What are /r/SurfaceLinux's favorite Products & Services?

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I run 16.04 on my SP3. I'm not familiar with Neoreep's stuff. Video seems fine, some scripts for autorotate (needed to change "Pen" to "Pen stylus" in some scripts though), I did have issues with the wifi not always starting up, I ended up just making a little script to unload/load the module at boot/wake and its been fine. I'm using tigerite's kernel.

I'd say it works about as well as Linux is going too without better touch applications, but the OS support for everything needed is there with a few tweaks.

Have you tried the kernel from my PPA? On SP4 that should definitely be okay graphics-wise, as it's using the backport module from Ubuntu, which is based on a fairly recent drm-tree from Intel. That's only active for Cherryview and above (Skylake, etc). I'll be pushing a 4.4.4-based one in the next few days, under a testing branch.

I've also copied the kernel packages so they are available for Wily now.

Tldr the cameras don't take an image like many sensors, they produce data which must be processed by Intel's image processing unit to form an image. The connection between sensors and IPU ought to be described in ACPI tables, which are a description by the manufacturer of the device and it's configuration that is loaded into the BIOS. However, those tables are often sorely lacking in details, because the OEM knows how it works and so simply hardcodes everything they need in drivers instead. Until recently, nobody had figured out how to make those connections.

In my experience VMs are slower than the real thing. You might be able to get more performance by fiddling with the settings, maybe turn on some virtualisation settings in the bios (I don't know if that's even possible on the SP 2017).

Another way to test Ubuntu is by booting it of an USB. The Ubuntu (and Xubuntu, and a lot of other linux distros as well) installation disks/usb allow you to try it before actually installing it. It'll just run off the usb disk with a standard suite of software. Though startup/load times will be worse, because everything is loaded off the usb, once loaded performance should be better than the VM.

You could use something like lilli to create a linux live/installation disk in windows.

I've used the Galaxy Note 10.1 and later the Surface 3 (Win10/OneNote) for note taking. Overall I would go with an android device and Lecture Notes again.

Hi! I think if you want to move to Linux move completely, burn the bridges, otherwise you might find yourself choosing the easy way and go back to Windows more often every day. By using it as your only OS you force yourself to learn new things and skills and you'll be much better at problem solving in very short time (because you are forced to). alternativeto.net is a great site for alternatives. I hate GIMP too, but it has a terrific feature set, handling and looks are disasterous though. Inkscape is a very good alternative to Illustrator, I use that almost every day, so there are positive examples as well. A Surface device might not be the best choice for Linux since most models have some minor or major issues under Linux. Check the support matrix "Suspends, but only wakes up from external keyboard" would be a no go for me if we are talking about the AMD model. I have a Go 2 which works perfectly excluding cameras, but it's something I can live with, and I was aware of this shortcoming. That's all, keep up!

I would suggest giving Manjaro 17.01 Gnome a try (it's now out of beta and at release candidate stage, pretty stable IMO from two weeks of use.) It's about the only distro currently shipping with the latest stable kernel as the default. On my Surface Pro 3, everything is supported out of the box with the exception of multitouch on the touchpad (which I enabled by patching the kernel.) Manjaro also supports switching to the mainline 4.10 kernel, which is supposed to have extended Surface support. Haven't tried it though. ISOs for Manjaro Gnome can be found here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjarotest/files/gnome/17.0-beta2/

(The ISOs are for beta 2, but after installing you can update the system directly to rc1 from pacman. That's also the beauty of Manjaro, it uses rolling releases, so you're constantly up-to-date and don't have to bother installing new versions all the time.)

I used to dual-boot on my Surface 3 Pro. This worked perfectly. I briefly dual-booted with my Surface Pro 2017 and it also worked. I stopped dual-booting when I discovered that I would rarely boot into Windows.

Given the size of a Windows install and its associated software (Office, Visual Studio, &c.,) I don't think it's convenient to dual-boot with less than 256 GB.

Originally, I had planned to use VirtualBox's "raw host hard disk" support (https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk) so that I could access my Linux files and software in a VM on Windows and access my Windows files and software in a VM on Linux.

I've done this successfully in past on desktop machines without Bitlocker enabled. I was able to get both sides of this working on my Surface Pro 3.

Because it's a portable device, I think it's important to enable Bitlocker. Even if I don't store any critical files on Windows, I don't want to accidentally lose the device in an airport and suffer sleepless nights trying to assess my exposure.

Unfortunately, if Bitlocker is enabled in Windows, then booting from within a VM presents different TPM PCRs. As a result, Bitlocker would constantly require the recovery key. I attempted to use dislocker and ntfs-3g to first unlock the drive, make it available on a loopback device, then boot from that, but I could not figure out how to fix or simulate the boot manager to boot from the unencrypted device. I'd love to get this working.

You have a dependency either broken or not available on the repos right now. Try tracking the faulty one (trying to install libllvm3.8v4 here), and see if it says something like "has no installation candidate". If this is the case, either wait till it's reintegrated (likely there was a bug and they quickly removed it) or download it directly from the ubuntu packages website (i.e. : https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/amd64/libllvm3.8v4/1:3.8-2ubuntu3~trusty4 )

If this is like debian, libc6 might be broken as it was a few days ago.

Another thing is if your packages are just corrupted, try running sudo apt install -f

It will try to fix it, and tell you what's broken atm if there was something.

I have Ubuntu 14.04 installed installed on a i7 512gb Surface Book. I used the tigerite ppa to get most things working (no touch screen; closing screen and reopening has weird glitchy things sometimes). I was unable to get 15.10 to work. I read somewhere else that you could install 14.04 and upgrade, but it would just get stuck on a black screen while upgrading. When I was messing around with the 16.04 beta 2, I was able to get it to install but like you said above no keyboard or mouse on the touch pad. I imagine you just need to rebuild the kernel with the correct patches, but it seems everything is pretty scattered on what we should use and what we should not, so I seem wary to do that myself.

You might also be able to try this in the mean time for 16.04 (I haven't tried doing this yet)

He's talking about the SP3 there bear in mind, not the Book. You could try my kernel which is built on Ubuntu's own servers (launchpad) and source is readily available, if installing a random binary is of concern. I haven't yet published it for Xenial but will be doing so this coming week. Bear in mind it still isn't perfect because there's no touchscreen driver for the SP4 or Book in Linux yet. But it's usable, certainly.

It honestly shouldn't matter which way you do it, as long as you update & upgrade after installing the linux-surface package. I can't say I've tried on Wily (15.10) myself, but I know the kernel definitely works ok with the SP4 as I've had positive reports on that. Does dmesg (/var/log/kern.log) show anything, or /var/log/Xorg.0.log ? Have you tried with linux-surface-bfs ? One more thing I can think of is did you add Oibaf's PPA to update the graphics driver plus Mesa/LLVM? That wouldn't hurt at least, certainly..

Hey, which release is this from? Have you tried the latest Alpha (uploaded this morning)? It's using an experimental kernel and a new graphics stack, both of which are plugged-in to the PPA repository on the system (so will get automatic updates if/when you install it).

No problem! I've now created a PPA for the kernel, which has the latest firmware with it, at ppa:tigerite/kernel. That's an even more up-to-date kernel than that on the Alpha ISO.

On my desktop now, here's the virtualbox manual for webcams

Did you make sure to select the device to pass-through from the 'devices' menu? Maybe something broke since I've last used it and you can file a bug report with virtualbox.

If you're using Debian, I downloaded right from https://www.deepin.org/en/download/

I don't think I even turned off secure boot initially.

I just did advance start up for windows and boot from usb

I used Rufus for bootable drive.

I used to use Ubuntu but fancied a challenge and wanted more customisability!

You were right, I was missing the synaptics driver which was mentioned on the Arch Wiki, the most invaluable source of information there is :D

Thanks for your help!

Another approach for sake of documenting 2018 tips.

I use fedora on a SP3 with no windows. Wifi was spotty and despite all fixes still varied from kernel to kernel. I bought a wifi dongle for 8 bucks. the Edimax nano and since wifi is solid and was plug-and-play. current state post on this subreddit fixes any hibernation workaround stuff.

Everything works as it should with no windows installed. Auto rotate, touch, keyboard snap on and off, and dock all working as expected. Only issue is a small nano dongle in the usb slot. (I use the SP4 type cover and a Bluetooth mouse anyways)

Link to amazon for dongle. currently 7.89 USD

I'd suggest taking a shot at putting a small root (/) partition and your swap on your ssd and then your /home onto the as card if you need more space. Root is where your OS/program flies live and run from (15 GB should be pretty generous, depending on your needs), swap is kind of like overflow memory and should be a tiny bit bigger than your RAM if you want any home at suspend or hibernate working --- both of these things really benefit from an SSD and would really hate being on a SD card. Then all your documents, photos, etc, all the stuff that really takes up big space will be under your home dir, on a partition on the SD cards, where you have way more room to spare.

I've been using Linux as my primary OS with this setup on a base SP6 (128 GB) with a 400 GB SD card for about 6 months and have no complaints with/noticing bad performance with having things on the SD card. FYI my ad card is this one, which I don't think is meant to be particularly ”nice" or "fast”

If your trying this and confused feel free to PM me or w/e!

Edit: I should add that I made a bootable linux usb, booted onto that, and installed onto the ssd/SD card from there (you'd use the option to the effect of "let me choose my own partition scheme" to do it"). My UEFI / boot partition is also on the ssd. For the BIOS options I think I turned secure boot off, and I believe I eventually turned off encryption in Windows, but that was after I installed Linux --- as others have hinted at, this might've been a bad idea and you should keep your bitlocker key handy.

Honestly, been using a cheap bluetooth keyboard with touchpad and I am extremely satisfied with it. Something like this one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foldable-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Android-Smartphone/dp/B00VRCKF5K/ref=sr_1_8?crid=PTPP6J37ZEVM&keywords=touchpad+keyboard&qid=1654514102&sprefix=touchpad+keyboar%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-8

can't seem to find the exact model I got, the only difference is that it was rockign bluetooth 5. The battery is magnificent, and it's super handy to be able to move it around and keep typing on my surface pro, especially cause I use it to annotate PDF as well and with the included keyboard it's a real pain to have it to disconnect and reconnect every time.

I used this guide here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-x86/D85Jq02cLrE

But I used the KitKat image from this XDA Thread here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/windows-8-rt/microsoft-surface/running-android-x86-surface-pro-t2989461

Most the steps went okay, it's just the GRUB I'm having issues with. The way the tutorial installs grub makes the Surface see it as a USB Drive (which later changed to UEFI OS), so it doesn't autoload on boot. You have to hold volume down when you press the power button, or hold the Shift key when you press restart from inside Windows. I'm totally fine with that since I lend my Surface to a person or 2 and even simple shit confuses them, so having it "hidden" works well for me. I just can't for the life of me figure out how to get it working. I'll try your suggestion out right now and see if it works.

I'm using a docking station as I want to be able to shut the lid and just use the external monitor with ext mice and keyboard. So, the device is hooked to a Plugable 3.0 USB docking station, which is hooked to the peripherals.

Let me know if this helps: https://hastebin.com/apixukakij.apache

There's the android x86_64 project which certainly could run on the surface. Would you want to run android on it? No, since android uses the linux kernel I know for a fact that the camera wouldn't work (it uses proprietary drivers that are only for windows) and the battery life would probably suck too.

If the OP reads this, don't buy it for the intend of running android on it.

I'm not sure with distribution are you using. In Arch linux, that what I'm using, the best way to apply this path is to download the PKGBUILD from arch website and apply the patch.

In this case, go to mutter package web page : https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/mutter/

download the source, and modify the PKGBUILD to apply the patch. In my case, I write this line

patch --forward --strip=1 --input="0001-Translate-coordiantes-of-absolut-motion-events.patch"

In the prepare() subroutine

Take care where do you leave the patch!

​

Anyways, the issue is reported and the commit is done and I suppose that soon, it will merge in the 3.36.2 version of mutter.

Different SP3s have different keyboard SKUs. 16.04 works for some SKUs out of the box. Others (like mine) need linux-surface.

If you're sure you've installed linux-surface from the right PPA (tigrete's here), then you're probably booting into the wrong kernel.

In grub, after you start your surface, go to "advanced options" and click the kernel that looks something like "4.6 - surface"

That should do it

Are you running onboard with Fedora 25? If so what version? Self compiled or rpm?

Regarding hibernation: Have you tried this? Works quite alright for me.

I'm using tigerite's ppa.

https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel

I just bought a usb ethernet port and called it good. I'm actually pretty happy :)

Check out my setup: http://imgur.com/4ACZI5S

:|

Then I probably misunderstood something, forgive me.

>Yes. That way, you let the Ubuntu installer partition the disk with the disk format it autodetects, which hopefully will be right

Aight, I get that (I think).

>Then, you can easily resize the Ubuntu partition (you will need to do that from the Ubuntu USB again)

Can't I boot into Ubuntu (now on the SSD) and install an application that'll do the formatting for me?

The way I understood your comment was that I use the USB to boot into the USBs Ubuntu, then under 'install' I choose the SSD (which I have plugged into the splitter as well) then, after installing, I've got my portable for of Ubuntu. Can't I then just boot into The SSD Ubuntu and use a partitioning Utility like EaseUS Partitioning Utility to partition it? Why would I need the LiveUSB again?

My suface boots Manjaro in 30 seconds only splashing the red warning for a moment, but I also removed all traces of Windows before installing Linux

I think your dual boot is timing out, and it should be possible to find the GRUB configurator in the settings on your distro and remove the Windows entry

Or, If you dare just boot a gparted stick and remove all partitions before starting over :)

Your installer can remove old partitions as well, but the interface is probably confusing even if it's based on Gparted, it might be easier to let the installer start on a clean disk

https://gparted.org

I couldn't get Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 to work (as of a few weeks ago), but I did have some success with 16.04 using Tigerite's kernel (typecover w/ touchpad).

No touchscreen or suspend unfortunately, but tbf I haven't really put effort into addressing that.

I'm currently using stock Ubuntu with the tigerite kernel. Does the kernel you're using offer other functionality besides the one by /u/tigerite?

Update; so I finally figured out how to apply the wifi patch listed below and can compile and install fine but now I am also trying to apply Perter Hunts patches/kernel as well found here; https://launchpad.net/~tigerite.

What I have done; I have applied the "linux-surface_4.4-6.3+1.debian.tar.xz" as a patch against kernel linux-4.6.3. Is the the correct way to do this?

I have also commented out the "surface-lid.patch" in an effort to hopefully prevent my keyboard from being disconnected.

I get some errors that I think are due to some of the patches having already been implemented? I apply with option -t, Is that correct?

Problem is, I can't compile once I apply tigerite kernel as a patch... Anyone have any solutions for me? I'm on day 3 now of trying to get this to work :)

https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel

Sorry for the late reply. The fix is in the link above. Right now I have installed Ubuntu and this patch, and everything seems to work, but I will not hesitate to move back to Fedora if this patch can be easily applied in Fedora.

If it's in the same boat as the SP4 (which it is afaik) touch doesn't work, keyboard/trackpad do (with tigerite's kernel), and it's relatively easy to install (so long as you're familiar with installing linux). I have a pretty stable experience right now.

EDIT: https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel has a pretty comprehensive list.

Try this method instead, which is from the actual PPA page at https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tigerite/kernel
sudo apt-get install linux-surface

If apt-get is showing the packages as being held, the PPA page says to run "apt-dist upgrade" instead of "apt-get install linux-surface"

I hope this helps and get you up and running! Just a heads up, touchscreen support isn't available yet. Hopefully we'll see something soon.

I just installed mine a few hours ago, installed /u/tigerite's amazing package (https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel), and it's working pretty well.

What doesn't work (yet) is the touchscreen. Which I can live with, hardly worked under windows.

Hi mRIGHTstuff,

Please when you mentioned Tigerite's alpha custom kernel is stable for you, are you referring to the Linux-testing version?

Thanks

I compiled a patched kernel which is now a PPA, and at version surface11 (mostly due to build errors rather than new patches!). That's a highly customised kernel for speed/responsiveness, with liquorix, BFS, BFQ and so forth but the Surface-specific changes are towards the end of the patch series in the debian tar.

Actually there's a much easier way now, and that's to add my PPA repository to Ubuntu. At the moment, only Trusty/Linux Mint are enabled due to space constraints, but it should install on Wily/Ubuntu Gnome if the appropriate packages are downloaded and installed manually with dpkg.

Of course, more than happy to! I've actually just finished setting up a PPA for the kernel - the patches are in debian/patches within the debian tar. I should really upload them to GitHub too at some point..

By the way, did Daniel (Martin) ever post the "updated patches on the list until Monday (sic)"? I never saw any, although I didn't look this week..

If you're interested in upgrading, I now have two PPAs for you! Firstly for the kernel, that's at ppa:tigerite/kernel and secondly for the graphics stack, which can be found at ppa:tigerite/mint-xorg-update. The instructions for the latter can be found if you follow the link. I'm also currently uploading the latest linux-firmware (1.156) to the kernel PPA, so that will be available shortly.

Nope, didn't touch grub so that one's a mystery. I don't actually use Chrome but Chromium beta from this PPA (as it has hardware acceleration enabled). You have to then apt-mark hold the package though, as his latest successful build has an earlier version than Ubuntu's stock (only really slightly). That is assuming his latest broken build hasn't overwritten that one.. failing that you could try to disable acceleration in Chrome? It's a bit of an odd one though.

OP here - I've tried that already.

As I told DMKitsh, I created my Windows ISO drive via my Mac using the terminal. I wonder if that is what is creating problems.

OP here - I created my Windows boot drive via my Mac using the terminal. I was not aware I could use Bootcamp, but I can try re-creating it with that.

This is a dump of what I've done - others may find it useful! Still not perfect, but am trying..

Surface Pro 3 (2160 x 1440) with a 12" diagonal = 216 ppi

Leave Global Scale at 100%

----

Settings/Fonts/ ForceFont DPI to 216

---

created ~/.XResources;

Xft.autohint: false Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault Xft.hintstyle: hintslight Xft.hinting: true Xft.antialias: true Xft.rgba: rgb Xft.dpi: 216

---

created ~/.bash_profile

# export GDK_DPI_SCALE=2.2 export PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING=1

----

created /etc/sddm.conf.d/hidpi.conf

[Wayland] EnableHiDPI=true

[X11] EnableHiDPI=true

----

update chrome / chromium / brave (resize fonts in settings, and use change below for UI elements)

edit launcher in (e.g.) /usr/share/applications/brave-browser.desktop

Exec=/usr/bin/brave-browser-stable --high-dpi-support=1 --force-device-scale-factor=1.8 %U

----

update firefox display scaling for UI elements as per here.

https://winaero.com/enable-hidpi-scaling-firefox/

(I used 1.1)

​

.. and that's it so far - a work in progress

I don't know about the SB2, but at least the SB1 is listed in the Hardware Compatibility List

I'm running Ubuntu with the surface linux lts kernel. You?

Edit: One good move would probably be to map "sudo surface performance set VALUE" to 4 hotkeys and rotate depending on need, since this is what Windows does automatically for you, unless you make changes. But if I unplug I mostly run in mode 2 (Battery saver) . This relates to Intel P States https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.12/admin-guide/pm/intel_pstate.html

The problem comes when you no longer have a windows install to leverage its advanced boot option.

Ventoy however boots every single time on it’s own and is pretty cool: https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

You need a usb-c to ysb adapter. Download ubuntu iso (https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/thank-you?version=18.04.2&architecture=amd64) and burn it to a usb drive using etcher.

​

- disable secure boot on your bios

​

shut down your surface go. while keeping pressed volume up, press once power button, when the windows logo appears you can release the volume button, and you will enter the bios

​

security -> secure boot -> disable

​

boot configuration -> set usb storage to the top

​

enable boot from usb devices

​

- boot with the live usb

​

from windows: settings -> Update & Security -> Recovery -> advanced -> Restart now -> Use a device -> Linpus

​

Touch scrolling works, but needs to be enabled application wise, e.g. Opera Browser has support for touch scrolling and also supports HiDPI scaling. As for your mouse it might help to upgrade to bluez 5. There's a PPA for vivid if you want to try, but do so at your own risk.

Not sure if this belongs here and fits your problem, but after I have installed Linux Mint on my convertible I also experienced a vast battery drain and heat.

For me, this worked: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/06/linux-kernel-power-issue-fix.html

Additionally, I tweaked the system a bit with powertop (by setting everything to good)

your might wanna try /r/UbuntuProblems - or Etcher dut io

> failing that - there are other guides such as Uni-USB-installer.

Nope, I've never seen that error before.. it almost looks like something has corrupted itself, really bizarre. I have to say though it's not my code :) I got it mostly from https://github.com/maoserr/redshiftgui with just some minor changes and GTK3 instead of GTK2 (which looks awful).

I may have a solution for the hibernation problems, via TuxOnIce. I've also found a BFS patch that works with 4.4, basically the patches from pf-kernel, albeit I could not get the "commits" (for UKSM and Tux) in the GitHub to patch cleanly so instead had to download the last official versions. It's untested so far though, and I need to integrate my modified RedshiftGUI, which is in my opinion much better than redshift-gtk and can be disabled by default (modifications are to make save/reload work, to continually check the screen brightness level, to work with GTK3 as it wouldn't compile and the dialog looked awful otherwise, and not to statically link libraries).

Try with rEFind http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

Maybe this will help with your boot setup. I could not get Ubuntu to boot , only from windows then selecting ubuntu :o

Microsoft "loves FLOSS" my ass. What a PR campaign.

That is very weird. You think that rEFInd is not initialising the USB driver? You can press Esc to refresh the list. Sometimes this is necessary if the drives weren't initialised at the time of rEFInd's search. Additional drivers are here, but FAT should be included.

I'm afraid this is all I've got...

Alright, so I have two more ideas you can try:

1. Use a different download manager to download the file. It has happened to me in the past, that ISOs downloaded in Edge or FF wouldn't work, but downloaded with eg. free download manager did. Have you tried a different distro based on Ubuntu, eg. *buntu, neon, etc.?

2. This is a bit more of an extreme measure, but you can try installing rEFInd boot manager and try to force the system to boot from USB. After system start it scans all attached drives for bootable files and presents them, for you to choose from.

> Does anyone know how to change the boot order to other than the default in uefi?

You can use rEFInd which gives you a nice bootloader menu and things. Or if you'd rather just stick with using GRUB to select your OS, you can use EasyUEFI from Windows (or efibootmgr from the terminal in Linux) to alter your boot order.

You need to make sure whatever you do you don't mess up your ability to boot to USB through EFI. The only way to reinstall windows is to boot from a recovery USB drive, which can be difficult to do without access to the Windows boot loader (as far as I know GRUB doesn't support this).

My best advice for putting Linux on is to use a boot loader such as rEFInd and not install GRUB, which sometimes decides to mess up the original Windows boot loader, which will can cause you to get stuck in Linux only.

Other general advice: have a really good idea what you are doing before you commit to anything.

Any idea what kernel version that is?

From the Slackware 14.2 changelog

> Runs the 4.4.14 version of the Linux kernel from ftp.kernel.org.

Is 4.4.14 good enough?

Download a Windows 10 ISO from the recovery website, then install WoeUSB using the links in this comment:

https://github.com/slacka/WoeUSB/issues/311#issuecomment-624426060

(Use the direct link for the second link in the comment.) This will allow you to create an install disk and you can then boot into it and install Windows.

Mm... the only thing I did different was to first install Fedora. But I deleted that afterwards..

Perhaps consider doing this:

1. Advance startup
2. Troubleshoot
3. Startup settings
4. Disable secureboot
5. Back to advance startup menu
6. Use a device
7. Boot from usb

If that doesn't work, consider installing a bare Debian stable.

Install Deepin v15

Upgrade from Deepin v15. Full instructions here:

https://www.deepin.org/en/2020/08/06/deepin-system-updates-2020-08-06/

​

Hope that works!

I absolutely love Deepin . It’s based on Debian and has everything you need to use a computer right in the box. It even has its own Appstore with programs like Spotify, Steam, and Discord. u/jakeday’s kernel installs almost effortlessly to enable most of the Surface’s features (on my Pro 4).

I think it should work, they have a distribution of Plasma Mobile for ubuntu (20.04) via kde neon. Just make sure to checkout the feature matrix to ensure touch works properly on your device. Otherwise, just install ubuntu 20.04 with kde neon with all the appropriate linux-surface packages and after you get touch working, install Plasma Mobile Neon. Let us know how it goes.

https://www.plasma-mobile.org/get/

I use a little plugin from the Snap store called P3X-Onenote. It is literally a minimal web viewer that loads Onenote web but it does what I need it to do!

I happily run Linux Mint xfce on my SP6, but I like xfce more than you, perhaps. I set the dpi to 200, set global font to 11pt.

In your window title bar, I think you'll fix your display issues by setting its font to 11pt.

I like bold font everywhere and one xfce rub is the Whiskers menu font won't bold for me. So I took an Arial Bold ttf font, renamed it BoldSystem, and that gives me bold across the board.

If you can live with numix, then this theme is built for hidpi: https://winaero.com/blog/download-numix-hidpi-xfwm-theme/

That gives a better windows title bar, though to make it finger-friendly, you'd really have to bump up the window title bar font.

As for the missing features with your touchpad, that's beyond me, but I do momentarily disable touchpad when typing, and that works well. When browsing, I finger-scroll.

Just found this. Have not tried yet, thought it would be of interest to you : https://www.kali.org/news/kali-linux-in-the-windows-app-store/

For a bit more of an exotic OS, try Android-x86. It runs amazingly well on my surface pro 3 and everything works fine out of the box and it can even see the pen pressure (the only app I've found that for sure supports it is the handwriting mode in GBoard).

1. Why not using the full ISO that you can download here?

2. I installed Ubuntu (and Ubuntu based) and fedora. Touchscreen always worked as the scrolling using fingers. Someone says that chrome has better responsiveness then firefox. I think it's device related.

3. IMHO it's kinda controversial...on the same distro installation boot defaults to grub other times I found myself with an installation the sometimes shows grub and when it doesn't it boots directly into Windows as if no grub were installed. Linux sys admin here that cannot figure this one out XD

4. Well...it's really a pretty device. Sure the odd screen resolution and some apps that cannot be completely resized to fit the display under some resolutions (settings in gnome for example) deeply suck. Overall I'm still satisfied.

I'm currently using the preview release: https://manjaro.org/manjaro-preview-releases/

But I think, in terms of SP3 support/stability, it's about the same as the standard release that you linked, and they both will use a 4.9.x kernel revision by default.

That is great news - thank you for sharing!

I plan on migrating to a dual boot this evening (win10/manjaro) then moving on to completely take out the win10 partition and just use WINE/Windows VM's when I need anything on a Windows machine done.

Silly question I am sure, but I am still an amateur, but the GNOME download here:

https://manjaro.org/get-manjaro/

I assume that is on Kernel 4.9.x? Reliable WiFi is important for my job as a field engineer.

Hi, thanks for the response.

Is this what you mean by gparted?

I'm just trying to get a regular Ubuntu installation alongside windows, I don't care if it's encrypted or not. I am also suspecting a Bitlocker issue, do you think this would work if I removed Bitlocker encryption?

That's annoying. You could try to create and boot a GParted Live USB stick and then move it from there.
Just a warning, I'm rather sure that Windows will still boot afterwards, but I can't 100% guarantee it. Also, you should reboot into Windows twice afterwards, so that it can fix potential file system inconsistencies.

You could also go on without resizing your EFI partition, it's normally large enough for both Windows and GRUB, but it can happen that it runs out of space during either a Windows or Linux upgrade, especially if you use a distribution that saves the whole kernel to the EFI partition.

Sounds like you don't have your X config right, or are missing the evdev drivers. Can you upload your /var/log/Xorg.0.log to something like gist.github.com? As well, what does the output of xinput list give you?

People also say "Write" by Stylus Labs is a decent app, especially for note taking. (Just came across it and thought I'd share it.)

I have looked at your issues and here is what I have to say.

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High DPI and Right Click can be easily fixed using GNOME tweak tool, install it by running sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

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You can find ways to help battery life here.

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To use Plasma use Kubuntu.

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Enable high DPI in Firefox by going to about:config and finding layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and you can change that and make it higher.

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I'm using Write Sylus. It's not as advanced as onenote, but it's great for simple note taking, making figures and moving written text around. I can write with the pen and scroll with fingers.

http://www.styluslabs.com/download/

I use onenote religiously on Windows and was wondering the same thing. I have struggled and struggled to find a "notebook" style app with pen functionality.

Best I found was this but it's only for writing on single documents which get saved as a .html, which requires you to sort of set up a folder hierarchy to emulate notebooks and sections etc. Not the worst.

But ultimately I don't think there is any good alternative, I've just settled on dual booting and basically keeping windows around only for this reason. (I also have a SB2)

Yeah, that is the same symptom I had with the pen before I changed the wacom files.

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I like Elementary and it's what I was using before I went to Manjaro. The upgrade from Loki to Juno made decide to switch to a stable rolling release.

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There isn't a lot of applications for the stylus in linux apart from drawing programs. Xournal gives some ability to markup pdfs, but it isn't as good as what is available on linux. Write is a pretty good note taking app http://www.styluslabs.com/

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Congrats on your purchase and happy computing!

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This is the drive i ended up getting for that surface

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D7PDLXC/

It's small enough and it's fairly fast. From what I remember, it's faster than the internal eMMC. If you need more USB Ports, the micro USB port should support OTG.

I have a a Pro 3. Best advice I saw and took was to buy a low profile USB dongle and sacrifice your only USB slot. Haven't looked back.

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Here is the one I bought. A $20 solution to get your ~$100 solution working isn't too bad, I think.

Honestly, I don't have this problem. I'm also always connected to a VPN provided by ProtonVPN through their command-line tool and I haven't encounter any issue yet.

I'm sorry, but I cannot help you with that!

Awesome thank you.

The screen matters for me a lot since I will be programming a lot on it and if I get the surface pro I will be using it with this: https://www.amazon.com/ThinkPad-Compact-Bluetooth-Keyboard-TrackPoint/dp/B00C32FWJC/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ThinkPad+Compact+keyboard&qid=1554647646&s=electronics&sr=1-1

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The sleep part is real bummer though and also I am not really interested in the touch screen though, just the portability.

I have this USB-C => HDMI adapter that I use with another laptop. Just yesterday I plugged it into the SB2 in Linux and it worked immediately.

For connectivity, I've always just installed over WiFi. But I've got a Dell-branded USBC => Ethernet adapter somewhere at home I can try to find and see if it works.

> How unstable is the wifi? I'll mostly be traveling with it where I'll need it wifi.

You're going to need a dongle. Without it your system will completely lock up. Yep.

> Do you mean that you just use a wifi adapter? Or what kind of dongle?

I don't use this particular one but it looks like this

> I'm still very new to Linux but those are all desktop environments right?

Yup. So many to try, but each have their pros/cons, so research.

> I was looking at Budgie recently and really like it.

I haven't tried that one.

> I saw it mentioned with Gnome, are they related and can I get Budgie on Manjaro?

At the very bottom of the Budgie website it mentioned Arch, and Manjaro is based on Arch. There also appears to be quite a few videos on YouTube about Budgie and Manjaro.

Yeah. ):

I got one of these https://www.amazon.ca/ARCTIC-USB-Powered-Portable-Cooling-Solution/dp/B003XN24GY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463147136&sr=8-1&keywords=arctic+usb+fan to help with the heating. I have one for my docking station and one I keep in my backpack for when I'm on the go.

Fucking bullshit though, I shouldn't need to use those just to have a usable device. But I push my device through photoshop and heavy image editing, so it's bound to get a little toasty.

No tips really. I had issues with the SD card not being detected on kernel 4.0 which required me to pull and reinsert the card every few boots. That problem was fixed with 4.1+.

Speed running from the SD card is great. I did make sure to buy the fastest card I could find though (have a Sandisk Extreme Pro). Doesn't affect Windows at all, since the tablet will automatically boot to Windows. To get into Fedora I need to power on the tablet while holding the Power and Volume Down buttons. Keeps the two systems isolated from each other.