this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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Does anyone know of a cheap tablet that can run a Linux distro?

It doesn't need to be high spec - it's just for displaying photos.

Thanks!

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[–] data1701d@startrek.website 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

At this point, I'd wonder if some of the older Microsoft Surfaces might be suitable for this purpose. Especially if it's just displaying photos, you probably wouldn't even need the Linux-Surface kernel for a lot of things and could just run mainline, avoiding a lot of misery. For instance, a 1st gen Surface Go from 2018 seems to run for ~$70 on eBay these days; I own one and used to daily-drive it on both Windows and Linux, and although there were some annoyances, the display is decent.

Though honestly, I wonder if you particularly need a Linux tablet at all. There are dedicated digital frame devices out there for displaying photos; a lot of them can just display off a USB drive or SD card in the ballpark of 50 bucks it looks like. I'd probably recommend not getting one that supports Wi-Fi, as I think it's probably a stupid idea to assume some random cheap device you bought online has correctly-implemented network security.

[–] BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Many surface devices don’t need a specialised kernel anymore anyway.

Surface Go 1-3 for example, everything is in Linux kernel 6.14+. And everything except the cameras is in since 5.17.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 25 minutes ago

Oh yeh. I heard that, just forgot. Thanks for reminding me.