config files symlinks to those files.

The project you’re thinking of is probably PostmarketOS, though it doesn’t look like anyone’s started work on an iPad 2 or mini yet.

They’re on Lemmy now, so that might be a good place to follow up (or if you’re curious to start hacking away at anything yourself)

Having both that and Waydroid on a phone would be pretty great. You might want to check out Darling for running Mac apps on Linux in the meantime, since its goals are similar to Wine’s (but it’s still early in development in comparison)

Always, because you get to assign keyboard shortcuts to each one (and then use each one for a dedicated purpose). Much faster workflow than alt-tabbing your way through an arbitary list of programs.

It’s pretty decent for me with ten virtual desktops (and each one mapped in a sequence from Alt+1 through Alt+0). Text editor always in the first desktop, browser in the second, music in the third, etc. What’s nice is that you can (almost) replicate the same workflow if someone forces you to use macOS or Windows at work

Your best bet right now IMO would be flashing PostmarketOS onto a used OnePlus 6, which is cheap, has good specs and none of the battery issues plaguing the Pinephone Pro. That said, it’s not 100% ready to be a phone yet- for now its best use case is as a mini-tablet / PDA kind of thing. Really feels like carrying a pocket laptop around, which is pretty fun as a starting point.

Linux phones for me. Really impressed by how these things have come in the last 3-4 years, and now we’re getting close to having at least one that’s usable day-to-day (with plenty of rough edges, obviously). As soon as that happens I hope more people will decide to take the plunge and really start pushing things forward.

Only syncthing, for me.

Battery life is pretty decent, but I haven’t had a 100% success rate with some of the basics like calls and texts. I’ve enjoyed using it as a kind of mini-tablet though, with no SIM (will keep trying again periodically).

Virtual desktops (accessible with keyboard shortcuts) are a must IMO. I usually set up ten of them at a time- MacOS is actually mostly ok in that regard, expect for the fade animation you can never turn off, and the fact that as soon as you full-screen a window, the system insists on moving it to a totally new workspace (that can’t work with any your predefined shortcuts), instead of just full-screening it within the current desktop. What were they thinking?

MacOS window management is unfortunately a total mess. To the point that I still feel more productive on a dirt-cheap linux laptop, vs. my expensive work-isssued M1 machine with great hardware

It’s frustrating that we’re still not there (with even one daily-drivable phone), but it’s getting closer and closer.

I also think it’s possible to get a lot of value from these devices in the meantime- when used as pocketable tablets. I have to carry a light backpack around pretty often anyway, so it’s easy enough to just throw an old Android in there for calls / SMS and tether a OnePlus 6 (with pmOS) to it for everything else.