How I interpret OP’s message is that it isn’t specific to Linux, but seeing as we are the Linux community, we might be more inclined to advocate for Linux features? 🤷♂️
Way back at the dawn of time, there was a regular issue with low quality applications that would run XGrabKeyboard() (or XGrabPointer()), and then get stuck without releasing it again. If you can, try to log in over the network from another machine and kill application processes one by one until it releases? It’s most likely the video game (or library used by it) that has gotten stuck.
Are you sure its a similar issue? Because usually closing the window actually doesn’t solve it, as then reopening another X11/XWayland window will still not register keyboard presses. I am adding some more info to the post right now.
I’m not sure, there can always be other issues. But note that closing the window is not the same as terminating the application. When you close the window, the application gets a signal that it usually handles as cleaning up and shutting down. But if it is hanging, that task is not performed and resources are still held.
I just switched from windows to Linux a few months ago. I just picked opensuse tumbleweed KDE at random and it just works. Idk anything about Linux so maybe give that a try and see if it works for you as well.
I like Garuda. I use the dragonized theme and it makes it look similar to mac OS. IMO it’s as easy to use as any other justworks distro but is far prettier
I have an OG Surface Pro. The first one. It’s running Windows 10 at the moment and it’s doing fine except for the occasional wifi/Bluetooth bugs. I’m using it exclusively in tablet mode with the pen. No keyboard.
When Windows 10 is going to reach its end of life, I’d like to install Linux on it. But I need it to have a tablet style interface with gestures if possible.
Do I need any special distro or drivers on that hardware? And what would you recommend as the desktop environment?
I had one of those too! Sturdy little guy, reminds me a bit of the first eeepc 701 :-) But I was worried about the replacement of the charger once it would die. Besides, I have had a bad experience of Surface-line longevity, they always seem to die suddenly after a while, so I sold it.
That is so awesome. Do you still have one lying around? Those things have an awesome form factor, but the I/O ports are a little bit dated by todays standard 😅
Nah. The hardware wasn’t very good and it was very slow. I had a 7" and a 9" one. I replaced them with the surface pro.
The company was going to make custom Linux based OSes for other smart devices like TVs and monitors but Android came out and was backed by Google, so of course it became wildly popular. Our company went bankrupt pretty quickly after that because it had no the contracts coming in. Asus was the only client keeping them afloat and the contract was ending.
To add another comment to your reply, have you tried it personally?
I’d like to back up my system before doing the switch. What do you recommend I use? Clonezilla with an external USB drive all plugged in using a USB hub?
I haven’t tried the Surface images due to not having one, but I am using their Silverblue images to make the whole NVIDIA drivers thing a bit easier on my system.
Also I haven’t needed to backup my system in over a year now (I stopped hopping with Silverblue) so I don’t remember the solution I used, but this seems good.
Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are the most recommended beginner friendly distros that “just work” in my experience. That being said, before you install, you can try out the look and feel here: distrosea.com
KEEP BACKUPS, ALWAYS. Systems can be reinstalled in short order and you can set /home/ on a different partition to make it easier, but keep backups of the important stuff still.
Youtube “bash tutorial beginners” and find one to follow along with, it’ll come in handy if you haven’t yet.
I don’t have enough experience with either x11 (or whatever else is used) or Wayland to have a well thought out opinion, but Wayland seems promising to me because of waydroid.
For something that “just works” and feels quite like home, without being KDE, I’d recommend Zorin.
It’s stable, beautiful to look at and works as expected. I’d not recommend Arch-based distros to begin (but if you want to go the troubleshooting and fixing things way, that would be choice #1).
Maybe it is me but Cinnamon, while being very user friendly, feels limited. I feel that when you want to start tweaking, the options are not there yet.
Besides Fedora (maybe) I’m not sure other non-deb distros really are recommended for new users.
Besides that, like it or not, nowadays most software is distributed as deb files (until Flatpak fixes it). Using something not debian based requires learning how to port .deb files or use manual dependency resolution for tarballs.
What would you suggest is a better distro for a new Linux user? I’ve found Mint to be great out of the box, and only needs minor tweaks if you want the Microsoft fonts, for example.
This should not be surprising at this point that a lot of users prefer the wayland session, gamingonlinux survey shows that wayland adoption is consistently increasing (while X11 usage declines).
I think this thread shows it’s very hardware/driver dependent?
I’m posting from Wayland running on Plasma 5, on 100% recent gen intel hardware, and as far as I’ve been able to tell I have zero deficiencies that matter in functionality. (aside from whatever little bugs surely exist that I’m not noticing - and big things no one really has yet like HDR)
I don’t have much sympathy for the haters who think we shouldn’t be moving to Wayland ever, but every recent thread seems to confirm that Nvidia and possibly other HW configs are still likely to be problematic.
A big aspect is fractional scaling needs. I have tried the current kde 5 wayland version everytime a new minor release is done and it’s very bad with inconsistencies in many places and weird font rendering and stuff like that. I’m very eager waiting for kde 6 where many of the bugs are supposedly fixed.
I’ve got a 3.5k 13" display and have only noticed scaling issues with xwayland apps (which Plasma warns you of) - but I’m not disputing your point, there are clearly rough edges some folks see that others don’t.
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