Has anyone installed and used Linux on Microsoft Surface Tab? Which Surface model is most suited and which Linux diastro performs the best?
im running debian sid on a surface go (1), stock kernel. everything except the cameras work perfectly (use the surface-linux kernel if you want the cameras to work). love this little device, my daily driver.
saw this recently: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface but I don’t own one. I was just curious about it and found that project.
I’m currently running Fedora 38 on a Surface Pro 6!
I’ve installed Fedora on a Surface Pro 4 and a Surface Pro 7 as well.
Super duper simple. Runs well and snappy. I prefer it to Windows.
The only downside is the battery life on standby is very bad (like all Linux distros).
Okay. And everything is working?
Is the stylus well integrated?
Not as good as Windows no. It acts like a mouse input but pressure sensitivity works well (as well as the eraser) in Krita.
I have ubuntu on a surface go 1 and it’s running better than stock windows (except for IR camera). On the SP7 it was working decently on the latest ubuntu release - even the WiFi OOTB. However, touch screen wasn’t working (ootb - custom kernel can enable it) and that was a deal breaker for me. I still need windows to boot from USB (!) as the device was designed this way, so don’t count on being totally defenenestraded. You will need windows for firmware updates too.
Check out the Linux surface repo mentioned earlier, it’s full of good resources for Linux on surface device’s.
Thanks for the detailed reply.