I would like to share with you a very cool project that develops drivers for correct operation of Microsoft Surface devices on Linux. I myself use Surface Pro 6 with these drivers and everything works like a charm (battery life is good, cameras work, stylus, keyboard, touchscreen, screen). The developers are gods. From myself, I would recommend using Fedora Linux distribution, as I got the best battery life on it and didn’t experience any additional bugs. If you don’t like GNOME, you can try spins.
Links to project resources:
- Home Page.
- Table of supported features.
- Installation Guide.
- Page with known bugs and their solutions.
- Wiki.
Awesome additional resources:
- User experience from Michael Horn.
- Installation instructions (non-official): Link. Link.
Microsoft wants to give Linux a nice warm hug and then squeeze and squeeze and all the warmth disappears this is actually quite a high pressure oh that hurts Microsoft no ow are those needles coming out of your arms I think I hear bones splintering and screaming oh no it’s me I’m screaming I’m hearing myself screaming I’m turning into
Very poetic description of EEE.
☝️
Fwiw, this is NOT an official Microsoft release, it’s like Asahi Linux, where the community made it Linux-compatible
I also recently got a Surface Pro 6. I got it used for $200, but it was in great condition, low battery cycles, and came with one of the keyboard covers. As you said, everything works. Gnome in Wayland is pretty good for touchscreen. I also got a third party pen for it that works great in Krita and xournal++.
I wish using it as a tablet was a bit better supported in Gnome or other DEs, and the battery life is only … OK. Still, as a thin and light linux tablet I can carry in my bag to work on light tasks or look up content it’s fantastic. The keyboard cover also makes it great for typing, programming, or opening remote shells on the go.
As of my experience, Plasma is better (funny) with handling touchscreen than GNOME. Maybe you should try to use it. Generally it is really good experience. Yup, some caviots here and there but meh, small thing 🙂
I have tried Plasma. Imo, it’s not even close. X11 style touch works OK in Plasma, but the multi touch gestures for navigation isn’t anywhere near as good as Gnome with Wayland. In Gnome, I’m just missing a few quality of life gestures, like being able to swipe from an edge to un-hide the auto-hide dock.
I also tried Plasma Mobile (which was amazing for tablet like navigation), but the hi-DPI scaling was all broken.
Latest Plasma Wayland is really stable. You should try it 😏
I’m typing this on my desktop that is running Plasma wayland right now. The touch gestures don’t give as much of a tablet experience. It’s not that plasma doesn’t work. If I want to use it as a “pure tablet” without normal computer interactions with the keyboard at all, then it’s not a great fit. Gnome is miles ahead for that use case.
Okey 🙂
I applaud Linux on as many laptops as possible. But given Microsoft’s history of EEE, bad security practices and multiple and on going privacy violations I would really not recommend using anything Microsoft. If you must use fx Surface I would recommend buying a used one. Or better yet a used Thinkpad or similar enterprise laptop used.
Security? Maybe. Privacy? Too hard and nonsense to implement hardware tracking to spy on 1% of users without Windows.
Agree on privacy. And why bother when Intel/AMD have their Management Engine (ME) and AMD their equivalent.
But why support a company like Microsoft when they have a long history of prioritizing profit over user freedom (FOSS/EEE), security and privacy?
Because there is no such well made 2-in-1 device from System76, Tuxedo or some another good manufacturer.
Perhaps you think the device is good?
By all means use it if it suits your needs 🙂 My point is that there are alternatives, like fx Lenovo Yoga or similar, where you dont support Microsoft and their history of bad behavior.
We all got different priorities and if it isn’t something on your radar, that’s fine. For me I would rather be without than buy a Surface for the mentioned reasons.
I don’t know the current state of Lenovo, but I do remember not so long ago they were shipping some pretty bad software on their laptops… so I find it a tad ironic to mention Microsoft’s bad behavior, but then recommend Lenovo 😅
I don’t really use laptops, I have an old 2015(?) MacBook that runs Fedora on it for whenever I need something portable on the rare occasion, so I don’t know whose good vs bad these days.
I know Lenovo is no angel but still a single piece of sand compared to the vast desert of Microsoft in terms of bad bahaviour.
We deserve System76, Tuxedo, Framework, PineBook etc. And if that doesn’t suit the use case a used Thinkpad, Macbook (a sandbox in the analogy) or Dell is OK options. There’s IMHO plenty of options that’s better than the desert of Microsoft 🙂
That’s completely fair on all accounts! I’d love to be able to try the offerings from the better companies some day, but money has been very tight and they’re definitely on the pricier side (for good reason of course) at least on my own scale of what I have available - the MacBook was given to me second hand so I didn’t find it myself or else I would’ve definitely spent the money on a really nice System76 laptop!
I wanted a small device to take notes on for school, but that I could also do development on for my cs classes. Got a surface go 3, put fedora (gnome) on it, added the surface kernel, and it’s honestly a better tablet experience than windows. I use xournal++ for notetaking and the stylus and touchscreen all work great.
This is cool, but if Microsoft would <3 Linux, they would do this themself.
Thanks for sharing!
I’m grabbing a decommissioned surface pro 7 from work today! Just need to order a charger for it, and I’ll try this out :)
Wish you best luck. Write here with issues. Will answer if there is internet around 🙂
So far so good. I put fedora on it, and starting to play around. Gnome seems pretty well suited to the tablet.
It is good! 🙂
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https://piped.video/6_EHEmz_j4o
https://piped.video/BreV6N0GApk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
i run debian sid on a surface go and i love it. my daily driver, and one of my favorite PCs in a very long time.
Awesome. Is it stable (not breaking) experience for you? Debian Unstable anyway 🙂
a little funny since the freeze lifted due to the sheer number of new versions all appearing at once, but nothing is breaking. typical post-freeze hiccups - they subside quickly, nothing has gotten in the way of being productive, and im used to it after 23 years of running Sid.
23 years… WOW😲 We found another Linux Hardcore user 😃
i would think that 23 years of primarily running one distro would be more notable, haha
Speech, vocabulary changes. Hair falls out. There is a personal penguin 🥹🤣
oh lord that pic is unnerving
oh lord that pic is unnerving
Fixed!
base
😁
