I'm as skeptical as you are, but at least they automatically preinstall a few useful gaming apps by default, ie. LatencyFlex.
sado1
joined 1 year ago
I think the beginning sets the context - a history of business models related to Unix, and later Linux + Open Source software. It's important to learn from it.
It also shows that the challenges of the clash between capitalism and software freedom are constantly evolving, and presents how our battles were won (or lost) in the past.
Oh, and as for the touch UIs, not much luck if GNOME doesn't work well enough. KDE can be made to run well with touch input, but for me it needed some work to configure it. But I liked it afterwards.
There are Mobile Linux UIs (which might run better on tight resources) but I am afraid they might not be good for multitasking on a tablet screen.
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/
What do you think about using a keyboard-based workflow: hit Super button (or click on Activities) to make the fullscreen menu pop-up, then write the first few letters of the app name, and finally hit Enter? Search-based workflow is my favourite way to navigate app menu, on GNOME and KDE alike.
Maybe it's obvious, but how about Kodi?
It has support for CEC (for utilizing your TV's remote through HDMI), of course there are other input options as well.
There's plenty of plugins to support online video services. Needs some work to configure them, and sometimes it requires maintenance when a plugin stops working, but I was in general happy with the way it worked while I used it for a few years.
Mostly agreed. Although I would say G1 was (relatively to its time) more advanced and stable than mobile Linux phones. It aged quickly, and the hardware felt somewhat underpowered (similar to what probably PinePhone owners feel right now); but it never had a problem to work as a phone or had serious stability issues.
Yes, I am aware we're comparing apples to oranges, and that Google had enough resources to make it work well enough. Still, they probably didn't make it work overnight, and neither should we expect mobile Linux could do that.
Disclaimer: while I did not use G1, I used Samsung Galaxy i7500 which had the same specs (minus the keyboard), and the experience I described is based on using it.
I had a somewhat similar issue on my work laptop a short while ago, when I installed a program, which included a bugged XML settings file, then ran system update. When the updater tried to rebuild some caches (related to ie. icons, MIME etc.), some programs which use these caches simply stopped working. Reinstalling all packages with apt was the only thing that helped, to this day I do not even know all of the parts of my system that were broken.
But this was one of these issues that happen once per 5 years, and leave you scratching your head and asking "what the hell is going on here?". The difference from Windows is that in Linux, you can have a high understanding of system's internal modular components (at the cost of time needed to learn it), and regular system issues can be identified after a few minutes of Googling.