I have an OG Surface Pro. The first one. It’s running Windows 10 at the moment and it’s doing fine except for the occasional wifi/Bluetooth bugs. I’m using it exclusively in tablet mode with the pen. No keyboard.
When Windows 10 is going to reach its end of life, I’d like to install Linux on it. But I need it to have a tablet style interface with gestures if possible.
Do I need any special distro or drivers on that hardware? And what would you recommend as the desktop environment?
You’ll definitely need this: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
Gnome is probably the best with touchscreens. I had issues with Ubuntu though so you probably want something more up to date, like fedora or arch.
Yeah, Fedora runs with wayland by default, which is really nice for touchscreens.
Don’t want to be the guy shitting on Ubuntu, but Fedora is the way to go in my experience and afaik.
I’ve got a Surface Pro 5 with the dogshit m3 processor and 4GB of Ram, anyone have any concept of how it’d run under linux? It basically folds at any real task in Windows
Incidentally, I had the exact same device. It actually worked pretty good to be honest!
Of course it will not magically be a top tier device. Programs will need some time to load the first time, and then be thrown out of RAM again.
BUT, compared to Windows, it will be a difference between night and day!
I strongly recommend you the silverblue-main-surface-image from universal-blue.org.
Why?
- Because you need the
linux-surface-kernel for it to work. 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.
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.
It would be smooth as butter with a lightweight desktop (probably not KDE). I suggest Linux Mint XFCE edition
“KDE is heavy” is so 2000s. It’s been quite a while since KDE is very tight on resources usage. Unless you’re running a raspberry or similar, there’s no point on constraining yourself with one of those desktops for an everyday use device.
Everything’s about perspective… maybe GNOME became SO bloated that KDE now seems very light. :P
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.
(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!
