I’m 43 and not really starting using Linux. I’ve dabbled with distros on and off over the years, but I never made the full switch because work always had some program or policy that just wouldn’t play nice with Linux. With all the crappy Microsoft decisions, bloatware, and ads I decided to try and use Linux exclusively on a personal device, and I’m absolutely loving it!

I’ve been working with Ubuntu as my main distro, and I’ve also been playing around with distros on a Raspberry Pi. To really challenge myself, I installed Linux on an old Surface Pro 3, and guess what? It just works! I was pleasantly surprised by how smooth the setup was and how well it performs.

I missing any key steps or tips to make the experience even better on a Surface? Any insights would be greatly appreciated. I was planning to buy a new tablet that runs Linux but this is working better than expected. I’m really enjoying the flexibility and control Linux offers and want to keep this momentum going.

I have read up and tried plenty, just looking for some perspectives out there specific to your tablet experiences.

EDIT Thank you for all the suggestions and insights! I’m going to continue using the Ubuntu build for the next few months. Still lots more to learn, but I’m excited to see how this goes. I have everything setup I need to function as a Linux only tablet experience. <sigh of relief> no more dependency on Windoze.

  • luciddaemon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    I’ve been messing with linux on my xps tablet. It mostly works well, I just hate the onscreen keyboards right now. Maliit lacks documentation and modifier buttons, squeekboard doesn’t scale to larger screens unless you manually build a dev branch, and wvkbd doesn’t hide/respond to input boxes.

    As for UI, I love plasma mobile personally. For other touch friendly UIs theres: gnome mobile, phosh, and hyprland + gesture plugin.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
    1·
    5 months ago

    Gnome works quite well on a larger touch-screen. Edit: ah, Ubuntu should have that by default.

    • Abdoanmes@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      5 months ago

      It worked immediately without much fuss. That’s why I was scratching my head. Was it always this easy!? I’m enjoying the experience so far

        • Abdoanmes@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          5 months ago

          What changed to make it happen? I am so done with other OS and Linux does everything I need. I really need to learn more about what’s happening and how to better use it so I can further customize and configure.

          • Pacmanlives@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 months ago

            Lot of just general progress, Linux was so fringe when I started in 2002 compared to now. Most enterprise customers are using Linux the past 15 years and hardware venders are now seeing more and more Linux adoption. We can kind of thank Chrome a bit for that but also more people generally having an interest and using it and developing drivers for their hardware

    • Michal@programming.dev
      0·
      5 months ago

      One annoying thing though is you can’t scroll terminal on a touchscreen, it’ll just start selecting text. Maybe there’s a non default terminal with touch support.

  • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.todayEnglish
    21·
    5 months ago

    You can try Fedora on a Surface with the Ublue variants such as Aurora and Bluefin, there are ISOs specifically for the Surface. Fedora atomic variants work very well. I found Fedora Kinoite works great with a touchscreen laptop.

    • Abdoanmes@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      5 months ago

      Thanks for these insights. From my laymen experience with Linux, I am a bit fuzzy on all the distros and variants. What’s the major difference between Ubuntu (or whatever distro) and what you described? From your perspective

      • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.todayEnglish
        2·
        5 months ago

        You’re welcome. I find Fedora to be much more up to date and refined than Ubuntu but also very stable still, at least the atomic variants as those are what I use. Also Ubuntu has all the controversy about trying to force their own packages at you as well as other things

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 months ago

    You might want to look at Surface Kernel for Linux. The link below shows their matrix of features on various Surface products and support within the Surface for Linux kernel. You would install Ubuntu and then install these updates to make Surface hardware function better. They have a lot of bespoke hardware in their laptops and tablets that aren’t supported by the Ubuntu Linux Kernel out of the gate. https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#feature-matrix

    • Abdoanmes@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      5 months ago

      Ok this is getting to the question I had. I found a few YouTube videos that went into detail about updating the kernel. I was wondering what’s the purpose when it was working as well as it has. I’m going to try to do this and follow the guides. Initially I had to overcome a BitLocker issue and a bug where I couldn’t overwrite the partition. Once I finally got Ubuntu running I was ready to dive into making it touch compatible, but it was already there. I suspect this makes it even better

      • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 months ago

        If it works well for you, don’t worry about it. The matrix will show what kind of support improvements you might expect over the standard kernel.

  • Michal@programming.dev
    0·
    4 months ago

    I use ThinkPad X1 yoga with Fedora 40 (Gnome)

    1. Enable fractional scaling and install Display scale switcher gnome extension - makes it easier to increase scaling when in tablet mode for easier touch input.
    2. logging in on a touchscreen can be a pain, in particular entering the password with on-screen keyboard. Special characters and numbers are not shown by default. On windows you have the option to use pin instead with a numeric keyboard. If you have a fingerprint reader compatible with linux that might work for login (mine doesn’t).
    3. Linux is very terminal-oriented, but Gnome terminal is unusable on a tochscreen. never mind typing commands - try scrolling long outputs - you can’t scroll with touchscreen, it will just start selecting text (i dont remember how this works in Windows)
    4. Google chrome supports gestures, so you can swipe left/right on the page to navigate back/forward. This does not with Firefox. Chrome also has a more touchscreen-friendly UI you can enable in chrome://flags/#top-chrome-touch-ui (Touch UI layout) although I haven’t noticed a significant difference.
    • while you’re messing with google flags you may want to change Preferred Ozone platform to Wayland - this fixed blurry scaling for me
    • Abdoanmes@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      4 months ago

      I was looking at Lenovo and this is good input. It sounds like everyone is not a fan of the tablet keyboard and the terminal is straight bollocks no matter the distro. I keep hearing Fedora and Wayland. I’m going to have to learn about them a bit more.

      • Michal@programming.dev
        0·
        4 months ago

        If you’re planning to get the 3rd gen x1 yoga, don’t. I had to disable thunderbolt ports in BIOS to get it to sleep correctly. Otherwise touch screen would not work after wake. And stylus doesn’t work correctly with Wayland. It stops working after few seconds of use.