In this repo you can find some workarounds and tweaks for different Linux OSs on the Dell Venue 8 Pro (3845) Tablet, to make them tablet friendly and usable on a low-end tablet like the DV8P.
I want to use this tablet for fairly simple tasks: Browse the internet, watch movies, listen to music and maybe use it at the uni during lectures. This implies several apps, which I want to use: Firefox, VLC, , Xournal/Xournal++ and a separate pdf-reader.
I have tried and compared several OSs with new kernels (>5.0), so below you can find out about which one would suit your needs best. All OSs were 64-bit except for Manjaro Xfce.
GNOME surely would be the best interface for touchscreen-devices, but it uses too much RAM, which this tablet doesn't have.. Therefore I tried to stay away from GNOME and mainly focused on Fedora.
- CPU: Intel Atom Z3735G; Quad-core 1.33-1.83GHz; 2MB cache; 64-bit supported
- GPU: Intel HD integrated graphics (Bay Trail)
- RAM: 1 GB (911.6 MB) DDR3L SDRAM
- Display: 8” IPS, 1280x800, multi-touch
- Comms: Wifi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, MicroUSB, 3.5 mm audio jack
- Storage: 32 GB (30.1 GB) eMMC, MicroSD-Slot for up to 64 GB extra space
To boot and install from USB, it needs an extra EFI partition with the bootloader (bootia32.efi and grub). Installation itself is uncomplicated if the USB is partitioned correctly.
- Wifi
- Audio
- Brightness Adjustment
- Rotation
- Touch
- Bluetooth
- Camera
- Battery Power Management
- Automatic Brightness Adjustment
First of all, I tested the Android x86 project, which worked quite well for 5-6 hours, but then started freezing randomly. I saw some hints on the net, that the problem might be with the google apps, but I have not investigated this matter any further. It may be useful to try the x86 LineageOS Version. The Android environment is very touch-friendly and requires the least tweaking.
Easy and fast: created a bootable USB with Fedora Media Writer, installation took ~24 min.
- Bluetooth
- Wifi
- Audio
- Touch
- Finger scrolling in folders
- Camera
- Brightness Adjustment
- Automatic Brightness Adjustment
- Rotation
- Battery Power Management
The most lightweight OS in this list. Fastest on this tablet, so I'm going to stick with it. Requires a lot of configuration though to make it touch-friendly. There is a great guide for the Openbox configuration, other tweaks can be found in this directory.
- Automatic headphones detection doesn’t work (plugging into audio jack doesn’t trigger audio output to switch to headphones). It seems that the speakers and the headphones port are recognized as one output.. I have tried to alter
~/.config/pulse/default.pawith themodule-switch-on-connect, but to no avail. - No rightclick without a mouse 👉
xbindkeys&xdotoolto use doubletap on the homebutton as rightclick - Doubleclick is messy and gets locked up sometimes 👉 press (& hold) homebutton to reverse the effect
- Logging in without a physical keyboard is only possible if the user password is disabled or if you use a different Login Greeter.
- Great themes: Numix Circle Light icon theme, Dark Party
iio-sensor-proxyquirk to enable automatic rotation stopped working after kernel update (>5.2) 👉 use two custom scripts instead to rotate display and touchscreen into landscape or portrait mode- Xournal++ needs to be configured for touch use first (using a mouse) 👉
Edit > Preferences > Touchscreen > Enable GTK Touch (workaround). Still not ideal though, the menu is laggy. Xournal works better on touch, but has less functions.
Same as above - easy and fast: created a bootable USB with Fedora Media Writer, installation took ~24 min.
- Wifi
- Audio
- Brightness Adjustment
- Touch
- Bluetooth
- Camera
- Automatic Brightness Adjustment
- Rotation
The login greeter looks better than in LXDE and LXQt is overall user-friendlier OOTB (e. g. doubleclick works). However it still requires a big amount (comparable to LXDE) of tweaking to become touch-friendly.
Create a bootable USB with Fedora Media Writer. Installation took ~26 min.
- Bluetooth
- Wifi
- Audio
- Brightness Adjustment
- Touch
- Camera
- Automatic Brightness Adjustment
- Rotation
OS consumes about 2-10% CPU and 64% RAM in idle mode - more than LXDE. Firefox is preinstalled. Lots of GUI settings.
Installation takes a lot of time - over 51 min.
- Bluetooth
- Wifi
- Audio
- Brightness Adjustment
- Rotation
- Touch
- Camera
- Automatic Brightness Adjustment
Overall performance is fine if not to many apps are opened at once, but F31LXDE is faster. Background apps consume ~100 MiB of memory when nothing else is running and you need to disable animations in Universal Access Settings. Rotation works, but is off (needs a small adjustment to get it right). Wifi works, but is unstable (connection is randomly lost). I also experienced some audio problems - the input device (Microphone) wasn't located, and the output device could not be determined; volume buttons didn’t work as well.
Just extract the ISO to a FAT32-formatted USB and add a bootia32.efi to EFI/boot/. Otherwise its easy and fast.
- Bluetooth
- Wifi
- Audio
- Brightness Adjustment
- Touch
- Camera
- Automatic Brightness Adjustment
- Rotation
LightDM login greeter, Firefox and Onboard preinstalled. Onboard works on the login screen unlike with the Fedora flavours. Use MATE Tweaks to set the Panel to Cupertine (good for touch).
The 64-bit OS needs bootia32.efi to work. I was only able to test the Live-USB version, since the installation wasn't possible:
System does not have enough working memory. At least 1 GB required.
- Wifi
- Audio
- Touch
- Bluetooth
- Camera
- Brightness Adjustment
- Rotation
Good looks, touch-friendly (big icons, touch-scrolling and doubleclick work OOTB). LightDM greeter preinstalled. Also some Microsoft stuff (Office, Skype). Quite a bit slower than Fedora LXDE.