Ubuntu 17.10 on a convertible laptop

doniks

Maybe it's of interest to some ...

The new Ubuntu version 17.10 with Gnome and Wayland works quite nicely as a touch UI on my convertible laptop!

Web browsing, emailing, text editing all work nicely, both when having the screen docked to the keyboard and in tablet mode when disconnected from the keyboard. User interface is reasonably sized for both use cases, screen rotation works. Basically everything works as one would expect.

For me that is quite a big improvement to all previous attempts with Gnome or KDE to have a reasonable touch experience.

A few tweaks and tips below. Not strictly needed, but I find them helpful. Otherwise it's out of the box.

Install "Block caribou" from extensions.gnome.org to turn off the on-screen keyboard, because out of the box it is too aggressive for laptop use
Settings: Always show universal access, so I can deliberately switch the on-screen keyboard on when I want tablet use
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keyboard keyboard-type tablet , to add Tab, and cursor keys to the on-screen keyboard which I like for terminal use
gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']" to allow fractional scaling, otherwise, I can only show the desktop with 100% scaling which is too tiny, or 200% scaling which is too huge
Settings: display 125%
Settings: auto hide dock, just my preference
Use "web" as a browser, since firefox has no touch support and chromium doesn't look good with the 125% scaling
Use geary as email client since thunderbird has no touch support
Use gedit for text editing, I quite like the mini-map for scrolling
Change the filemanager "file" to use single click since that's more natural with touch

Curious to hear others experiences and tips!

UKPhil

This is off topic and good one for marking it as such. Why are we all of a sudden getting desktop and laptop related posts.

Skyblue

Can you tell me manufacturer and model specification of your convertable ?

doniks

@Skyblue HP Pavilion x2 12, let me know if you want to know more