(Copypasting an answer to another comment on this post, slightly modified, here, so it reaches more people.)
I had a MS Surface too a while back.
After installing Linux, it felt like a totally different device. Just like you, I thought “That is how it was supposed to be!”.I strongly recommend you to try the
silverblue-main-surface-image from universal-blue.org.Why?
- Because you need the
linux-surface-kernel for it to work properly. Otherwise, most functions, like touchscreen, webcam, adaptive brightness, auto-rotate and more won’t work at all. - You can install the kernel on other distros too, but it might break. I had that already happening. On uBlue, it’s baked in and won’t break. And if it does, you can just roll back.
- It comes with Gnome by default and provides you a great touchscreen experience
- And you can install Waydroid easily, which gives you access to Android apps. Distrobox is already pre-installed and gives you access to the software of every distro available, including Arch.
I don’t recommend using another DE than Gnome for that. Especially those “light weight” ones like XFCE are horrible for touchscreens, and if you use a browser, those few hundred MBs RAM less used by them is negotiable.
Gnome is, like it or not, king for devices like that. The gestures on touchscreen, big icons, and more, is only surpassed by Android.
silverblue-main-surface
Do you know where I can find simple clear explanation on how to do a fresh install of this? I’m kind of a noob… I’ve installed standard Fedora on a Surface and it works well but I have a few bugs.
Go to https://universal-blue.org/installation/ and download the image. It’s a net-installer, so you can use a small USB stick too. Then just install it the way you would any other distro, e.g. Fedora Workstation. Done.
For me, that didn’t work at the time due to internet problems. If you encounter issues, do the following:
- Go to https://fedoraproject.org/silverblue/ and download the normal Silverblue version there and install it the same way you did the Workstation.
- Go to https://universal-blue.org/images/, open your terminal and rebase. Do that by pasting
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/silverblue-surface(I think that’s the correct image) and wait for it to download and apply. - Reboot
- Open the terminal again and paste
rpm-ostree rebase ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/silverblue-surface:latest. Wait and reboot again.
It isn’t as elegant as the first option, but if it doesn’t work, then consider the alternative steps.
You are a champion! Thank you for this info! I’ve been wanting to install something else on my Surface pro 7 since I started using W11 on it and immediately disliked it. Your comment just turned that into a much easier process for my weekend!
You’re welcome! Glad to help.
Just remember that Silverblue/ the immutable desktops are still relatively new. For more information, read my newest post about image based desktops. It’s hopefully written in a way everyone can understand it, no matter the prior experience :)
I appreciate it! I’ll take a look at that post as well.
Thank you so much!!
Just to comment here. I installed KDE Neon on my SP7+. It took a bit of messing with the UEFI secure boot, but after that trouble…it’s been mostly problem free for a couple of years, since I did it. I reckon it’s just easier to have it all baked in, in my case I kinda preferred KDE neon as my choice first.
- Because you need the
Taskbar can even be moved!
Too difficult for a multi-billion dollar company.
I bought my wife an HP Stream 13 some years back. It came with Windows 8 installed. Which worked just fine until updates bloated it so much it literally took up the entire (paltry) SSD. Windows 10 came out and it offered a free upgrade, which would have been smaller. Unfortunately, every time I tried to do that, it just complained it didn’t have the space to make the switch. I rolled it back to an older Windows 8 and disabled updates to try and keep using it. It complained constantly. I finally deleted the shit out of Windows and installed Lubuntu. It’s worked since then without issue.
Is KDE good for touch? I always though gnome would be the way to go for touch.
With Wayland it’s pretty good
Is there a tablet mode?
Yup. I think I needed to manually install the touch keyboard. But once installed, it works as expected. Touch the screen or remove the physical keyboard, and touch mode gets activated. Whenever touching a text field, the soft keyboard pops out. It’s massive, though (well, about the same size as the one for Windows).
Nice!
Which one did you choose? The ones I found feeled pretty clunky to use…
Seems the one I use is Maliit. It’s on the chunky side, but for the few times I type without the real keyboard, it does the job just fine I guess.
I hope you mean touchpad by touch, it has nothing to do with desktops, it relates xinput libinput synaptics sw common for X and wayland, window managers. If it works it does so before desktop layer is drawn, in some cases it can work on console as well with the right sw.
I have a Surface Laptop 5 as my work laptop. I hate it with passion, it’s one of the worst laptops I ever used.
Beyond the lack of IO (not even a fucking hdmi port) and the piss poor cooling, the USB C display isn’t connected to the integrated GPU, it uses a different display adapter that is so bad the mouse stutters on high res displays.
The built-in display has a 3:2 aspect ratio. I wanted to use a lower resolution so I could disable scaling (having different scaled monitors is annoying to use), none of the “supported” lower resolutions are 3:2 and they all have ugly black bars.
It has a touch screen, but the lid only opens about 120 degrees, making it completely useless.
And it uses “special” locked down hardware that is very hostile to other operating systems like Linux.
I don’t think surface would make for a good work laptop, but I have amazing experience so far with using it for the ocassional traveling, or just as a carry-on.
I just Parsec into my desktop at home, and can comfortably work without having to deal with performance, and Surface is amazing for that.
I also really like the pen support, so I can make notes or draw bascially anywhere.
And I also use it for DJing, where it works pretty well and is compact enough to not be a bother carrying it around.
ooh, I just snagged an old Pro X. Tempted to see how it runs with Linux on ARM before even messing with Win11 that’s installed.
When these launched they seemed interesting. I liked the concept, and they still do, but the biggest flaw was basing them on windows. I’ve seen windows on low-power devices before, and I’m not going through that again.
Once the drivers got into the mainline kernel, running Linux on surface has been a dream. Except for using the pen, IR-cameras, booting from USB…
I think there’s enough of us to have a SurfaceLinux community here :-)
I’m looking forward to doing this on my 4, Windows is chugging hard lately
Getting a surface pro 8 soon, looking forward to getting Linux on it!
Edit: installed Pop OS on my SP8, had to switch to Wayland and also needed to do some tweaks to get the keyboard to work to decrypt but it’s running well so far. I believe you can get the camera working with the proprietary camera stack but it’s not a priority for me right now
Beware of camera support. I’d bet it won’t work on yours.
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#feature-matrix
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Camera-Support
Yup, I was aware of that when I bought it. Annoying but I got a good deal on the 8, and want to upgrade the storage
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Gnome is going to be a better experience for most people.
Surface Laptop 3 running Kubuntu, such an improvement over what it was “designed” for.
I’m sure it is an improvement until… you’ve to use Wine to run something Windows only or a VM and end up on the exact same spot as initially but with extra steps and less performance. 😂 😂 😂
If every day is 1 min faster and 1 day a week is 5 min slower, that’s still a net gain. And that’s assuming that they need to run a windows-only app which a surprising amount of people don’t.
Everyone does run into a Windows-only app eventually. It’s sad, it hurts but it is what it is.
I didn’t, after two years of Linux only. When is my turn?
When you absolutely need to use Windows Defender… On Linux. Or when you need to use Cortana /s
You’re in a Linux community here man, you’re going to be outnumbered. I think people here genuinely don’t rely on Windows stuff as much as you think.
Last time I needed Windows was a few years ago when I wanted to do a firmware upgrade to my guitar processor. In the meantime I upgraded to one that itself runs Linux :)
I think lots of people exaggerate their need for certain apps. I understand if you need Photoshop for work because it may be the best tool for the job and an industry standard, but some people swear they “need” it when all they do is apply blur or red eye reduction to a picture once every 3 years. Nowadays you can probably do that in dozens of other ways.
I’ve been Linux only since late 2015 and in this time I “needed” a Windows VM ~ 2 times, but ofc personal experiences can vary greatly.
Sure, but like I said, better to suffer once a week or month than every day
Windows only app… Name one that is actually useful and I bet there is an alternative.
Unless you have to collaborate with others who use said Windows only apps and you can’t afford compatibility issues.
Like what, what format would this be? Regardless every company I have ever worked for issue me a laptop with windows anyway, so why would the OS I choose to use on hardware I own be a factor for work? Even then, if they didn’t I don’t know of any format that I would need that would be an issue.
Okay that’s fair, you don’t try to do any work in your Linux box and things work out. Great.
Not sure about your life, but I don’t count things I enjoy as “work” especially when its not work. I enjoy using Linux, I enjoy my home lab why should I need to justify it when it brings me joy? Linux works for me and my workflow, just because it doesn’t work for yours, don’t try to shit on other people.
Hasn’t happened to me yet. At least not enough that the trade off is anything other than totally worth it for Linux.
I don’t need it for windows applications, its basically something I can use for light photo and video editing and uploading to my server, all the heavy lifting is done on my PC which has windows because of adobe and better support for X264 and X265 when video editing.
Okay that’s fair. So this this the solution, fallback to a second machine running Windows? :P
Well in that case; My windows PC falls back to a server running Linux as that’s where all my files are, where my docker containers and VMs all run off… I can spin up a new PC in minutes (windows or Linux) as everything is done off the server, including staging my devices.
Considering most proprietary software companies are moving to web technologies, I call bs on your take, sounds like you’re still mentally stuck in 2015.
Wrong. Autodesk, Adobe, Office (the real one, not the limited web experience), NI Circuit Design, Solidworks, want more examples? Sounds like you’re mentally stuck on a lifestyle that doesn’t include working at all.
There are alternatives to these so it depends on the user. If your workflow requires these, then that’s in you.
:bootlicker:
Except battery lasts more on Linux. Not to mention suspend ACTUALLY works, and won’t wake at random times while in your backpack and kill your battery before you can actually use it when you need it. Which Windows does. And yeah, most people do NOT need anything specific from Microsoft to be productive.
…yes, but that’s a minority of the time. Cumalitively the slightly bad experience averages out with the 99% of the time better experience to be solidly superior
