I’m looking for a cheap and portable tablet that I can use for writing. Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, at least around the gen 4 models, are rather cheap to buy used, and they seem decently well made. Naturally, were I to buy one, I would have to install Linux onto it.
I’ve been peripherally aware of the Linux Surface project for some time now. I looked at it recently, after having not for some time, and it seems that they have really made good progress compared to what I remember, and it’s making me much more interested in trying to install Linux on a Surface Pro.
Having never owned a Surface Pro, I’m not sure which models are the most reliable and sturdy. I’m not looking for something that’s the flashiest; I want something that works well. I want something pragmatic — something akin to the idea of an older era of Thinkpad (eg T460). I want a pen with low input delay and good accuracy, reliable and responsive touch controls, and a decent display. I was thinking the Surface Pro 4 might be a good choice, but it’s hard to know as there aren’t many videos out there of people installing Linux on them, so I’m wondering what your experience has been with Microsoft Surface Pro’s and installing Linux on one.
Cross-posts:
I have a surface pro 6, bought used for cheap. With the surface Linux kernel, almost everything works.
I built support for the front and rear cameras using the surface Linux instructions and they work, however it’s not a working solution, since ms Teams pwa or discord can’t use libcamera devices.
One thing you should be aware of, though, is that the tablet experience is only really workable in Wayland, so you’ll have to forgo non-wayland apps and desktop environments. Gnome is… not great.
Also, there are several gotchas with wayland. I use flameshot for screenshots, which is broken on Wayland with scaling. Scaling also breaks default firefox on Wayland.
Sorry, didn’t mean to turn this into a Wayland comment.
The hard work the folks at surface Linux have done is amazing, and I’m happy to daily drive my surface.
Yeh. To get the cameras working, you have to do some janky stuff with v4l2loopback. When I went to replace my aging Surface Go, I got a Thinkpad and haven’t had to deal with much (other than switching to the Debian 12 backports kernel for the Wi-Fi driver, as I chose to use stable on that laptop because I don’t want to have to debug it on the go).