what Desktop Environment are you using on your FW12 and why?
As I am using KDE Plasma for some time now on different notebooks and desktops it was my first choice for the FW12. I really like and got used to KDE Plasma, especially on lager screens. On the FW12 as convertible with a small screen I found it not optimal for me. In laptop-mode, everything is fine, but in tablet mode I have several issues (all those menus are small to hit, maliit-keyboard is horrible and the upcoming plasma-keyboard isn’t much better).
So I think hard to switch back to Gnome, which feels natural in tablet-mode (well keyboard isn’t perfect, but much better), but has it’s own issues.
So what is your way to go, and how does it behave as convertible? I saw some use sway or hyprland, how does this behave as tablet?
I have not gotten my FW12 yet, but I will be using Windows Shell / Metro.
Justification: Unfortunately, some things I do just require Windows, and I have too much PTSD from trying to fix package manager issues while work is due the next day, and deciding at 8pm to start frantically reinstalling Windows. I know FW Linux compatibility is generally superb but I will not make the jump again. For now.
GNOME, with extensions. I don’t hate the stock experience, but I really like the small set of extensions I use. Bluefin (which I’m using) ships with most of the important ones out of the box.
The touch screen and trackpad gestures are nice to have, and fractional scaling with the experimental flags (which again Bluefin ships with enabled by default) works better than I expected although I drop it down to 125% (from the default 150%) on the FW12 for a bit more space.
Edit: there are a few things about the UI that could work better in tablet mode - like the overview relying on hover to show close buttons - but nothing major; most of my tablet mode use so far is reading news, watching Netflix, and playing Balatro.
I’m currently testing out the GJS OSK extension as a replacement for the built in keyboard for tablet mode on the FW12, and am liking it so far.
oh! happy to see someone else using Gnome on the FW12!
I’m still waiting to get mine (batch 10) but have been using Gnome on my old Thinkpad X230t and Yoga 9i convertibles, and am looking forward to seeing how the FW12 handles a similar install.
Yeah, I find Bluefin surprisingly decent. It auto rotates, it pops up the on-screen keyboard (usually), and the stylus works well with palm rejection. All out-of-the box.
I was expecting to have to do more customization.
There are quite a few wrinkles, like my stylus’s eraser doesn’t work, sometimes the OSK doesn’t pop up, and some apps require hover which doesn’t exist in a touchscreen environment… I’ll be filing some issues.
But overall, the fundamentals seem to be there. Which is a pleasant surprise!
Haven’t received mine yet (Batch 8), but I’ll at least be starting with Ubuntu/Gnome. I didn’t “get” Gnome Shell and was using KDE or XFCE or Gnome2 for years, until I started my job and for some reason on my workstation every desktop on Ubuntu 12.04 crashed randomly, but Gnome3 would just restart its shell and bring all my apps back up without losing work, so I stayed with it, and over time figured it out
We’re now on Mint at work (our environment doesn’t play well with Snaps), but I’m the weirdo running Gnome on Mint
I’m planning on sticking with Gnome as well on Linux Mint. I’m not planning to use tablet mode often but I hope it works okay for it’s needed uses. I’m planning to use the computers ‘stand’ mode so I can watch videos or use a separate mechanical keyboard and mouse if needed.
Silverblue. With just a couple of gnome extensions. I tried bluefin, but they went out of their way to bling the terminal. I have my own .bashrc.d/ die for that. I’ve fully adapted to the toolbx life, and the base system only has tailscale layered in.
Hardware-wise, everything works as expected. I liked SB so much I migrated my home server to CoreOS. The not having to worry about package-level updates on the atomics is nice.
Ubuntu 25.04 + Gnome. I have traditionally run i3 on my machines, but i3 (and Xorg in general IMO)’s support for tablet mode is just not there. I tried i3, but got tired of trying to roll my own rotation/tablet mode scripts. Gnome has all that built in (and i much prefer wayland—although i did have to install a few weird programs to be able to peek under its hood). the paradigm of convertible laptop/tablet is new to me, and i think that gnome is the best environment for me to explore it.
I’m kind of surprised nobody brought this before, but I think GNOME and KDE are currently the only options if you want to have a lockscreen with a virtual keyboard on Wayland, at least from what I can tell. Touch input on a tablet is clunky but it’s less frustrating than flipping the keyboard all over just to input a password.
@Rightaway I am using the Sway window manager on the Framework Laptop 12. My config files for Sway are here.
This is a good point.
As far as I know, Sway and Niri use the Swaylock as a lock screen application by default. But I haven’t found the way to use the virtual keyboard wvkbd on the swaylock’s lockscreen. So, I opened the issue ticket for the Swaylock project below.
I investigated below. According to the Reddit threads, the gtklock can work to display a virtual keyboard. And the swaylock-mobile may also work for that.
