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Re: [X1 Tablet] Careful with dist-upgrade in unstable at the moment

From chris@21:1/5 to All on Thu Dec 22 21:10:02 2022

On Thursday, 22 December 2022 09:16:50 CET Martin Steigerwald wrote:

I made an interesting experience regarding the current Qt transition: I updated a ThinkPad X1 Gen 1 Tablet with "apt upgrade" yesterday.

Did you manage to have your tablet fully functional in keyboard free mode?
I've experimented with an old Portege Tablet and many applications couldn't be used without a keyboard or a mouse. I want to use the tablet as a reader and Okular couldn't be used without "mouse right click" or "keyboard control keys" which Maliit doesn't (didn't) have. Example: you can go to full screen mode
but you can't leave it, because it would require a right click which I
couldn't manage neither by touch nor by stylus.

On the hardware side, everything was fully functional with pure Wayland install. I use GDM3 instead of SDDM because the latter still rely on X11/Xorg, when GDM3 can do without.

Touch screen and stylus (plain Wacom) fully functional.

But the applications were not ready to be used with tablet mode, specially Maliit, imo, which is fine to insert text but doesn't do keyboard shortcuts at all, which could atone for absence or right click. Touchscreen longpress-is- rightclick is on a per application basis, so you (did) have it with Dolphin, but not with Okular. Same goes for stylus button configuration.

It was a few month ago so I'd be happy to hear how you solved it or if you stick with the physical keyboard.

Note, integrated Firefox pdf reader, and FF generally, was what was best tuned for pure tablet mode use, but it was both not very stable at the time, and it was killing my fanless "Y"-series i5.

I've tried Phosh: couldn't insert my password. Gnome: no better. Actually I
did find some (old) extension of some Gnome keyboard that did provide control keys, but maybe it was not working with all applications, and also it was getting all Rube Goldberg, so I gave it back to the cupboard.

But I'm still interested in an open source e-reader working with plain device as the portege, and I don't want to use outdated technologies like X11/Xorg, unmaintained for years when Wayland is doing great.

Cheers,
Chris

Ciao,

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

From Martin Steigerwald@21:1/5 to All on Thu Dec 22 21:40:02 2022

chris - 22.12.22, 20:57:34 CET:

On Thursday, 22 December 2022 09:16:50 CET Martin Steigerwald wrote:

I made an interesting experience regarding the current Qt
transition: I updated a ThinkPad X1 Gen 1 Tablet with "apt upgrade" yesterday.

Did you manage to have your tablet fully functional in keyboard free
mode? I've experimented with an old Portege Tablet and many
applications couldn't be used without a keyboard or a mouse. I want
to use the tablet as a reader and Okular couldn't be used without
"mouse right click" or "keyboard control keys" which Maliit doesn't
(didn't) have. Example: you can go to full screen mode but you can't
leave it, because it would require a right click which I couldn't
manage neither by touch nor by stylus.

No. Already LUKS encryption password at boot requires a keyboard. AFAIR
I briefly researched whether that could be done with an on screen
keyboard, but quickly gave up on it.

Additionally after replacing the internal battery with a new lithium
polymer replacement battery and a full hardware reset the time was gone
and the UEFI firmware asked to hit F1 to continue. The firmware menu can
be used by touch, however the engineers seem to have forgotten about
that "no time is set" error.

I made sure I have a working attachable ThinkPad X1 tablet keyboard.

I can comfortably read PDFs on the tablet without keyboard, but for
special functions in Okular, I am not so sure. However there is a "okular-mobile" package in Debian. So that might help.

On the hardware side, everything was fully functional with pure
Wayland install. I use GDM3 instead of SDDM because the latter still
rely on X11/Xorg, when GDM3 can do without.

Touch screen and stylus (plain Wacom) fully functional.

This tablet is still an experiment at getting a fully functional tablet
with Linux. It is not that we have a plethora of options here.

There are several rough edges. Trackpoint on keyboard does not work
after boot, you need to detach and attach the keyboard once or hibernate
the machine.

I am using Wayland and some times the display just hung for whatever
reason. Thing is, that then I can not just hit the power button long
enough for a hard power off. That does not work on the tablet. Instead I
have to stick a straightened paper clip into the emergency reset role.
So I made sure I always have one of those with me when I am using the
tablet somewhere. Once I had a HID related boot time kernel oops and was
not able to enter the LUKS password. That also required that paper clip procedure to recover from.

But the applications were not ready to be used with tablet mode,
specially Maliit, imo, which is fine to insert text but doesn't do
keyboard shortcuts at all, which could atone for absence or right
click. Touchscreen longpress-is- rightclick is on a per application
basis, so you (did) have it with Dolphin, but not with Okular. Same
goes for stylus button configuration.

I installed Maliit and tried it out, however I did not try to enter
keyboard shortcuts with it.

It was a few month ago so I'd be happy to hear how you solved it or if
you stick with the physical keyboard.

The later. I use the physical keyboard.

Note, integrated Firefox pdf reader, and FF generally, was what was
best tuned for pure tablet mode use, but it was both not very stable
at the time, and it was killing my fanless "Y"-series i5.

I really like to look into okular-mobile. Also… I think for some other applications there are mobile alternatives in the Debian repository.
Like for example kalender as a replacement for Okular. Meanwhile there
are also some tablet form factor related settings in Plasma's system
settings. Additionally I wonder whether it might be good to switch
Plasma to a different form factor mode. I think I tried around with it,
but then went back to regular desktop mode.

I've tried Phosh: couldn't insert my password. Gnome: no better.
Actually I did find some (old) extension of some Gnome keyboard that
did provide control keys, but maybe it was not working with all
applications, and also it was getting all Rube Goldberg, so I gave it
back to the cupboard.

I did not dig into Phosh or GNOME.

But I'm still interested in an open source e-reader working with plain
device as the portege, and I don't want to use outdated technologies
like X11/Xorg, unmaintained for years when Wayland is doing great.

I think this tablet currently is the only device that I run with Wayland
these times. With my main laptop I often enough tried and then switched
back due to various issues I do not remember at the moment.

On my music laptop I had it for a while but then there was a strange
issue as well that I do not remember.

Maybe I try again when Plasma 5.27 is available to see whether it works
with the package versions intended for next stable.

I just hope that additional software that I install as Flatpak will also
work and so on.

Ciao,
--
Martin

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

From chris@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 23 02:40:01 2022

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

On Thursday, 22 December 2022 21:32:28 CET Martin Steigerwald wrote:

chris - 22.12.22, 20:57:34 CET:

On Thursday, 22 December 2022 09:16:50 CET Martin Steigerwald wrote:

I made an interesting experience regarding the current Qt
transition: I updated a ThinkPad X1 Gen 1 Tablet with "apt upgrade" yesterday.

Did you manage to have your tablet fully functional in keyboard free
mode? I've experimented with an old Portege Tablet and many
applications couldn't be used without a keyboard or a mouse. I want
to use the tablet as a reader and Okular couldn't be used without
"mouse right click" or "keyboard control keys" which Maliit doesn't (didn't) have. Example: you can go to full screen mode but you can't
leave it, because it would require a right click which I couldn't
manage neither by touch nor by stylus.

No. Already LUKS encryption password at boot requires a keyboard. AFAIR
I briefly researched whether that could be done with an on screen
keyboard, but quickly gave up on it.

Thanks for the answer, awesome. Tablets are awesome, we do so much reading on our phones, we should be able to do that too, with texts that are more involving, and require a larger screen, and with open source software and hardware that actually belong
to us.

I think I've gone a little bit further than you in the configuration of the tablet, but I really wanted a keyboard free solution.

Regarding the LUKS password, I'm pretty sure there is a debian packages doing just that. Only it wasn't at the top of the priority queue so I didn't try it.

My priority was more about the ergonomic of the slate, that you actually could read, without distraction, no tinkering: for instance it is important that the full screen be covered by the text you are reading in order to avoid windows with different
colors and different brightness which tend to hurt the eyes.

Too bad for the EFI battery thing and the F1 keypress. My system was pretty stable once started so I expected that once it would be usable it wouldn't need restarting too often.

I did do some bug reports at the time regarding the usability of both okular and maliit, and the okular bug has been accepted.

So there is hope it gets better soon.

Also I keep encouraging people to use wayland, because the more users the faster the bugs will get fixed; and x11 is "won't fix" so sticking to it won't help.

I don't use anything anymore that use x11 or even xwayland, save zotero. But zotero 7 is hopefully coming soon, using Firefox 102, instead of 66, and it will be able to comply with `MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1`. (my emacs is built from source with option pgtk
and does not require xwayland.)

Happy Christmas,

Additionally after replacing the internal battery with a new lithium
polymer replacement battery and a full hardware reset the time was gone
and the UEFI firmware asked to hit F1 to continue. The firmware menu can
be used by touch, however the engineers seem to have forgotten about
that "no time is set" error.

I made sure I have a working attachable ThinkPad X1 tablet keyboard.

I can comfortably read PDFs on the tablet without keyboard, but for
special functions in Okular, I am not so sure. However there is a "okular-mobile" package in Debian. So that might help.

On the hardware side, everything was fully functional with pure
Wayland install. I use GDM3 instead of SDDM because the latter still
rely on X11/Xorg, when GDM3 can do without.

Touch screen and stylus (plain Wacom) fully functional.

This tablet is still an experiment at getting a fully functional tablet
with Linux. It is not that we have a plethora of options here.

There are several rough edges. Trackpoint on keyboard does not work
after boot, you need to detach and attach the keyboard once or hibernate
the machine.

I am using Wayland and some times the display just hung for whatever
reason. Thing is, that then I can not just hit the power button long
enough for a hard power off. That does not work on the tablet. Instead I have to stick a straightened paper clip into the emergency reset role.
So I made sure I always have one of those with me when I am using the
tablet somewhere. Once I had a HID related boot time kernel oops and was
not able to enter the LUKS password. That also required that paper clip procedure to recover from.

But the applications were not ready to be used with tablet mode,
specially Maliit, imo, which is fine to insert text but doesn't do
keyboard shortcuts at all, which could atone for absence or right
click. Touchscreen longpress-is- rightclick is on a per application
basis, so you (did) have it with Dolphin, but not with Okular. Same
goes for stylus button configuration.

I installed Maliit and tried it out, however I did not try to enter
keyboard shortcuts with it.

It was a few month ago so I'd be happy to hear how you solved it or if
you stick with the physical keyboard.

The later. I use the physical keyboard.

Note, integrated Firefox pdf reader, and FF generally, was what was
best tuned for pure tablet mode use, but it was both not very stable
at the time, and it was killing my fanless "Y"-series i5.

I really like to look into okular-mobile. Also… I think for some other applications there are mobile alternatives in the Debian repository.
Like for example kalender as a replacement for Okular. Meanwhile there
are also some tablet form factor related settings in Plasma's system settings. Additionally I wonder whether it might be good to switch
Plasma to a different form factor mode. I think I tried around with it,
but then went back to regular desktop mode.

I've tried Phosh: couldn't insert my password. Gnome: no better.
Actually I did find some (old) extension of some Gnome keyboard that
did provide control keys, but maybe it was not working with all applications, and also it was getting all Rube Goldberg, so I gave it
back to the cupboard.

I did not dig into Phosh or GNOME.

But I'm still interested in an open source e-reader working with plain device as the portege, and I don't want to use outdated technologies
like X11/Xorg, unmaintained for years when Wayland is doing great.

I think this tablet currently is the only device that I run with Wayland these times. With my main laptop I often enough tried and then switched
back due to various issues I do not remember at the moment.

On my music laptop I had it for a while but then there was a strange
issue as well that I do not remember.

Maybe I try again when Plasma 5.27 is available to see whether it works
with the package versions intended for next stable.

I just hope that additional software that I install as Flatpak will also work and so on.

Ciao,

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>On Thursday, 22 December 2022 21:32:28 CET Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> chris - 22.12.22, 20:57:34 CET:
> > On Thursday, 22 December 2022 09:16:50 CET Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > > I made an interesting experience regarding the current Qt
> > > transition: I updated a ThinkPad X1 Gen 1 Tablet with "apt upgrade"
> > > yesterday.
> > Did you manage to have your tablet fully functional in keyboard free
> > mode? I've experimented with an old Portege Tablet and many
> > applications couldn't be used without a keyboard or a mouse. I want
> > to use the tablet as a reader and Okular couldn't be used without
> > "mouse right click" or "keyboard control keys" which Maliit doesn't
> > (didn't) have. Example: you can go to full screen mode but you can't
> > leave it, because it would require a right click which I couldn't
> > manage neither by touch nor by stylus.
> > No. Already LUKS encryption password at boot requires a keyboard. AFAIR 
> I briefly researched whether that could be done with an on screen 
> keyboard, but quickly gave up on it.
 Thanks for the answer, awesome. Tablets are awesome, we do so much reading on our phones, we should be able to do that too, with texts that are more involving, and require a
larger screen, and with open source software and hardware that actually belong to us.
 I think I've gone a little bit further than you in the configuration of the tablet, but I really wanted a keyboard free solution.
 Regarding the LUKS password, I'm pretty sure there is a debian packages doing just that. Only it wasn't at the top of the priority queue so I didn't try it.
 My priority was more about the ergonomic of the slate, that you actually could read, without distraction, no tinkering: for instance it is important that the full screen be
covered by the text you are reading in order to avoid windows with different colors and different brightness which tend to hurt the eyes.
 Too bad for the EFI battery thing and the F1 keypress. My system was pretty stable once started so I expected that once it would be usable it wouldn't need restarting too often.</

 I did do some bug reports at the time regarding the usability of both okular and maliit, and the okular bug has been accepted.
 So there is hope it gets better soon.
 Also I keep encouraging people to use wayland, because the more users the faster the bugs will get fixed; and x11 is "won't fix" so sticking to it won't help.
 I don't use anything anymore that use x11 or even xwayland, save zotero. But zotero 7 is hopefully coming soon, using Firefox 102, instead of 66, and it will be able to comply
with `MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1`. (my emacs is built from source with option pgtk and does not require xwayland.)
 Happy Christmas,
 > 
> Additionally after replacing the internal battery with a new lithium 
> polymer replacement battery and a full hardware reset the time was gone 
> and the UEFI firmware asked to hit F1 to continue. The firmware menu can 
> be used by touch, however the engineers seem to have forgotten about 
> that "no time is set" error.
> > I made sure I have a working attachable ThinkPad X1 tablet keyboard.
> > I can comfortably read PDFs on the tablet without keyboard, but for 
> special functions in Okular, I am not so sure. However there is a 
> "okular-mobile" package in Debian. So that might help.
> > > On the hardware side, everything was fully functional with pure
> > Wayland install. I use GDM3 instead of SDDM because the latter still
> > rely on X11/Xorg, when GDM3 can do without.
> > 
> > Touch screen and stylus (plain Wacom) fully functional.
> > This tablet is still an experiment at getting a fully functional tablet 
> with Linux. It is not that we have a plethora of options here.
> > There are several rough edges. Trackpoint on keyboard does not work 
> after boot, you need to detach and attach the keyboard once or hibernate 
> the machine.
> > I am using Wayland and some times the display just hung for whatever 
> reason. Thing is, that then I can not just hit the power button long 
> enough for a hard power off. That does not work on the tablet. Instead I 
> have to stick a straightened paper clip into the emergency reset role. 
> So I made sure I always have one of those with me when I am using the 
> tablet somewhere. Once I had a HID related boot time kernel oops and was 
> not able to enter the LUKS password. That also required that paper clip 
> procedure to recover from.
> > > But the applications were not ready to be used with tablet mode,
> > specially Maliit, imo, which is fine to insert text but doesn't do
> > keyboard shortcuts at all, which could atone for absence or right
> > click. Touchscreen longpress-is- rightclick is on a per application
> > basis, so you (did) have it with Dolphin, but not with Okular. Same
> > goes for stylus button configuration.
> > I installed Maliit and tried it out, however I did not try to enter 
> keyboard shortcuts with it.
> > > It was a few month ago so I'd be happy to hear how you solved it or if
> > you stick with the physical keyboard.
> > The later. I use the physical keyboard.
> > > Note, integrated Firefox pdf reader, and FF generally, was what was
> > best tuned for pure tablet mode use, but it was both not very stable
> > at the time, and it was killing my fanless "Y"-series i5.
> > I really like to look into okular-mobile. Also… I think for some other 
> applications there are mobile alternatives in the Debian repository. 
> Like for example kalender as a replacement for Okular. Meanwhile there 
> are also some tablet form factor related settings in Plasma's system 
> settings. Additionally I wonder whether it might be good to switch 
> Plasma to a different form factor mode. I think I tried around with it, 
> but then went back to regular desktop mode.
> > > I've tried Phosh: couldn't insert my password. Gnome: no better.
> > Actually I did find some (old) extension of some Gnome keyboard that
> > did provide control keys, but maybe it was not working with all
> > applications, and also it was getting all Rube Goldberg, so I gave it
> > back to the cupboard.
> > I did not dig into Phosh or GNOME.
> > > But I'm still interested in an open source e-reader working with plain
> > device as the portege, and I don't want to use outdated technologies
> > like X11/Xorg, unmaintained for years when Wayland is doing great.
> > I think this tablet currently is the only device that I run with Wayland 
> these times. With my main laptop I often enough tried and then switched 
> back due to various issues I do not remember at the moment.
> > On my music laptop I had it for a while but then there was a strange 
> issue as well that I do not remember.
> > Maybe I try again when Plasma 5.27 is available to see whether it works 
> with the package versions intended for next stable.
> > I just hope that additional software that I install as Flatpak will also 
> work and so on.
> > Ciao,
> 
</body>
</html>

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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From Samtinel@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 23 12:40:02 2022

Regarding the LUKS password, I'm pretty sure there is a debian packages doing [LUKS decryption with an on-screen keyboard]

Did not read the thread, but in case this was not mentioned: osk-sdl does exactly that. Debian - https://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/osk-sdl
Source: https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/osk-sdl
pmOS Wiki: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Osk-sdl

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Re: [X1 Tablet] Careful with dist-upgrade in unstable at the moment

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