Just putting out feelers, anyone here run Linux on a surface pro 4 or 5? What distro did you use, and how did it go?

Edit: I’ve pulled the trigger on a Surface Pro 4. I’ll make a new post in a week with my early impressions, which distro I’ve gone with, etc etc etc.

  • Raimu@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 years ago

    SP4 owner here, you should avoid the pro 4, one of its revision (with the samsung display) is very prone to touch screen defects, see this issue.

    I’m avoiding surface in general now, after using linux-surface for a year, I finally gave up and got myself a thinkpad x1 tablet. Even without the touchscreen issues, my experience with my SP4 was never good, the cameras needs libcamera and are awful, audio input randomly stopped working after sleep,I had blackscreen issues after login, and random freeze.

    • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      🤣🤣🤣…😅😅😅😅…😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

      Too late now, my SP4 arrives today. If the Linux experience is really really bad I’ll just reinstall a stripped down Windows 10.

  • Shatur@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 years ago

    If I wasn’t interested in drawing and wanted a GNU/Linux tablet, I would buy Pinetab 2.

    • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Ah, but I got a surface pro 4 i5, 8gb, for £90. With keycase and charger. I was looking at a pinetab 2, but it would have run me a bit more than that…

  • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
    1·
    2 years ago

    A thread made just for me.

    I have a i5 256gb Surface Pro 5 running Pop_OS. Prior to that, I ran Ubuntu and prior to that I ran Fedora for a year or so.

    Battery life is much worse than with Windows thanks to Windows keeping secrets about suspended sleep or something. I’m not a wizard I just follow guides and fart so that’s the most technical explanation you’ll get on that.

    Webcam doesn’t work on any of the distros, you’ll want to install the Linux Surface kernel after installation to enable touchscreen and pen support. Not an issue for me but could be if you use it a lot.

    After all that though, Linux of most flavours works very well. I fully removed Windows as I was getting issues with GRUB bootloader forgetting that Windows was installed. Fedora never had that issue but Ubuntu and it’s flavours were mean n rude on me.

    Pen support is really good but Linux treats it as a mouse. That said, booting up Krita and drawing is a pretty good experience. Not as flawless as on Windows but very similar.

    Fedora installation worked pretty flawlessly with a dualboot into Windows so I’d recommend that if you still want to keep Windows.