- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
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.
Lemmy community. tiddeR community
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.
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I highly recommend it! I’ve been running PopOS! On my Surface Pro 3 for years. It works perfectly, and functions extremely well with the form factor
👍❤️
Also, consider REFind (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/REFInd) when you dual boot. It’s the only boot manager that supports touch screens.
Good advice ❤️
I’ve had nothing but issues with Microsoft hardware… Even excluding Xbox stuff, my SP4 had major issues with video corruption and hard freezes. Multiple RMA attempts came back defective or damaged, even the first party folio keyboard went bad. These were widespread defects and once warranty was up I was sol.
The only thing that somewhat extended its life before it went full spicy pillow was putting Linux Mint on it with some kernel patches.
Thank God this community exists, but I’ll never buy another surface product as long as I live.
SP4 was really buggy from Hardware perspective, flickering screen, fast battery drain while off, etc… SP567 are really good devices!
I love my 8 now. The battery is definitely not the best, but the whole device is awesome.
I think it should be really slick device. Glad you’re glad 🙂
Yeah it works- and has for quite a while. My SP3 ran Ubuntu fine back in the day, but it didn’t save it from being an unservice-able piece of shit with failing hardware that overheated in 5 seconds flat.
Weird bugs. RIP SP3
Not bugs- it overheated in BIOS. :D
:DDD
It’s the next evolution of planned obsolescence - it just doesn’t work as soon as you start to use it.
It didn’t?!?!
I don’t understand your question.
I am sarcastically shocked that it didn’t prevent the hardware from being shite.
Ha okay. Yeah, no saving that junk heap.
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Surface Pro devices are awesome in use (not pro 4 pls). Not many alternatives. It pretty cheap used. So awesome variant 🙂
I’m somehow really surprised by the linux community embracing the surface. It’s a horrible piece of hardware. It’s designed to be short lived. Hard to repair or upgrade. Limited connectivity. Etc. I’ve had user come back with their surface where the battery had pushed the screen out.
I cannot say I agree.
I am a road warrior, a linux admin and a salesman. I have my SP9 ARM and while ARM on Windows has been a disappointment, the hardware is top notch and does everything I need.
Plus I work in very dirty environments, so it is nice to be able to buy a new keyboard when needed
I’m a huge Linux shill, but man I love the surface pro. It’s just such a sexy device lmao. I’ll mainly run Windows on it, because I at least need one Windows device for my work. The surface pro 9 has and easily replaceable battery which is a huge draw for me.
No good alternatives. Very convenient. That’s it.
There are hundreds of better alternatives, to a MS surface. For linux enthusiasts, hardware should be very important, as important as the software, OS your running.
In similar format? Which?
Like I said, the format to me is the problem, any similar format will have glued or soldered component. It’s highly anti DIY by design.
In a portable computer, I want 14inch screen, Replaceable RAM, SSD and battery, HDMI, USB-A, USB-C, a SIM slot. Maybe SD card and ethernet. I want a laptop format because it’s much more comfortable to work on the go. My work PC is a HP X360 1040 G8. It’s a pretty solide machine it’s not heavy. But HP has soldered the RAM on the motherboard, it has no Network connector and no SD card reader.
HP has also removed the possibility to swap keyboard layouts in their professional range, which is very annoying!
But as people buy into Apple and MS bullshit. Other manufacturers will follow into making computer as unrepairable or upgradable as possible.
I agree that we shouldn’t support such an unrepairable devices. But it is too good not to use it. Sorry. My principles went away here 😁
So ergo, no real alternatives. People like the 2-in-1 form factor enough for MS to keep on selling them, and that’s why there are people who want to run Linux on them.
It’s the best “laptop” I’ve ever owned. Overly expensive, but it’s legitimately the first laptop I’ve had that hasn’t died in a few years. It feels like Microsoft’s response to the Mac-book.
It’s exceptionally bad if one wishes to repair or upgrade, as you stated. Outside of that though - performance, reliability… it’s been pretty good.
As I typed this I remembered that in the past year it’s started hard locking seemingly at random requiring a full shutdown via holding the power button. So, not quite as consistent as a Mac-book.
I have a microsoft laptop studio and I love it. I had the previous Surfacebook pro and they have solved everything with the studio.
I’ve supported over the last few years surface pro 4 and hp X2 G4. They are nightmarish devices. The surface pro had constant freeze issues where people had to force restart them, then after two years, the battery wouldn’t last, but we couldn’t change it, because I believe the screen was glued. We had also keyboard and touchpad issues.
Now the X2, same kind of system as the surface, but we have issues where machines become really, really hot. So hot that some have their heat sink burning the displays. We have issue where dust gets in between the display and webcam. Last but not least, your keyboard will die after two year of use, the small connector gets damaged bye folding the keyboard overtime. Making the machine unusable, overtime. Machines that are out of warranty can’t have their keyboard replaced and new keyboard cost a fortune.
Now, if you take any professional grade laptop. Like a Lenovo T or some HP Elite book. You could keep machine in rotation for years after the warranty was over, we had 10+ years old laptop being used as loaner or for short assignments. Because we could upgrade the RAM, HDD->SSD, battery etc. Also don’t get me started on the connector, a surface had 1 USB A one mini DP and a proprietary connector. The x2 3 usb-c port.
The surface are very expensive for what they offer.
IMO, hardware should be very important for the linux community, it must be as important as software!
I appreciate your perspective. Clearly handled a lot more devices than I have over the years. My experience is about 3 laptops, and then a Surface with the latter being my best experience.
When upgrading I’ll look at your recommendations.
Greetings from a Surface Book 2 running Fedora 38! Everything works nicely (dtx included), battery life is great. Switching from W10 to Linux on this machine was probably one of the best decisions I could make.
Fedora 38 is VERY good. Really cool distro. Same here, best decision was to install linux, it is so much snappier and smooth! P.S. cool GNOME extensions pack, looks beautiful!
My pops has a Surface, first Gen. Middle-tier model. It runs Windows 10, poorly. Do you reckon Linux would work on a first-Gen device?
I guess it’s worth a try, maybe go for Fedora KDE spin or something lighter? If he has an Nvidia card in it I’d suggest gettin Pop!_os.
Hmm I’m also still using a surfacebook 2 but with windows 11 and it’s been giving me some issues like hard locks and sometimes overheating. Does the gpu work too or is that not possible? Might switch if that is supported and it does have better battery life.
Surface-linux page for SB2 says their kernel does support Nvidia variants. Not really sure about the battery life because mine only has an iGPU.
ITs been a while but last time I tried installing Linux on my surface book 2 it was such a mess and had so many problems.
I’ve been daily driving Fedora with surface-linux kernel on SB2 for over a year. It just works (well, maybe except for the camera).
Good to know! Haven’t tried fedora before.
If it was long time ago maybe you should try it again. Many improvements were made. Also, disable secure boot in BIOS, it is kinda meh on Linux.
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking after reading this. Might be worth a try. I did disable secure boot last time.
❤️
The Microsoft ❤️ Linux image is a weird choice. WSL is neat but Microsoft will never support Linux on their hardware.
where is/was that image? I don’t see it
It was changed 😏
WSL does nothing to further the paradigm of Linux. WSL is a bandage for Windows to make it suck just a tiny bit less, and it generally fails miserably.
Back when I was having issues with the Linux desktop (2016-19), I used WSL to get access to Linux’s useful tools. I was always on and off with Linux, mainly due to having components that don’t work with it well (mainly to do with NVIDIA and Broadcom WiFi).
Now I’m full-on Linux. Only exception is Apple Music (virtual machine) or some gaming scenarios (dualboot). Stuff like mods that work better on Windows, or steering wheel games (I have a Logitech wheel that works so much better on Windows than Linux).
You don’t need an entire VM just for Apple Music! There’s an open source client for it available on Mac and Linux. They just dropped development, but it still works. https://github.com/ciderapp/Cider/releases/tag/v1.6.2
I have tried Cider before. It’s a solid client, but there’s some stuff that’s still missing for me. I can live without lossless audio, but gapless playback when listening to albums is very important for me and Cider doesn’t support it unfortunately.
Totally understandable, them making the project closed-source is making me switch off too, but the last open-source version works in a pinch.
Well, since that comment several hours ago I just set up Apple Music on Waydroid, with lossless. If need be, the Android version of Apple Music works pretty well on Waydroid. There’s some hoops to go through (Google’s certification, the app needing fake WiFi for anything above low-quality AAC) but once it’s done it works.
I didn’t know about the fake Wi-Fi so I just thought it wouldn’t work, Good catch! I’ll use it
Trigger activated check 😏
Should also mention Nobara Linux (which is funnily enough based on Fedora) has Surface Linux patches baked into its kernel.
WOW. Such a cool detail! 🤯 Nobara is good.
Nobara looks very good
Especially for gaming.
That’s actually very tempting. I always liked the form factor of the surface but I didn’t want windows for it.
Cool project!
I’m currently running EndeavorOS on my Surface Laptop 4. I’ll admit it was a pain to get working right, especially since I have the amd model, but damn once it’s working its so nice.
It is really stable!
I’m actually looking into purchasing a Surface Pro 7/8 to replace my current laptop, and was wondering about compatibility for dual booting
8 doesnt have great compatibility from what i saw, we have some at work we want to convert and its a hassle
Its honestly very usable. Touch has some weirdness and I haven’t gotten it working on my device but its one of the laptops not the tablets so I don’t really care for touch. Look through the Table of Supported Features that OP linked to make sure whatever device you plan to pick up supports everything or is at least being worked on.
You can try latest iptsd build from GitHub Actions. It has has some patches that make touchscreen better.
Surface Pro 6 has better compatibility but 7 is also good!
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Yup, if photoshop on Linux 🤔😁
Howdy! Just wanted to share that drivers for Surface devices (at least my Surface Laptop and a family member’s Pro) are now in the newer Linux kernel versions and you should only need this if you’re using an older kernel version. That being said, Linux Surface might add some nice improvements.
Mostly. But not everything.
