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Galaxy Book 12

Remember these things? It's still one of my favorite tablets to use.

Mine has been sitting in a drawer for a bit, and I attempted to charge it up a year ago. But it wouldn't get past 0% so I just thought it was a lost cause.

I was somewhat tempted to take a heat gun and swap in a new battery, or at the very least take out the SSD to get my files.

However, last night I got it to recharge. What was different this time, was I detached the keyboard (perhaps it had just enough power draw to prevent charging) and it is really cold temperature-wise here. So either one of the other, or perhaps both got it over the charging threshold.

Anyway super happy, what's old is new...

14 comments

Comments (14)

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violajack

Mar 05

I gave up and put Windows 11 on both my big 12 and my little 10.6. I just can't get away from Onenote on windows for actual work. Linux is fun but relegates the device to toy and tinker status.

Dellaster

Mar 06

Replying to

It’s good to know your non-negotiable apps when contemplating Linux. Earlier today I was watching a YT video interview with someone who took a “one-month” Linux challenge. I groaned out loud and did a face palm when he said he failed at day 22 because Lightroom was a must-have, no ifs or buts. If only had done a little bit of research and found out that Adobe anything is a no-go for Linux, He wouldn’t have wasted 22 days of his life.

Same goes for gamers who play competitive multiplayer shooters, most of which have kernel-level anti-cheat systems which are not functional in Linux. I wouldn’t even try to count how many YouTube videos are about a gamer who “tried to switch to Linux but failed” because of that. Or rather, they failed because they didn’t do any research about it, or didn’t realized it was a go/no-go sticking point for them before taking the plunge.

violajack

Mar 06

Replying to

For a while, I was okay with either using the web version or the android version via waydroid, but ultimately, it's just not as smooth as using full windows onenote, and there's one thing I need to do (about once a month, fairly infrequently) that can only be done in the Windows version. (Or the iOS app, but I'm not going down that rabbit hole.)

Some decent alternatives exist in Linux land, but because of how I use the notebooks to share schoolwork with the kids, I need to stay in Onenote until we're done with school.

Dellaster

Mar 06

Replying to

I understand your situation. I was in a similar spot when I was freelancing doing novel editing stuff for authors. Stuck on Windows using Word. I had tried for a year to get it to work OK on a Mac, and I briefly tried Linux as well, but it took twice as long to do things and was more of a pain on macOS and three times the time and pain on Linux if not 4x (Open Office 15 yrs ago was a cluster-fart).

Retirement meant freedom from being a slave to MS products. 😸

Edited

Dellaster

Feb 22

With Pop!_OS linux in a transition between the old 2022 release and their self-designed "Cosmic" desktop environment (DE), currently in alpha, I've been distro-hopping to see if I can find a stable distribution for this old Book 12. Currently typing in one I installed this morning: Solus using their own Budgie DE. Like everything else since 2017 when everything last worked completely in linux--but only in Ubuntu, and then it regressed and disappeared--sound doesn't work from the speakers or headphone jack, only via bluetooth. And brightness control needs a custom applet called "budgie-brightess-controller-applet" which I got in their software center and added to the bottom bar.

Left bar is backlight, does nothing on this OLED. Middle is gamma, right is color temp. Gamma works well enough as brightness control. The moon icon is a night light applet.

For most linux distros your best bet for brightness control is picking the Gnome DE and installing the "Soft Brightness Plus" extension. There used to be other extension options but none of them work anymore. Gnome tends to have that problem.

Edited

violajack

Feb 22

Replying to

I've been watching a bunch of linux on tablet videos to see if there's something better than Ubuntu and I was considering trying a few others, but my current Ubuntu install with Waydroid is working well enough that I'm not sure I want to go through fresh installs. But apparently, Ubuntu breaks some tablety things that should work better in something like Fedora's implementation of gnome, so maybe it would be worth it? In any case, I need to try out that brightness extension.

Dellaster

Feb 23

Replying to

No idea about normal Fedora and tablets. My Book 12 was on Fedora Silverblue before yesterday and I found that rather sluggish and stuttery. Solus isn’t the greatest for tablets, just FYI. I mostly installed it on my Book 12 to test it out on “bare metal”. VMs don’t really tell you everything.

I like it well enough—and the fact that it’s an independent distro, not based on anything, intrigued me—so this morning I installed it on my Lenovo Legion laptop. So far so good! It replaces CachyOS, an Arch-based distro that’s all the rage. No problems after a month of use… but it’s Arch, ya know? I was in constant fear of it breaking with the very frequent rolling updates. 😹

Edited

Macario

Feb 16

I`m still using my 10.6 daily. Installed Windows 10 IoT and the drivers pack from Samsung, everything runs fine. I setup battery protection since the start, so it still holds up, but I mostly use it connected to the charger,

Yes, modern browsers and web sites are slow as hell, and yes, I still use it because I`m stubborn. But I`m very curious to see how far can it go. About the keyboard malfunction, cleaning the contacts with isopropyl alcohol and a q-tip usually helps. Does anyone knows a replacement keyboard?

Tams

Feb 16

Replying to

4GB of RAM really cripples it.

As for a keyboard, only used ones will be available.

violajack

Feb 25

Replying to

This inspired me to refresh my little one too. Linux just can't figure out what to do with the screen, so I put windows 11 back on it. It's great for onenote and reading.

Tams

Jan 27

I was using my 10.6 today even (slow as molasses, mind). Oh what could have been.

I found the keyboard would randomly cause issues for a while, then go back to being fine. The only thing that seemed to work was just attaching and detaching it repeatedly.

Dellaster

Jan 27

I haven’t charged mine up in forever so I just plugged it in to see if it’s still alive. It has had Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS for the past year and a half. The only issue was brightness control for the OLED screen. I had to dig up an extension for Gnome for that, else it was 100% brightness all the time.

It’s responsive and perfectly usable on Linux.

Edit: it’s alive and well. Lots of updates overdue is all. Which is nice since it’s the only tablet I have that works with the Zbook X2 pen. 😻

Edited

violajack

Jan 26

Great timing! I just pulled mine out yesterday and put Ubuntu 24.10 on it. I'm typing on it now, connected through the Microsoft Teams dock (thanks to whoever posted that woot deal) to my shiny new widescreen monitor. Speakers don't work, but everything else is great! I'm testing out PDF and drawing apps to see if I can get all the way off Windows, but I have so much in OneNote, I'm not sure I can.

Unfortunately, the smaller sibling, the 10.6, still does not play well with Linux. It doesn't know how to handle the native portrait screen and it takes all kind of shenanigans to get pen and touch lined up properly.

willadams

Jan 26

Replying to

Sadly, mine has a disk error, so I despair of getting it going again --- it would be great if I could get Linux on it....