Is Linux compatible with touchscreen/2 in 1 laptops?

Yes, I run Pop_OS on my Lenovo Yoga 6, no complaints whatsoever

One thing to understand here is that it mostly depends on the "desktop environment", which is basically the GUI of the system. (Imagine you could have the Windows XP GUI on a Windows 11 PC. Or the macOS GUI on a Windows 11 PC.)

Distros intended for desktop use will typically come with a certain desktop environment by default, so to some degree, you can talk about the distro, but yeah, there's just gonna be a strong correlation with their default desktop environment.

To my knowledge, GNOME and (recent/Wayland versions of) KDE have good support. Most comments here imply these two desktop environments, so for example Ubuntu, Fedora and POP!_OS are typically GNOME, whereas Kubuntu and Nobara are typically KDE.

Some folks here also mention Linux Mint and LMDE working well, which use the Cinnamon desktop environment, so I guess that works well, too. Cinnamon is somewhat based on GNOME.
Well, and Elementary OS's whole shtick is its Pantheon desktop environment, which is also based on GNOME.

So, basically, as Elementary's Pantheon is its own thing, there's no guarantee that it'll work, but I would not be surprised.
As someone else already said, you can use a Linux Live USB to try it out before installing. You should be able to just follow along the installation instructions of Elementary OS and shortly before you actually install things, you should find yourself in Pantheon and can try it out.

I use Fedora Atomic (GNOME Desktop Environment) and it works amazingly with a touch screen!

I've been running kubuntu on a lenovo yoga for years, works great.

I think the only think is that the touch screen maps incorrectly when there's a second monitor plugged in. I didn't use it enough for that to be annoying, and it's possible it's fixed on plasma 6, I haven't tried yet.

Touchscreen works OOTB on my Dell XPS in Ubuntu and Debian.

Running Linux Mint 22.1 on a Dell Latitude 5300 2-in-1 with zero issues. Touch screen worked OOTB.

Arch Linux on Dell 7389 : just works. Also had OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on this machine, best installer ever.

Debian on Thinkpad X390 Yoga : with included variable-pressure pen, the touchscreen is actually a wacom tablet, perfect. Also, one if the best installer there is.

Ubuntu on Thinkpad T480s : just works. Installing Ubuntu today is literally just a couple of clicks. Wife hasn't complained in 3 years, this distro must be doing it right.

(Everything Gnome here, no additional setup whatsoever. The KDE gang will argue that Plasma has a lot of goodies for touchscreens, be sure to check it out)

I've got a Surface Go 2 running Kubuntu and it's been running fine. Performance overall seems to be better compared to Windows, and the touchscreen works fine as well.

I've experienced some kinks with the Surface Pen's responsiveness in that sometimes drop-down dialogues won't be properly selectable with the pen, it's skipping options for some reason if I hover over one, so I have to use my finger instead.

Apart from that, I have an extra program for an on-screen keyboard since, for some reason, the pre-installed on-board keyboard is only available when logging on the device.

Most multitouch functionality is also available right out of the box, like pressing the screen with two fingers at the same time to simulate a right-click.

Works on my surface pro 3 with fedora gnome

Ubuntu

Don't use it. They apply some weird patches to make the touchscreen experience worse. Try Fedora instead.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad L13 Yoga with Mint and touch screen works perfect. Only thing not configured yet is screen rotation.

Also works fine with an external USB-C touch screen with extended desktop, but a command to re-position touch location is needed, and when going back to internal screen only (haven't automated it with udev rules yet).

The touchscreen on my laptop works without having to configure anything. Mine doesn't fold into a tablet, so I rarely use the touchscreen though.

I would suggest that you load Elementary OS or Ubuntu on a flash drive, boot it up and try it out. You don't have to install anything, it will run right from the flash drive. That's the best way to figure out if a distro works with your hardware.

Oddly a jailbroke Chromebook i5 has been the best 2 in 1 I've ever used

I have Mint on an old Acer 2 in 1 that is barely capable or installing Windows just for the size, so it's possible but of course YMMV.

This is the problem. Perfectly fine laptops and desktops but can’t run windows 11. So they’re going to become ewaste. Sucks. Fuck microshaft

Chiming in with another laptop with a touchscreen running kubuntu. Works great, required zero setup on my part.

I've used an Acer Spin 5 and Dell Latitude 7440 with Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora and NixOS over the years without many issues.

I've heard that the x360 laptop you have may be a little troublesome but you can always test things out on a live Linux USB.

• I've heard that the sound quality might be degraded on Linux, or certain speakers don't work
• The flip switch doesn't work, meaning that the keyboard and trackpad aren't disabled when flipped.

Ofc, there are a few x360 laptops so it might not apply, I'd encourage you to just give it a go with a live USB.

For using your stylus for note taking, I'd recommend trying Xournal++ and/or Rnote

I have LMDE on an old Lenovo Yoga, but it doesn't disable the keyboard when in tablet mode. It's on my list of crap I need to fix. Make sure to check that behavior before you go full install.

I have Nobara running on an old Lenovo Flex 15 with an 8th gen i5. Everything on it worked right out of the box including the multi-touch screen, I can't imagine why it wouldn't work on any other distro. I can't tell the difference in responsiveness between Windows and Linux on it.

Touchscreen (and 2-in-1) support in general is quite good, both Gnome and Plasma (two most popular "desktop environments") support it well. It should be about as responsive as it is on Windows, because the response time generally comes from hardware and not software. However, I must warn you that I've had a similar HP 2-in-1 (although a different model) and there simply wasn't a Linux driver for the touchscreen so it didn't work at all; all the other tablet-like features worked fine. I would first check on a liveUSB - the touchscreen should work there the same as it will on the installed distro. If it doesn't work, well, there's your answer.

The screen with my Lenovo Yoga 720 (I think) is a convertible touch screen. The brightness never stays consistent in Mint. It constantly changes brightness no matter what I'm doing with it. However, I'm not sure it worked right, even with Windows 10. Still a decent machine.

I have an x360 running bazzite with gnome and it runs great.

I can't see why it shouldn't be. I have used it with touch screens. It works great. Remember that Android is linux too, and that really spurred the development in that area... :-)

Yes but your mileage may vary. My pavilion x360 had okay out of the box support for it's touchscreen. I don't remember if tilt worked.

My touchscreen is currently busted and the hinges broke the case (and probably the digitizer) so I stopped using the convertible function of it.

Yes, I tried PostmarketOS with Phosh on my old Lenovo Ideapad. It just works without tinkering.

My last laptop was an HP Stream. Crappy laptop, but it had a touchscreen. It worked fine whenever I remembered that it had a touch screen. I didn't have to set anything up, it was just automagicly setup for me on Ubuntu. Couldn't tell you how responsive it was and that laptop would have been a poor benchmark anyways, but if I touched a button or scrolled the screen, it would do the thing.

Sorry, I'm old. Prefer a physical keyboard to a screen keyboard any day.

Mwahahhahaaaa!

I'm running aurora on a surface pro5 for ages, the thing works like a charm out of the box.

I have a similar convertible device, and it's almost good with KDE. KDE components switch to a layout with more whitespace and bigger icons so they are easier to touch, and some KDE programs like the file manager also opens a special menu on long press on files that is an easier to use version of the right click menu.

firefox also handles it well, I can easily scroll a page with momentum, but I can also select text.

my device also has a plastic pen (no buttons or battery in it), and linux knows to ignore touch input when the pen is near the screen so that I can rest my palm on it while writing.

but a major pain point is that so far I haven't found a real touch keyboard. there is Maliit, which is much harder to build locally than other programs, and if you get it to work it is hard to use. then there is squeakboard, but last time I was looking into it that depended on wayland protocols that were not implemented yet in KDE's compositor

Generally yes but those HP laptops can get really glitchy when they run something other than windows. You can try it but next time just avoid HP.

It absolutely is. I had a Dell 2-in-1 with Ubuntu preinstalled like 10 years ago.

Running an Acer Chromebook R1 on OpenSUSE right now. ChromeOS was end of life, so I managed to get Libreboot to work. It got a touch screen and you can fold it into a tablet. The touch functionality is ok, but the problem is that the Chromebook specs shit, so I have to run xfce. But tbh, I didn't use the touch functionality much when it was a Chromebook either.

My previous laptop had a touch screen, and the Linux driver worked for it with no configuration on my end. Not exactly what you're asking about, but I was impressed by how it "just worked".

But that was a traditional laptop.

I recently bought the TUXEDO InfinityFlex 14 which is a 2-in-1 as you describe. Well, they call it a 3-in-1 because you can fold it in such a way that you can stand it on a table and watch movies on it which is a bit silly to call a 3-in-1.

Anyway! It works very well. TUXEDO OS is bascially Ubuntu but they put the latest KDE Plasma on it which has much improved tablet mode support compared to Plasma 5.27 that Kubuntu 24.04 comes with. I really like it. You can install it on non-TUXEDO laptops too like yours. I mainly use tablet mode to read books or browse websites in a more relaxed pose on the sofa.

There's a touch keyboard too which works well enough if you need to type a sentence here and there but for anything more than that you would revert to laptop mode.

I have a Lenovo 2 in 1 tablet laptop and it works OK. I am running Debian with KDE Plasma and it has been a little flaky with the automatic screen rotation and sometimes i have to toggle it on and off to get it to kick in but that's it. Not sure if that's something that would be fixed on different distros or DEs.

I didn't have to do any extra 3rd party driver setup or anything like that.

The touch screen itself works great. I have used tablet mode mostly for reading RPG source books that I only have PDFs of. Works great for that.

I've got a little 2 in 1 laptop, a Dell Inspiron 3670 (I think). Works great out of the box with the XFCE desktop environment, less with others. XFCE specifically is the only one that disables my keyboard correctly when I fold it backwards into tablet mode, and re-enables when I fold back

Tell me you understand the health risks with unnecessary touchscreen use.

My two Intel laptops work great with Fedora KDE.

My two AMD laptops do not. Neither of them detect that they have an accelerometer, so turning the laptop to portrait mode doesn't turn the screen. My minisforum V3 is the worst because volume output is either off or on, there is no turning it down.

All of them detect the keyboard being flipped around and disable the keyboard and trackpad.

I suggest GNOME for getting started in Linux with a touchscreen. There is less to learn than KDE, and the last time I tried Cinnamon on a touchscreen was painful (granted that was years ago, it might have improved since then).

Look into the DE (desktop environment) and find out if it supports Wayland. If it does, there is a good chance that it will support touchscreens out of the box, but unless it's changed in the last year, only KDE and GNOME currently have Wayland as the default display driver. (Not talking about window managers, they aren't in the scope of what OP is looking for)

If you are going to use a Debian derivative (elementaryOS, Ubuntu, Mint), stick with GNOME. Unless the distribution specifically upgraded the KDE version (Like KDE Neon, the official KDE distro), most of them are still using 5.27 KDE. It works, if you use Wayland, but it is far less smooth.

For your distribution choice, a Debian derivative will be rock solid, but will lag on getting the latest updates. With an older system, that's not really an issue for hardware. A Fedora derivative will be cutting edge. The latest updates roll out with each new version for the most part, but that can introduce some instabilities. As I understand it, an ARCH derivative (Manjaro, Garuda) is bleeding edge. Great when it works, but breaks often (particularly Manjaro).