Nowadays there are (less than $20) single board computers able to “run Linux” and decode 1080p videos like its nothing, so a perfect, plausible answer for your thread is simply “Why not a PC with Linux and another PC for Windows?”. Even if GNU/Linux is decent enough for gaming/working needs nowadays.
Then again, you might be arguing like distros have specific use cases – which is a straight up fallacy. Every distro is GNU/Linux at heart. Theres no such thing as “more useful” since you can simply remove packages/commands you don’t find pleasing/“useful” and add/compile another ones yourself.
I use tridactyl in firefox. Except for emacs and tiling wms I’m not too deep in applications for reducing mouse usage, I tend to use keyboards with ‘better mouse placement’ for example the tex shura which copies the thinkpad trackpoint, or a corne keyboard with a pimoroni trackball. Or a charybdis nano. Even using a smaller keyboard layout counts imo, my favourite non-ergo keyboard layout is 60% which reduces necessary arm-travel-distance a lot :)
I recently picked up an older MS Surface model and it has been really good. I don’t know where tablet bleeds into 2in1, but it’s a tablet that has a magnetic keyboard that pops on and off and accepts USB connections for stuff like mice with a USB to USB-C adapter or via a surface dock. Prices start at around $70 on ebay for older models in decent condition and run up to around $2k for the highest end models directly from Microsoft. Being x86 they accept any compatible OS (including Linux) and installs just as easy as any laptop (minus the later models that need the touch driver installed manually on Linux or a Windows re-install). If you go with a surface and buy an older model make sure you get 8gb of ram instead of 4.
As far as setup goes, I went with Gnome, enabled the on screen keyboard, then added the “custom hot corners” Gnome plugin to get a working on screen keyboard everywhere (without the plugin it only works in Gnome and Gnome apps). Afterwards (since I went with an older model that didn’t need the touch drivers) it’s fully ready for use like any other device.
There’s also the PineTab2, though from the sounds of it it’s not really ready to be used as a tool, more so just for development and experimentation. I did find two good blog posts about it’s state when researchign devices which would be worth reading if you were considering buying a PineTab2 and wanted to know what to expect:
Did you use the linux-surface-kernel? This project is awesome for getting as many functions of a surface running as possible. There are lots of useful information and tipps for every surface model too.
I’m on the standard LTS kernel (if I properly remember Debian defaults). I did check out the Linux Surface project before setting it up, though the standard kernal and Gnome config seems to work great out of the box. Even little things like the gyroscope and automatic brightness worked from the start, though it probably varies from model to model.
Edit: only thing that didn’t work out of the box is the camera. Going to tinker around with that at some point, not a super high priority personally but still nice to have.
Probably a bit less than other people if you take an average between the groups of people because they spend their time tinkering with other stuff and software development takes time. If you do it as a hobby that eats into the time you could use for other hobbies. But I’m not sure if this holds true once you do that as your day job.
I personally like the fact that u-he, acmt and audio damage provide their plugins on linux. I know, not FOSS, but game changing when it comes to switching music production over to linux. Vital is also available on linux, as is bitwig as host.
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