I've been testing out GrapheneOS on a Pixel Tablet and I have to say I'm impressed. It is better than I expected. I'm not doing anything crazy. Mostly just as a way to manage my calendar, email, tasks, and do some reading but its nice to have privacy respecting tablet to do it on.
33 sats \ 0 replies \ @final 27 Feb
There is a huge room for potential when it comes to the Pixel Tablets... The upstream is working on a Desktop Mode and in addition we've previously voiced our interest in having a virtual machine manager app due to support of hardware-accelerated virtual machines in newer Pixel devices which could allow running desktop apps.
If Google continue making tablets there could definitely be a future of people using them like desktops.
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @JuanMiguel 26 Feb
It's just a phone with a bigger screen, right? Does it have proper mouse/keyboard support? Can you show some screenshots/videos of your experience? Thank you!
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133 sats \ 3 replies \ @hunicus 26 Feb
Android has had key/mouse support for a while. Even on your phone...plug in any keyboard/mouse and it should just work.
Coincidentally, I had the same thought recently after getting a little frustrated with my Linux setup...GrapheneOS just works, every time, no matter what. FOSS app landscape on Android has gotten pretty rich. And it's highly secure.
So I also got a Pixel Tablet recently to see how it could work for work...apps for basic functions are there (email, messaging, browser, etc) and with Termux you can do a lot more (ssh, vim, etc). Depends what you do on your computer but that covers 75% of what I use...main things I miss having are browser devtools and desktop-class editors like Inkscape and GIMP.
It can be a nice sidekick when you're doing something relatively simple and don't want to have to worry about battery life. It's somewhat similar to a MacBook running Apple silicon but on a more private OS that is less powerful.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford OP 26 Feb
Thanks for the info! I really hadn't considered using it in the way you describe but you have me thinking. Appreciate it.
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33 sats \ 1 reply \ @hunicus 27 Feb
My pleasure. Hope it works out for you!
I would love it to be a little more powerful to make it better for work (e.g. I tried building Mempool's Node.js front-end on it earlier today and it flat-out failed / ran out of memory) but I mainly got it to have a device on which I could read and take notes side-by-side...and for that it's perfect.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 27 Feb
I think small devices like this make the most sense as terminals used to connect to more powerful systems. Having a remote work environment that you can ssh in to for example. I've done this with laptops and iPads but the iPad is way to locked down.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 27 Feb
Tested usb keyboard and a bluetooth mouse. Worked well.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 26 Feb
I'm still testing it out but it feels a lot less like a phone with a bigger screen that I thought it would. I mean that really depends on the apps more than the OS. I was concerned that the tablet would be kinda an after thought vs. the phone experience. So far I don't see that.
I haven't found a big use for mouse and keyboard on tablets but when I test that stuff I will share for sure. I was thinking of testing that last night but didn't have time.
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