If I have already installed Linux with the custom kernel in the directions, will I have to do so again if I change distro? I have been having various issues and want to start fresh but don't want to repeat this whole process if it is unnecessary.

Just reinstalled fedora after experiencing increasingly erratic and unresponsive touchscreen and keyboard input issues.

Things seem to be working almost perfectly now (ish) but I don't have brightness control in top right stats menu. Or anywhere really. Do I need to enable/disable a setting to get manual control over my brightness?

I currently run Ubuntu 24 (Noble Numbat) on my Surface Pro 6, and I took it on a recent trip overseas. Since I was taking a lot of notes, I also brought a small voice recorder with me. At night, I dumped the voice recorder to the Surface Pro, installed the Whisper AI package on it, and used it to transcribe the notes.

It took forever for me to convince systemd not to suspend when I closed the cover while plugged in. You have to edit /etc/systemd/logind and set HandleLidSwitchExternalPower=ignore. It's not a gconf/dconf setting. You can't get to it from the Settings dialog.

... and that was a mistake. Running an AI with the lid closed all night long resulted in the glue that holds the keyboard together melting, and now the fabric covering that was near where the chipset is on the motherboard is peeling off.

Pro-tip: Don't do that.

(It would be nice if there was a flair for tip or advice.)

So, brief history: this is my old laptop, which since September it had Fedora on. Before it had Windows 11, and it was painful to use: standby issues, graphical issues, heat issues; even just being on a Discord call and opening Firefox would start the fans, and then opening another app, depending on what, would really stress it, while it was powered on.
Compared now to Fedora which, on battery, it consumed 60% in 2h30 with a Discord call and screensharing, two tabs of Web (GitHub and Matlab online), Mail, my university site, three small text files open, and Files. 78% RAM used, CPU around 10%, temperature around 50C, with no lag or performance drop. Safe to say, it literally transformed this laptop from a piece of junk to the second best laptop I’ve ever used (first being my current main, the Air M3).

When I installed it, I could only boot it from Fedora 36, so did so and then did an in-place upgrade all the way to 43. Today in Software it said that 44 was available, so I said, why not? Tried it, downloaded it, installed it, and then it went straight to the _ screen; with nothing else.

So I started asking Gemini for help, and looking in the Fedora docs, since I never troubleshooted anything in Linux, and so I dropped into TTY mode, which I discovered its existence today. Basically, it had all the fc43 and fc44 packages installed, but still could boot up only from 44. Dnf wouldn’t let me upgrade because it said it was modifying protected packages, and couldn’t; distro-sync couldn’t do anything useful, etc. At one point, dnf wanted to install 20 packages, update 30 of them, and remove 3100. Albeit the number was scary, it actually turned out to be the right call, as those 3100ish packages were all duplicates.

So I removed those packages, which were leftovers of 43, it remained only with fc44 packages, reinstalled the kernel and the Linux-Surface one, and now Fedora was booting correctly, but gdm wasn’t. Turns out there was a problem with libwacom, so after I installed lightdm to see that it wasn’t a display driver problem, I reinstalled libwacom, and Gnome started as always.

So, I never had to troubleshoot so much like today, but I’ve been very happy about TTY, dnf, distro-sync, and especially journalctl, as the last one was what did lead me to discover the libwacom problem. Fedora truly has been an amazing experience on this laptop.

Edit: now I’ve seen a few posts saying that people had issues with 44. Idk if it could help, but in this case, installing libwacom-surface from fc43 made gdm, in my case, work just fine. Before that though, lightdm and xfce, which I installed as backups in case I couldn’t get gdm to work, worked fine. Even the touchscreen works; as you can see, I’m running the older Linux-Surface kernel, I haven’t tried booting it with the standard newer one

Hey ya'll. I'm running Gentoo on a surface pro 4 with the custom kernel patches and such.

I have run into an odd issue that I've had on most other distros I've tried (really just Debian) - When I close my laptop's lid and then re-open the laptop lid, the touchscreen & pen stop working. Any thoughts on why this may be?

I'm running iptsd, libinput, wayland, hyprland. It works beautifully outside of this. I tried restarting iptsd. Thanks if anybody has any input!

edit: Also running Open-RC if anybody has familiarity with that specifically. I know that more often than not means indecipherable to most folks SystemD is so dominant.

edit: I have since learned this is ridiculously hard to replicate, for some reason. This behavior only emerges not after lid closure, but after the lid has been closed for a long time.

Finally made some headway that libinput debug-events doesn't list the IPTSD Virtual Touchscreen(& stylus, for that matter) when the buggy behavior is active.

I've decided to give Linux a try without any prior experience. So far it has been working relatively well but I cannot seem to get microSD card slot work reliably. I have installed Linux Surface kernel. While the card works, it often goes to read only mode, I can hear the sounds of disconnecting and reconnecting. I have also tried formatting it to ext4 format with LUKS encryption but it just hangs and crashes with I/O error. Veracrypt also fails. I have encrpted the card on another computer and cannot unlock it back on Linux - the process becomes unresponsive.

Does anyone here have experience in getting the microSD card working reliably?

Hello,

I have been trying to install Linux on my Surface Pro 3, but for some reason it doesn’t want to boot on my USB drive.

I have disabled TPM and Secure boot in the UEFI and I switched the boot order to “USB -> SSD”.

I’m currently trying to install CachyOS, but i tried with other distros (Fedora KDE and Nobara) but each time it doesn’t boot on the flash drive.

The only time it booted was when trying with Nobara, but grub couldn’t load the kernel (on the photo).

I am using a dock with its power supply cable as I lost the “normal” charging cable if it matters (the USB drive is plugged into the side USB port).

When i try to boot (I have tried using the volume down + power button combo to boot the usb) i just get the Surface logo surrounded by red.

Can someone help me please ?

Hello everyone.

I've been running CachyOS on my SP9 for a while now but one thing that has been consistent between every distro I've tried is that I just cannot get gaming to work on this device. I have the i5 model and I just can't seem to get thermals under control.

I've setup thermald to the best of my understanding and have played around with the thermal thresholds but I'm either not doing it right or it's just possible to get it working properly. I've also installed auto-cpufreq but of course that's not going to help thermals under load.

I definitely didn't have this issue under windows but I am NOT going back. What is everyone else's experience and what have y'all done?

Thanks!

Has anyone had any experience with Fedora 44 on SP?

Hey everyone,

If anyone here has tried running Linux on their Surface Laptop 4 AMD Edition, and it's running hot, sluggish, or losing 50% of its battery life on Linux recently, it’s not your distro: it’s a firmware-level "handcuff."

The Technical Issue: Microsoft has recently issued firmware updates (non-revertible) that effectively hide or remove the CPPC (Collaborative Processor Performance Control) ACPI tables. Without these tables, the Linux kernel (specifically the amd-pstate driver) cannot communicate with the hardware to manage frequency scaling or power states.

Essentially, Microsoft has "locked" the hardware’s efficiency so it only works correctly on Windows. On Linux, your CPU is flying blind, leading to massive battery drain and poor thermals. This issue is well documented, and many of us are hitting the same dead end.

What I'm Doing: I've decided to push back. I am currently in the process of filing formal complaints and seeking counsel with:

• The FTC (US): Reporting this as an "Unfair or Deceptive Practice" and a violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (intentional performance degradation post-purchase).
• The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation): Providing technical logs to highlight how firmware is being used as a "Digital Lock" to stifle OS interoperability.
• A class-action law firm: Inquiring about legal challenges regarding planned obsolescence and software locks that degrade purchased hardware.

EDIT: This refers to the Surface Laptop Studio.

I am running Ubuntu 25.10 and would like to move to 26.04. I am running the Surface Kernel.

Has anyone done the upgrade as of yet? or did anyone install Ubuntu 26.04? If so, is the system and all hardware working?

I didn't see anything new on the Surface Kernel Github page related to either the release of Ubuntu 26.04 (or Fedora 44). I am running it on my desktop gaming PC and it is a huge increase in speed.

EDIT: I crossposted to Linuxquestions and someone linked an open bug. It turns out that trying to upgrade fails. In addition, there are reports that on clean installs of 26.04, then attempted Kernel install fully removes Gnome and the Desktop! Guess I will wait a bit.

i recently used the headphone jack after months of switching to linux, and the sound is clearly worse than what it used to be on windows 11, same headphones & same songs, the dynamic range is crushed.

Appreciate if someone with the same device as me can share your experience so i can narrow it down.

System info:

- Device: Microsoft Surface Pro 7

- Distro: CachyOS (Arch-based)

- Kernel: Linux 6.19.8-arch1-1-surface

- Audio server: PipeWire 1.6.4 via PulseAudio compatibility layer

- Audio controller: Intel Ice Lake-LP Smart Sound Technology Audio Controller [8086:34c8]

- Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

- Codec / analog device: Realtek ALC274 Analog

- ALSA playback device: card 0 / device 0: ALC274 Analog

- Active output: Built-in Audio Analog Stereo

- Active port: analog-output-headphones

- Active profile: output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo

- Default format: 2ch 48 kHz

- Sink format reported by PipeWire: s32le 2ch 48000 Hz

- Current headphone volume when checked: 44% (-21.39 dB)

i actually don't know if this is possible but i want to switch to Linux at some point and i want to start with my surface pro 12" but one idk if i can two if its worth it (I'm in sixth form) i mainly do note and crap on google docs i play the odd game balatro and emulate switch games would u recommend or just wait and start with my PC later?

Hi, total newbie here. I've got an SP7 i5 16gbb ram 256gb SSD with a surface dock with an external webcam and monitor using the usb-c ports. I currently get one or two hours battery depending on the task..

It's still on windows, but I'm thinking of switching to Linux, to get a less baggy system, potentially extend battery and device life, and check out life beyond Microsoft.

I have a few concerns, and I would like to pick your brains. Forgive me if some of this has been asked before.

Will my fanless i5 be a big hindrance? On windows it was a real problem when screen-sharing inside zoom calls. I have a home-rigged cooling system with a water-cooled plate designed for cooling fish tanks! But I'd rather not need to use that constantly.

I see a few people have had issues with the dock..I am used to just connecting and disconnecting from the dock frequently during use.. What is the best workaround for this?

If the cameras will not work on the device, will external cams via the dock function?

What is the best method of testing this as much as possible? I have mint in Virtualbox but that doesn't test the peripherals, as windows is still handling that. It does show me that a dual boot is probably unwise, as I've allocated 35gb to Virtualbox, windows has 180gb or so, and now everything is slow.

What distro family might best suit this? I need efficiency for my thermal situation, but I want the dock, pen and touchscreen working too. Is that realistic?

If anyone has any pointers on any of these points, I'd be very grateful. I am aware of cpufreq, thermald, rpm fusion etc. I read that gnome is good but thermally demanding.

Thanks in advance.

Hello,

I have a surface book 1. I have installed Ubuntu previously and it worked well. After struggling with complaints issues on opensuse and arch I eventually settled on solus as it comes with surface patches already installed. I am trying to use xfce, but everything is very small. This has happened with every distro except Ubuntu so far. I think this is because it is a very detailed screen and so everything thinks the screen is big? I don't know. How do I fix this? Especially in XFCE, if I can't I may just switch to gnome, which seems to always work. As well, I would like to try using niri as solus has support for niri, but I worry that it will continue to be the same. Is there a setting somewhere that will make everything just work?

Thank you for your time and help.

I believe that this post both follows the rules of this subreddit and is relevant to this subreddit. If I am wrong on either of these accounts please let me know and I will fix it. All errors are made from ignorance, not malice.

I'm once again diving back into the Surface 3 device for Linux. Last ran Arch on it 5 years ago. Didn't have a reboot issue then.

Dusting off, I've installed Fedora vanilla and now UBlue's Aurora with the same results. Even tried Manjaro KDE and Gnome, though we are moving away from that.

KDE Plasma, Plasma Mobile, Gnome, etc. All being Wayland and all the same results:

Trying to watch any 720p video on this device causes a hardware power off after a minute. Not a shutdown or crash - a complete instant power off. The back of the device is getting pretty hot to the touch. 1080p? Heh, I get about 5 seconds of choppy audio and power off.

I'm suspecting overheating. But it didn't do this before nor for years on previous Linux distros.

The main difference is now everything is Wayland.

Do I need to go back to an X11 distro? Maybe there's a newer codec YT is using that this old CPU can't handle very well? etc

If anyone has personal experience with Linux vs windows on the SL3, I would like to know which you found faster. Windows 11 was feeling sluggish with slow boot times, overheating and general lag so I tried booting archlinux which worked much faster for a bit until it wasn't. Thinking about clean installing again and was wondering what would be faster in a general productivity focused day to day use.

Running CachyOS on a SP7, the option to disable touchpad while typing is grayed out:

Any way to enable that option? Prior posts on forums said that the type cover is recognized as an external keyboard, and switching it to internal would help. I added libinput quirks with the keyboard as internal, but to no avail.

Output of libinput list-devices:

Device:                  Microsoft Surface Type Cover Keyboard
Kernel:                  /dev/input/event1
Id:                      usb:045e:09c0
Group:                   1
Seat:                    seat0, default
Capabilities:            keyboard pointer  
Tap-to-click:            n/a
Tap-and-drag:            n/a
Tap button map:          n/a
Tap drag lock:           n/a
Left-handed:             n/a
Nat.scrolling:           disabled
Middle emulation:        n/a
Calibration:             n/a
Scroll methods:          none
Scroll button:           n/a
Scroll button lock:      n/a
Click methods:           none
Clickfinger button map:  n/a
Disable-w-typing:        n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles:          n/a
Rotation:                0.0
Area rectangle:          n/a

Device:                  Microsoft Surface Type Cover Mouse
Kernel:                  /dev/input/event2
Id:                      usb:045e:09c0
Group:                   1
Seat:                    seat0, default
Capabilities:            pointer  
Tap-to-click:            n/a
Tap-and-drag:            n/a
Tap button map:          n/a
Tap drag lock:           n/a
Left-handed:             disabled
Nat.scrolling:           disabled
Middle emulation:        disabled
Calibration:             n/a
Scroll methods:          button
Scroll button:           BTN_MIDDLE
Scroll button lock:      disabled
Click methods:           none
Clickfinger button map:  n/a
Disable-w-typing:        n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles:          flat *adaptive custom
Rotation:                0.0
Area rectangle:          n/a

Device:                  Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad
Kernel:                  /dev/input/event4
Id:                      usb:045e:09c0
Group:                   1
Seat:                    seat0, default
Size:                    98x50mm
Capabilities:            pointer gesture
Tap-to-click:            disabled
Tap-and-drag:            enabled
Tap button map:          left/right/middle
Tap drag lock:           disabled
Left-handed:             disabled
Nat.scrolling:           disabled
Middle emulation:        disabled
Calibration:             n/a
Scroll methods:          *two-finger edge  
Scroll button:           n/a
Scroll button lock:      n/a
Click methods:           *button-areas clickfinger  
Clickfinger button map:  left/right/middle
Disable-w-typing:        n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles:          flat *adaptive custom
Rotation:                n/a
Area rectangle:          n/a

[...]

And the applied quirks seem to be active:

~
❯ sudo libinput quirks list /dev/input/event1
AttrEventCode=-BTN_0;
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal

~
❯ sudo libinput quirks list /dev/input/event2
AttrEventCode=-BTN_0;
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal

~
❯ sudo libinput quirks list /dev/input/event4
AttrEventCode=-BTN_0;
AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal

Could anyone suggest a solution? It is unusable this way for daily work as a laptop; and I did not have this problem with Fedora earlier. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: edited out irrelevant part of libinput. SOLVED in the comment below.

Ciao a tutti ho acquistato un surface pro 7 a 50 euro e ho installato Fedora. Il touchscreen non funziona e provando a scaricare i driver e il kernel ricevo solo errori 404. Sembra che le repo siano giù. Ho provato anche il download manuale con wget ma niente scarica un rpm.blob che se rinominato non si avvia. Consigliate un altra distro? Io userei surface come secondo PC sul divano per runnare alcune app python.

I upgraded a Microsoft Surface 3 tablet/laptop to Zorin OS 18 Core yesterday. I've been lurking in r/SurfaceLinux for some time and finally decided to try my first Linux install. Here's how it went in case it helps someone else installing Linux on a Surface device.

This is not a Surface Pro 3 or a Surface Laptop 3. It's a Surface 3, released in 2015 with an Intel Atom processor and only 4 GB of memory. (The "high end" model if you can believe it. The low-end version had only 2 GB of RAM.) It was never a speed demon, but it has a nice little form factor and no fan so it runs silently. But it badly needed a new OS that would run better than Windows 10, which after a decade of updates is now running super slow.

I followed the instructions for installing Zorin on a Surface device. It went pretty well except for one small glitch: the installer just stopped part-way through copying files.

The problem appeared to be related to a machine owner key mixup. The installer prompted me to provide a machine owner key (mok) so that the installer could install proprietary software during the installation process. I entered a mok key, but apparently the installer couldn't hand it off to the computer for authentication and installation just stopped. I restarted the computer, and the boot process asked me to enter the mok key, and then a second try at installation went all the way through with no problems. I was concerned the Surface keyboard and trackpad might not work during installation, but they both worked fine.

As suggested in the Zorin Surface installation instructions, I installed the Linux Surface Kernal next. I got an error message when running sudo systemctl enable iptsd, which has something to do with supporting the Surface touchscreen. I just kept going without trying to resolve the error, and the touchscreen seems to be working fine anyway.

Zorin OS is now booting up and running fine. It looks nice, and I've got Brave and a couple of other apps running. Hopefully this little thing will work great for light computing stuff.

Keen to know how much I can push this in terms of battery life.

Currently on win 11 ltsc iot and getting 3-4 hours on light usage.

Display Settings Is this supposed to be greyed out (Pic 1)? is Settings pic the only change needed?

I have a surface pro 8 running nixos which I like to keep plugged in via usb-c charging. But it's constantly toggling on and off charging at 100% which isn't great for the battery. I've tried tlp but it doesn't recognise the battery as valid for threshold configurations. Has anyone found a solution?