Background

I wanted to get into digital note-taking for my classes, but didn’t feel like spending $800+ on an Apple Pencil + iPad combo. I also found Apple hardware/software to be generally limiting when it comes to repairing and running sideloaded applications. These are the things I was generally looking for in a note-taking device:

• Relatively innexpensive
• Repair-friendly hardware
• Unrestrictive software
• Good stylus support

And then I finally found it…

Meet the Dell Latitude 5290 2-IN-1

I settled on the Dell Latitude 5290 2-IN-1 as I found it fairly cheap used on eBay.
It’s a tablet PC equipped with an i5-8350U, and 8GB of RAM, which is plenty for basic actions (except if you’re running Windows 🤢).
It’s battery and general condition was pretty good. It unfortunately didn’t come with storage installed.
Luckily, opening up the device is very easy compared to other tablet/tablet pc devices cough Microsoft Surface Pro cough

Including the stylus, storage, and tablet pc itself, I got it all for around ~$109, which is less than an Apple Pencil Pro sold on Apple’s website.

It’s Linux Time

For my distro of choice or distribution of Linux, I’ve settled on Fedora Workstation for its ease of use, inclusion of GNOME (the desktop environment) for being very touchscreen friendly, and its packages being fairly up-to-date.
It’s not quite as bleeding edge as Arch Linux per se, nor is it as stagnant as Debian stable, it’s just right for me.
Fun Fact: Linux Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, actually uses Fedora as his primary distro.

The software I use

For notetaking, I’ve settled on rnote, as it was the most complete and polished looking notetaking app.
The only downside with rnote is that the file format is unstable, which means a future update could render older saved documents unuseable on newer versions.
To combat this, I simply just export my notes as a PDF after I’m done writing in them.

To sync my notes, documents, and other files between my main laptop and tablet pc, I use SyncThing.
SyncThing is completely opensource, free, and doesn’t require any “cloud” services. It works by sending encrypted files over p2p.
As long as both devices are on and connected to an active internet connect, they will sync.

Overall a very good piece of hardware, despite only have roughly 6 hours of battery on a full charge, it does what I need it to do.