Arch Linux

Xwang

Member

From: EU

Registered: 2012-05-14

Posts: 414

KDE on a 2 in 1 tablet pc

Hi to all,
I've just finished installing archlinux on my new Lenovo Miix 720 2 in 1 pc.
I've installed KDE because it is the desktop environment I use on my pc since 2004.
I've discovered that out of the box it seems not ready at all to be used in tablet mode.
There is no virtual keyboard when you need to insert text and no rotation.
I've installed gnome too and there the virtual keyboard works as expected, but I feel not at home with Gnome.
Is there a way to have KDE working on a 2 in 1 in tablet mode?
Otherwise is there a way to have gnome look like or  very similar to kde?
Is there any other desktop enviroment more tablet mode friendly?

d_fajardo

Member

Registered: 2017-07-28

Posts: 1,687

Re: KDE on a 2 in 1 tablet pc

I've never used a tablet PC before but there's a whole wiki on it:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Tablet_PC
It seems it can all be configured within XOrg.

Xwang

Member

From: EU

Registered: 2012-05-14

Posts: 414

Re: KDE on a 2 in 1 tablet pc

I've never used a tablet PC before but there's a whole wiki on it:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Tablet_PC
It seems it can all be configured within XOrg.

I've already installed xorg and wayland, KDE and Gnome and the issue is that KDE seems not to have a virtual keyboard at all.

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: KDE on a 2 in 1 tablet pc

KDE indeed does not come with a good tablet mode out of the box. You need to actually read that wiki article and work with that.

Xwang

Member

From: EU

Registered: 2012-05-14

Posts: 414

Re: KDE on a 2 in 1 tablet pc

I confirm that KDE is not yet ready for the tablet.
It keeps freezing too much.
Using the same archlinux installation with GNOME it never crashes.
Now I have to find a way to use onboard on GNOME instead of the GNOME's default on screen keyboard which does not have a lt of useful keys (tab, arrows, Fn keys and son on).
Then I will try to customize GNOME to resemble a KDe desktop or understand how to use it.

d_fajardo

Member

Registered: 2017-07-28

Posts: 1,687

Re: KDE on a 2 in 1 tablet pc

Did you actually tried any of the solutions from the Xorg links quoted earlier? It looks to me the solutions to your issues are pointing to the X server rather than the actual Desktop Environment.

Xwang

Member

From: EU

Registered: 2012-05-14

Posts: 414

Re: KDE on a 2 in 1 tablet pc

Did you actually tried any of the solutions from the Xorg links quoted earlier? It looks to me the solutions to your issues are pointing to the X server rather than the actual Desktop Environment.

Yes, of course I did.
I discovered that the iio-sensor-proxy didn't work on my pc, whereas iio-sensos-proxy-git works.
Plasma had a lot of freezes and crash when using kded-rotation-git or screen-rotator-git, whereas installing GNOME and using it with X11 it seems to not suffer of such issues.
Suspension to RAM works while Freezing does not (it failed to restore the only time I tried it, but I've not spent any effort to have it working).
Meantime thanks to some GNOME extensions I managed to have a fully keyboard in GNOME and a panel which resembles the normal way to interact with the desktop on KDE.
Still I'm finding a way to have the system recognize all my Lenovo Active Pen 2 buttons (it has two buttons which are recognised and a third one which should be connected using bluetooth. I will investigate better in the future.
Finally I'm testing a solution which permit me to emulate the right click when using the PC without a physical keyboard (which will be 99.9% of the time).
So for the moment I'm pretty happy with the configuration even though I hope to be able to have a working KDE environment sooner or later.