Microsoft Surface Go 3

I've never found the iPad form factor appealing. I once thought I'd like the iPad mini. What I do own and use often is a Surface Go 3 with 10.5" 3:2 aspect touch screen--though I rarely touch the screen. Drawing diagrams with the stylus is nice though. I once solved a math problem with the 'pencil' on it. It's just the smallest, lightest laptop-like thing that runs a real OS (even if that's Windows/WSL2) .

I switched from an iPad to a Surface Go 3 running Fedora a while ago and it really transformed my tablet use. I mostly just watched Youtube videos and did some light browsing on my iPad, but never really any serious work. Occcasionally I would ssh into other machines using apps like Blink, but even with the external keyboard the UX just feels ... off. Same for other apps that have IDE-like environments. They work, but they're never really great to use. I was skeptical about getting a Linux tablet because of the worse battery life and less polished overall experience, but having a desktop Firefox with all add-ons, my text editor of choice, and the ability to open a terminal and run whatever I want really more than makes up for it (Plus GNOME is a pretty good tablet experience out of the box these days as long as you broadly stick to their 'official' apps).

I got the original Surface Go and keyboard (saving $50 by getting black instead of the highly advertised colors). I've been very happy with it--the portability of an iPad but can do normal computer things. Later I wanted to upgrade it to a Go 2 when the Go 3 came out. The price jump to the Go 3 was so large as to make it worth waiting to find something else. I was fortunate to find a used Go 3 that fit my bang/buck profile. The hardware is great for the package. I don't know anything else that compares. Running Windows isn't great, but I've found ways to disable most of the baggage and mostly doesn't get in the way of what I'm doing on it. The m3 model that I got can even do some light gaming (StarCraft 2 in 1280x800 w/low textures) provided I use the Peltier cooler I got for it. The iPad Pro line has been more than $999 since long before the M1 chip and no one seems to think that's too much, even though you can only run AppStore things on it. Software for creating rather than consuming has been coming out for iPadOS, but I'd rather use a mainstream OS with common toolchains.

Surface lineup is a weird one because Microsoft uses a non-standard firmware, but even still the support on many devices are great. I have a Surface Go 3 and despite the poor processor it flies on Fedora and I use it daily to do light tasks. Perhaps try with linux-surface kernel?

I disliked Windows 11 (and Windows in general). Windows 10 was mildly tollerable with tweaks. Windows 11 added a lot of negative features so I had no interest in using it, even for a gaming only PC. I upgraded my Surface Go to a Go 3 which comes with W11 pre-installed. I was planning to attempt a downgrade to W10. After using W11 for a while, I realized that many of the annoyances that were particular to using a tablet/laptop were greatly improved. So now, I'll keep using W11 disabling as much of the extra crap that I can get away without. Maybe if/when there's a "MacBook Touch" I could use that. In theory an iPad could work, but the software is so limited to consumption and not development/creation. I'm really only running rekordbox, Ableton, and StarCraft2 on the Surface Go3. Audio drivers on Windows still mostly suck.

First a disclaimer. I am writing from my perspective. What I say will be pretty subjective. I am not trying to represent everyone, but simply give you my view on things from using Windows, macOS, and Linux all on a daily basis for a couple years. I have several computers: Two PC's, two laptops, two tablets, one phone, and a handful SBC's. Mainly, though, this is my lineup: PC runs Linux, macbook air runs macOS, and my microsoft surface runs Windows. I don't consider myself a stalwart supporter of any OS, and although I believe in free software, I don't avoid proprietary software that's simply better. I use what's best for what I'm doing at any particular time. I use my PC/Linux for most of my development. I use my macbook air for my iOS development and for a lot of school work, and I use my microsoft surface go 3 when reading online (the touchscreen is great for it), and because I like having a dedicated Windows machine. I do have an iPad mini too, but Windows 11 is, for me, a much better touchscreen OS than iPad OS. If I want to do phone-like things, I'll use my iPhone, not my iPad. I keep my configurations very vanilla; you won't find anything more than brew on macOS, WSL on Windows, or a mostly standard Fedora/Ubuntu flavor on either of my computers at any given time. Partly, this is because I don't try to make something into what it's not, but use the tool that fits best for each job. If I were to choose a single OS for a laptop that I were to use for web programming (emp…