Portable Computing
The previous setup with iPad and Raspberry Pi Zero was usable, but occasionally frustrating. Bluetooth PAN occasionally stuffed up, and couldn't be troubleshooted in the field. It also required various cables and batteries as well as the ipad, and keyboard.
So about two months ago I remembered that Microsoft Surface existed. I picked up a used 2020ish Surface Go 2 with keyboard for under $300.
I installed Slackware (Surface is Intel, which simplifies distros) and it's been working a treat. It did take a while to work out how to turn off the windows boot loader in favour of Grub. I left a small windows partition in case I need to load firmware upgrades.
I'm using Wayland rather than X, thinking it might be more resource efficient. Sway, foot, gvim (without gui, but colours work better than regular vim) and Firefox all work fine. The keyboard is fine. I can carry a USB hub for connecting stuff to it's USB C port. The touchscreen just works.
I still need to find a good ebook viewer, and setup automatic rotation, scaling and on screen keyboard, but there's no rush. I haven't tried the camera yet.
Battery life is good enough that I can use it for 6+ houts without worry -- so I don't always bother to bring charging cables.
Currently I'm using it to explore SuperCollider, which is a fantastic audio propgramming environment. THe GUI functions work really well with the touchscreen.
