My HP Stream 7 seems to be having problems with a Windows device driver, but the problematic driver is somewhere in a large bundle of Intel chipset related drivers. For another data point I thought I would try an entirely different operating system: Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop. Also, because I thought it would be fun.

Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop is something I encountered earlier when looking for Linux distributions that are familiar to me and built for low-end (old) PC hardware left behind by mainline Ubuntu builds or even Chrome OS. The HP Stream 7 tablet fit the bill.

One amusing note is that since HP Stream 7 is formally a tablet, the default resolution is portrait-mode which means taller than it is wide. Unlike the Windows installer which knew to keep to the middle of the screen, the Debian installer scaled to fit the entire screen making for some very difficult to read tall narrow text.

Once up and running, the Debian with Raspberry Pi desktop ran on this tablet much as Raspberry Pi runs its Raspberry Pi OS, except this configuration is comparable to a fresh installation of Windows: many devices didn't have drivers for proper function. I disabled Secure Boot in order to access non-mainline device drivers, which is thankfully straightforward unlike some other PCs of the era I had played with. But even then, many drivers were missing. Video and WiFi worked, but sound did not. A pleasant surprise was that the touchscreen worked as input, but only at the default orientation. If I rotate the desktop, the touchscreen did not adjust to fit. And while an idle Debian drew less power (~8W) than plain vanilla Windows (~10W) it is still significantly worse than this tablet running at its best.

Seeing Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop run on this tablet was an amusing detour and possibly an option to keep in mind for the future. On the upside, at no point did Debian complain that the battery is low, because the operating system didn't think there was a battery at all. The hardware, however, really misses the battery's absence.