I Dream of a Linux Device With a Folding Screen

I’ve barely touched desktop Linux in the past year, but that has little to do with Linux and more to do with Linux hardware—or the lack thereof. I’ve fallen in love with foldable phones, and I wish there were a Linux device shaped like my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6.

I originally dismissed folding phones as a gimmick. Now I’ve come to love how practical it is to have a large touchscreen in my pocket at all times. I don’t need a keyboard and mouse. This has become the preferred shape of my PC, and like many a Linux user, I want to see Linux come to all of the things.

Linux Is Already Touch-Friendly

Linux may be primarily associated with servers and desktop PCs, but it’s surprisingly well-suited to touchscreen devices. My preferred desktop environment, GNOME, looks like it was designed with touchscreens in mind. I’d personally like to see GNOME blossom into its own OS. It has most of the necessary bits, on laptops and tablets alike.

The GNOME Activity Overview makes launching apps and switching between virtual desktops easy to do with just a few gestures. GNOME apps are relatively simple and adaptive, so you can open the same app on widescreen monitors and smartphones like the Librem 5.

KDE Plasma may not look like a touchscreen-focused desktop, but you’d be surprised. App icons space out and become a tad larger when the software detects that it’s running on a touchscreen, and in KDE’s modular fashion, you’re free to redesign the desktop to take whatever shape you want.

Linux Is Finally Proving Itself on Tablets

I remember watching GNOME 3 debut in 2011 while I was in college. Critics called it a tablet OS at a time when the iPad was only a year old. I deeply wished I had such a tablet to run Linux on, but the only option at the time was to use a convertible laptop with a touchscreen. I did not own this type of PC, and despite appearances, desktop Linux wasn’t yet optimized to run well on one even if I did.

Within a few short years, it was viable to install Linux on a 2-in-1, but it would be closer to a decade before we would see Linux on devices shaped like modern tablets. Today you can run a full version of Linux on tablets like the Star Labs StarLite, the Purism Librem 11, the Fydetab Duo, and more powerful hardware like the Minisforum v3. Linux runs like a champ, though you do still occasionally encounter issues stemming from distro-specific changes that aren’t the fault or limitation of GNOME. While open tablet hardware still isn’t common enough to just pick up a device at a big box store, it has become easy enough to find options online.

Linux Would Make My Foldable Feel Even More Like a Pocket PC

Last year, I ditched Linux for Android-based desktops like Samsung DeX. For years, Linux companies like Canonical and Purism hyped me up on the vision of convergence, but it was Samsung who managed to sell it to me in a practical way. My Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a truly convergent device that quite seamlessly unfolds from a phone into a tablet, becomes a laptop when connected to a lapdock, functions as a desktop PC when placed into a dock, and can serve as a streaming box when connected to a TV. For the time being, I’m locked into using Android since no other software and hardware combination supports this degree of flexibility from a single device, but I’d love to have a Linux-powered option.

A Linux device would provide me with full access to any file on my device in a way that isn’t available on Android without going through the complicated process of rooting. I would have an immense set of command line tools available to me. Then there are the apps.

As a GNOME guy, that’s the software I want on my phone. I would happily write up drafts in Apostrophe while Amberol or Blanket plays in the background. As someone who primarily reads ebooks and comics on my foldable, I’d make heavy use of Foliate. But what I want most of all is the GNOME Activities Overview itself. The GNOME interface provides one of the most intuitive and versatile ways to multitask on a touchscreen I’ve seen yet. It’s a step beyond the taskbar available on most current book-style foldables.

Foldables Are Already Most Appealing to Tech Nerds

Foldable phones have not outsold their slab phone counterparts. It’s not even close. A large part of this, undoubtedly, has to do with price. But whatever the reason, current foldable buyers tend to be tech enthusiasts. They’re people looking to do more with the pocket PC in their hands.

After all, the excitement of having a full-blown dock for switching between apps on a phone isn’t going to appeal to people who rarely ever click the taskbar on their PC. Split-screen multitasking has limited appeal to someone whose laptop only ever shows one full-screen app at a time. This, frankly, is the way many normies use their PC. They’re already able to use a traditional phone the same way.

Some of us who are most excited for book-style foldables are those who have long dreamed of having a full computer we could carry around in our hands. We’re the people who look at a device like the PocketChip and inherently get it.

I love the foldable form factor more than any other type of computer hardware I’ve ever held. Now if only I could pair it with software and code I can genuinely own and have full control over. A flexible device with such flexible software? That’s a future I can’t wait to unfold.