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Thinking about buying a Surface Pro 4/5 (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nobara, a Fedora-based distro, has the Surface patches in its kernel, iirc. Said kernel also has an AUR package.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Very cool! I’ll have to check this out.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sweeeeet! Yeah, I've found a good deal on a pro 4, just negotiating with the seller.
Thanks for your input my dude!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Happy to help! Safe travels.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'll be making a post in a week or so to talk about my experience with it.

Also, pierogi fucking rock.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You should read this page: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Installation-and-Setup

It's very detailed about what to do to get stuff working (on lots of distros), and what currently isn't working (see camera support etc)

I took a look in the past but deemed it too much of a compromise at the time for what wasn't working.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I actually just read it about 25mins ago. And yeah, there's a lot missing for it to be considered feature complete. That said, it might still be worth it.
Gonna wait and see if anyone chimes in with hands on experience. Might still buy one, and just hope the surface kernel matures a bit more in the coming months.

Edit: I've just had a second(proper) look at the feature matrix, and for the Pro 4 and 5, everything actually seems to be working. So maybe I'll just pull the trigger while my wife's out of town!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I ran archlinux using the software and kernel in that repo for my surface pro 4. It worked great. Additionally I found GNOME desktop to work well, particularly with some extensions like toggles for rotation, on-screen-keyboard and other stuff you'd find on a phone. I also setup pop shell and cosmic for tiling window management, but paperWM might be better for this these days.

I should not that I had some troubles with the stylus. Sometimes it would work, sometimes not and if I used configuration tools it would sometimes help or sometimes make it worse. That said, I think my stylus is a little screwed up. There is a lot of good info in getting the stylus working and troubleshooting it, you should be able to get it working, for me it was always just a matter of time before I had to fuss with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So would you say more or less fiddling about than with a regular laptop/desktop install(barring the additional need for the surface kernel install)?

I'm fine with extra fiddling about, that's part of the fun, but if it's not really functional at the end of the fiddling then that's not so fun.
The ones I was looking at didn't come with the stylus, so that's a hurdle to jump at a later date.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of fiddling and no joy was my experience with a friends 4. No camera and it was a nightmare. I would avoid! Starlabs?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Fair dues. Sadly the trigger is pulled, and the seller says no givesies backsies. At the very least I'll have another thing for my wife to be angry at me for having in my home lab!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everything was pretty smooth after getting the right GNOME extensions installed for me. In the project wiki there is even an archlinux repo so you don't need to compile the packages from the AUR. The stylus was the only troublesome part, but like I said, I think my stylus has issues, so I don't think I can blame it on the Linux setup.

It was a good time getting the UI tuned in and customized. I had no idea so many good extensions existed for GNOME.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm so confused right now. Basically no one is sitting in the middle ground in this thread... Either I've made a horrible decision, wasted £90, and I've set myself for a load of pain with no reward at the end, or basically the exact opposite....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My sympathies lol. I've been a long time Linux user. Sometimes my experience can be optimistic but in this case I remember things working pretty well. Definitely post your experience here and feel free to DM if you need a hand with something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks bud, much appreciated 👍

I'm no longbeard wizard, but I've gone through the manual arch setup a few times, and done my fair share of distro hopping. I think I'll be able to run through this without too much issue. Just not sure who to believe, or if it really boils down to luck of the hardware draw.

In any case, I'm looking forward to playing around with my new toy, and hopefully it'll work how I want it to.

Might shoot you a dm and pick your brain if I get stuck.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I dislike it. And it's got nothing to do with Linux, or even Windows for that matter.

I dislike it because the BIOS sucks. It's literally one of the most barebones, locked down BIOSes I've ever seen. You basically get just three categories, boot device selection, turn some hw components on/off, and set the date and time. That's about it. You can't choose enable CSM/Legacy mode, you can't set MAC Address Passthru options, no option to edit existing or add new UEFI boot order entries, and so many more options missing, compared to say what you'd find on other devices. Classic example of corporations unnecessarily locking down devices and abstracting things away from the user.

This may not be a big deal for you however, but as a power user who likes to tweak things and have finer control, having such a gimped BIOS is a deal breaker for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the gimped BIOS is certainly not a selling point. But for my use case, I don't feel like it's a deal breaker. I'll be using it for light emulation gaming, and for tracking my self hosted bits. Maybe scrolling lemmy. Possibly distro hopping for the first week or two.
It's essentially going to be a toy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've had Surfaces up to the Pro 3, which all worked wonderfully on Linux. Also had a Surface Book which required some non-mainline kernel additions in order to use all the hardware (camera, touchscreen).

The Pro's lasted like champs. The book eventually ran into issues with the digitizer (non-OS related), was repaired, and got the same issue 8mo later after the warranty had run out.

I was looking at a current generation SPro when I came across the Lenovo X12 on sale (+Rakuten). For half the price of a Pro6 I got more storage, RAM, and a more powerful CPU. The only thing it lacked versus the SPro was a microSD slot and dedicated video out (though USB-C hubs work for the latter).

There were some initial issues with the soundcard and weirdness with storage going into RO mode periodically, but the sound has been fine in current Ubuntu/etc versions and a firmware update seems to have fixed the storage issues

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I had looked at getting an X12, but at the end of the day, I found a good deal on a SP4 i5 8gb/128gb.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which Gen X1 did you get? I've been looking at those, but I am not sure which Gen will have the best compatibility.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I got a gen 3, basically what is not working are :

Internal MIcrophone
Back Camera
Fingerprint reader
FnLock key Everything else is working well enough so far for me. S2idle is working way more reliably on this device than on my SP4 but with a bit a tinkering I think that you can get S3 sleep working.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I really want to love my PineTab 2 and I'm hoping for kernel updates to unlock more hardware potential. The Wi-Fi doesn't work at all in my experience and the touchscreen feels very cheap (usually must tap my finger several times before it registers the touch).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year 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....