Peter N. Glaskowsky:
>> From: sajolida <sajolida@???>
>>
>> Peter N. Glaskowsky:
>>> Internal SSDs like the typical eMMC devices found in cheap x86
>>> tablets are very nearly indistinguishable from SD cards; the
>>> major difference in functionality is that you lose the ability to
>>> yank the drive to trigger a shutdown and memory wipe, and
>>> compensating for this probably requires UI alternatives for
>>> keyboard and touchscreen.
>>
>> Did you investigate whether GNOME is already working on supporting
>> touchscreen and touchscreen keyboard?
>
> Tails itself already provides some support for both, presumably just
> by pass-through from Gnome.
Regarding the virtual keyboard, are you referring to the usual virtual
keyboard from Tails:
https://tails.boum.org/doc/encryption_and_privacy/virtual_keyboard
Or to something else?
Regarding the touchscreen that's good news! I'm adding that info to
https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/6064
But there are limitations; for example,
> Tails doesn’t seem to provide a way to turn on the virtual keyboard
> for entering the administrator and persistence passwords, so getting
> those things done means connecting a USB keyboard (or a keyboard that
> uses a proprietary USB wireless dongle, since those look like USB
> keyboards to the system).
You already have a ticket for that:
https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5563
But note that since we are in the process of revamping the whole
Greeter, I doubt that we will put a lot of energy on fixing #5563 before
that. Unless the technical solution can be reused, but this I don't
know. Greeter experts are alan@??? and andres.gomez@???.
> Here’s the Gnome status page for touch support:
> https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/Touchscreen Gnome’s page about the
> on-screen keyboard feature says this feature is “absolutely
> imperative” to create a good experience on touchscreen devices:
> https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/ScreenKeyboard
Cool, apparently they are working on their own solution for an
integrated screen keyboard but they are not there yet.
>> When you say that they have very few options for storage expansion,
>> how often do they have a SD card slot for example?
>
> Most Windows tablets seem to have SD card slots, most commonly for
> the MicroSD card form factor. They all have USB sockets (a Windows
> requirement), but they tend to have just one of them.
So technically speaking, people could start Tails from a SD card. I'm
not saying that your idea of having Tails install on the hard disk of a
dedicated Tablet is bad. But most of them have a SD card slot, then this
is not a blocker anymore to have Tails usable on those.
>> Do you mean that you already started Tails on one of those
>> tablets? which brands and models?
>
> Yes, three models, all designed to what Microsoft used to call the
> Tablet PC standard— basically, these are all designed to the same
> standards as Windows laptops, but without the permanently attached
> keyboard and generally with fewer connectors. They all worked
> normally within those limitations:
>
> HP Slate 500 Samsung Series 7 Slate Microsoft Surface Pro (original
> model)
>
> Of these, the Samsung was probably the best experience. The HP Slate
> 500 is painfully slow with relatively low screen resolution.
Did you experience this bug on the HP Slate 500:
https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/7880
> 1) Enable installation to any drive (with suitable warnings) 2) Have
> the Greeter recognize the absence of a keyboard and activate the
> on-screen keyboard 3) Increase the size of UI elements where needed
> so they can be selected using touch
Regarding the size of UI elements, did you try the accessibility
features of GNOME: Applications → System Tools → Preferences → System
Settings → Universal Access → Text size?
If you want to go further you could also check if anything has changed
for good or for bad in our experimental Tails images based on Debian
Jessie which includes GNOME 3.14 (if I'm not mistaken):
http://nightly.tails.boum.org/build_Tails_ISO_feature-jessie/
To install those ISO, I recommend using the "Upgrade from ISO" option of
Tails Installer and upgrade a current Tails USB or SD card.
--
sajolida
