Windows keeps reminding be that I have to switch to Linux if I want to keep using my computer. It’s a rugged tablet from about 2011 that I still use daily for internet and some light Photoshop. Core i7 1.2 GHz, 4GB RAM, and the important part, a built-in touchscreen and Wacom digitizer. Keyboard is an external device that I don’t generally have attached. I grew up on DOS, so I’m not afraid of fiddling, but I’d rather this machine just worked. Any recommendations?
I’d recommend just getting a live version of a distribution that you don’t have to install, that way you can play around with it before committing.
This is the way. It may take a few tries to find something that works on this particular machine. But that’s the beauty of Linux. You can try before you don’t buy.
Gnome and KDE (The current version is also called Plasma.) are generally touted as being the most touchscreen friendly desktop environments, so go for a distro that has one of them as an official flavor. You’ll wanna keep your physical keyboard around through the install process until you get the onscreen keyboard set up the way you want. (The touchscreen is not going to work during the UEFI/bootloader stage, so the physical keyboard is not just a suggestion but a requirement.)
Right-click through touchscreen being set up out-of-the-box, I have only seen in Gnome. Gnome also has the onscreen keyboard pre-installed. The whole Gnome layout works well with touchscreens. It is a bit different from Windows, though.
One downside to Gnome is that for some reason, the screen scaling is limited to 100% or 200%. This can be annoying, since 1x scaling frequently makes the buttons too small for a touchscreen, but 2x is way too huge. You can install “gnome tweaks” to get 150%, if it even works properly on your distro. If you want 120% or some other number, then you’re outta luck. Increasing the text size can help, but then the app labels in the app drawer get cut off. This all seems like a huge oversight to me, personally. Even Windows allows custom scaling percentages.
I have a touchscreen device myself (1st Gen Surface Go), and I’ve found Gnome to be the best suited to touchscreens. However, I personally can’t stand it. I previously tried KDE but left due to lack of right-click support. I’m planning on going back and just living without it.
There is a Gnome fork called Phosh (PHOne SHell), which is adapted for the touchscreen out of the box.
I’d recommend you go with Debian (or Ubuntu) as the distro. Minimal fiddling (for Linux standards), and it uses stable versions of software so minimum bugs
If you want solid reliability, Debian is where you might want to start. Particularly on an older PC where the hardware should be well supported. Make a live install image USB boot drive and see if you like it before you decide.
Debian is all about stability, at the cost of having less recent software. For newer versions of the desktop environments you could try live boots of KDE Neon and Pop!_OS as well.
