cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100
Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
I wanted a cheap way to try out using a tablet to read music from at my amateur orchestra. I couldn’t find a large-screened affordable android tablet, but I got hold of a cheap 2nd hand Surface Pro 5, a Surface Pen (for making annotations on the music), and a bluetooth foot pedal (for turning pages).
I figured I’d try sticking Fedora on it, but even with the surface specific kernel installed, it did not seem stable. Waking it with the power button randomly stopped working entirely, seemed quite sluggish, that kind of thing.
Even if I’d got it working, there are basically no ideal options on Linux for music reading software. Other platforms have MobileSheets, enScore, etc. If the core OS experience had felt more robust then I was looking forward to trying to create one myself in Qt, but just to get something working I had to give up and stuck a LTS edition of W10 on it instead, which (sadly) does work great and seems very stable in comparison. This makes sense - it’s a very Windows-specific bit of hardware; I was just hopeful that it’s basically just a x64/UEFI device with a bunch of tablety peripherals, so Linux should be an option even if it’s missing a few features. But I can’t risk it blacking out or failing to respond in the middle of a concert.