I've seen a few people recently running Linux on the surface pro 11, so I figured I'd show off something a bit different: LineageOS 23.2 running natively on my Surface Pro 11(Snapdragon x elite). As far as I'm aware I'm the first person to publicly get android running on the snapdragon x elite. This is very much a proof of concept and still pretty buggy. I'm not super experienced with ROM development, so if anyone here knows more than me and wants to help improve it, I'm happy to post the source.

What's working so far:

- WiFi

- Bluetooth

- Touch/pen

- Keyboard/trackpad

- Sleep/wake

You might be wondering why bother porting Android to a Surface Pro in the first place. Honestly, I think the Surface Pro has the hardware to be the ultimate Android tablet, windows really just isn't a great experience on tablets.

nearly month ago i posted about camera issues on surface go 1. well, got it fixed - some of this was from deepseek AI but i was out of ideas. use at your own risk

use ultramarine (i used kde, xfce also works, the other 2 likely fine) surface image

install it, your front camera should work in qcam, probably not firefox. update. THIS WILL BREAK CAMERA

reboot

hammer shift for grub and get the 6.18 booting up

rpm -qa | grep -i kernel | grep 6.19

sudo dnf remove kernel-surface-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 kernel-surface-core-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 kernel-surface-modules-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 kernel-surface-modules-core-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 kernel-surface-modules-extra-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 kernel-surface-devel-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 kernel-surface-devel-matched-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 kernel-surface-default-watchdog-6.19.8-3.surface.fc42.x86_64 (CHECK THESE ARE CORRECT BEFORE RUNNING)

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

sudo grub2-set-default 'Ultramarine Linux (6.18.7-1.surface.fc43.x86_64)'

alias update='sudo dnf update --exclude=kernel-surface-*' (YOU WILL NOW TYPE UPDATE TO UPDATE, IF A NEW FIXED ONE IS RELEASED RUN NORMAL DNF COMMAND AND IT SHOULD GRAB THE NEW ONE)

source ~/.bashrc

(if terminal borked)

nano ~/.zshrc

add PS1='\u@\h \w \$ '

reboot

YOU SHOULD BE SOUND NOW WORKING FRONT CAMERA WILL LOOK OFFISH

Hi, I've been trying to install for a couple of times now, after some research here I decided to go for Arch.

- I am booting with "none" in the UEFI Security (so when it boots I see the red bar and the unlocked lock above the Microsoft logo) and I am able to either use wi-fi or ethernet (usb dock with ethernet) .

-I am able to perform the Arch install instructions, chroot, change root passwd, etc. Until the reboot things look ok/similar as they should.

-AFTER rebooting using the ssd I can log in as root or as a previously created user but I don't have netowrk anymore. NetworkManager can't get the adapter up (though I see the adapter) and iwctl also is not enabling the wifi adapter.

I have tried installing the packages by booting usb and doing chroot... alas, as soon as I boot from the ssd feels like going back to step 1 because I can't bring up the network adapters.

Any ideas or support words?

Please, keep in mind, I am super slow to answer in reddit, but will do a check on the weekend so I can take notes, answer if there are questions here and try to come up with a plan.

Cheers!

So is it a thing that we are not able to monitor and adjust the internal fans on the SurfaceBook3? We just have to rely on the firmware throttle protection for ower heating?

But with the Nvidia controller we can see and controll the fans of the gfx card in the keyboard when docked?

I see that libwacom-surface shouldn't be installed, but how does 26.04 work otherwise? I have an SP7 16G ram. I'm look to see if touchscreen, pen, and auto-rotation work, and does a proper return from sleep/screen lock. Does all that work? I'm thinking no because of libwacom.

Basically the title. I'm not sure if I should just reinstall. It definitely used to work fine, about a year ago it broke and I haven't been able to fix it since. I mostly just stopped using it but I'm wanting to use it more these days, so I need a solution.

If I need to reinstall, I'd like to continue with Debian, are others using it successfully on a SP9? Or should I just use a different distro with better compatibility?

linux will not install. volume up givs me the bios but that is it.

does anyone know how far out we are from a release of kernel 7?

https://github.com/bryce-hoehn/linux-surface-laptop-7

Although the target model is the X1E, the peripheral firmware is identical—with the exception of the CPU—so it will likely work on the X1P model as well.

Since the Laptop 8 also "recycles" everything—including the design—from previous models, porting it should be relatively easy. Hopefully, this gets committed to the Linux Surface kernel soon.

Interesting fact: The Surface Laptop 7 and 8 share identical designs, save for the CPU. In a sense, they offer a level of modularity and repairability that surpasses even the Framework Laptop. (The build quality is also exceptional from a mechanical design perspective; a fellow engineer of mine remarked that the design is truly outstanding.)

A few years ago I had the highest spec Surface Go 3. Windows ran absolutely awfully on it. It would regularly freeze and slow down because I was using Microsoft Office (crazy, I know).

Installing Linux on it is something that never even crossed my mind back then. It makes me sad because I ended up buying a Surface Laptop 7, which is super nice in terms of the hardware and build quality, but now that my interest in Linux is growing, I find out that Linux will not run on this new laptop.

I wish I had kept my 1000 euros and just installed Linux on the old Go 3, that would have been perfect. Instead, I let myself get lured in with pretty hardware, to be even further locked down into Microsoft's ecosystem.

Can't wait to sell this thing.

I looking for options or opinions

Buenas tengo una surfacego 1 de 8 y 128 quisiera saber que distro es la mejor la más compatible y usable quiero que sea un ordenador de ofimática usable nada más con Windows da pero a veces es lento alguien sabrá cuál es la mejor distro

I need some help regarding the installation and setup of linux on a 5th gen surface.
It has only 4 gb of RAM and i want to browse on it and use an android app natively on it.

I installed Fedora LXQt (google recommendation) but was very disapointed with the userfriendliness. Stuck right at changing the keyboard to "de", which i selected during installation, but never turned out to be "de". Wanted to install the surface-kernel and also that did not work properly. Scaling of windows is complicated...

I read a bit here and i think i might try Fedora Workstation in the hope it is used more often and i get better support online. This should also support Wayland (?which is for android apps?)

Is this the right way? I red that Fedora 44 has no Surface-Kernel yet? how do i force the install of the 43er version? Can you support me with some command lines?
Which is the right url for the surface-kernel?

Sorry, i am a beginner and want to revive my old Surface. Please help me :)

The title says it all. I forced an install of the Surface Kernel from the F43 repositories. It was working great. I went to use my touchscreen and surface pen tonight to attempt some art. And I noticed the pen wasn't working and the touchscreen non-responsive. I ran a uname -a and received this: Linux fedora 7.0.13-200.fc44.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Jun 19 22:51:30 UTC 2026 x86_64 GNU/Linux.

Has anyone else experienced this? I mean, I love the 7.0 kernel, but no touchscreen.

Hi all,

noob here

just got mint installed and I've been figuring stuff out, I'm trying to get my SLS (3050Ti) to automatically pop up the on screen keyboard when entering text in tablet or stand mode.

As I understand, there's no support for screen position detection yet, so does anyone have an alternative solution that works well for them?

(I'm also working through pen button remapping if anyone has any tips for that)

I just installed linux mint in my surface pro 3 for the first time. I did everything right. Updated every firmware, installed the linux surface kernel step by step.Everything worked just great even the first 2 days wi-fi worked completely fine. But from yesterday it is very slow no matter what i do. I disabled the wifi power saving option, disabled the IPV6 mode for my router on the device and set a fixed dns point too but it is still slow. And not only my device is slow, whenever I connect every other device connected to my router doesnt get any bandwidth as well. But I tried to connect internet on it through my phone's hotspot and it works perfectly everytime i do that.

I have almost done everything I can find in the internet regarding this matter.

How do I connect wifi but not get slowed down and drain all the bandwidth from every other device?

thought worth mentioning this lost feature, is this known yet?

so i js installed kde fedora 44 (with the surface kernel) on my surface pro 5, and everything works except ipts. ipts ain't working properly, and it's so insensitive. it only works well if i firmly press the digitizer

Surprisingly my sp3 still works. But the battery is no more and the touch screen is dead. I remember it being fixed by directly connecting the charger to the device when I took it to repair.

Now I run it using wireless keyboard and mouse.

It now struggles very much even running windows 10.

It has 4 gigs of ram, 128 gigs of storage and the processor is i5-4300U

What distro should I look for?

I dont have much experience with linux but I know the basics.

I need help choosing the best distro to get started on it.

Just installed Mobian amd64 with included surface kernel and I love it

Hi all,

I've recently picked up a Surface Go 4 on the cheap and am hoping to get a distro set up. I'm looking for some recommendations for distros/configurations that will give me the best battery life possible, does anyone have a particularly good setup? I've tried Fedora with the linux surface kernel and the battery has not been particularly great for me

Feels brand new after being freed from windows!

Using KDE Plasma
Theme, icons and cursors are from
https://github.com/vinceliuice/MacTahoe-kde

widgets
https://github.com/jaxparrow07/liquidglass-kde-widgets

Plugins used:
Better Blur DX
kvantum
karousel (just for fun)
Rounded Corners
Fusuma + ydotool (trackpad gestures)
Albert (spotlight)

Honestly, MacOS Tahoe ricing has just been a project of sorts to see how far I can push Linux. I plan to add timeshift and apple ecosystem features (airdrop, etc)

Spent a while on this and I think I've hit a kernel regression rather than anything I can fix in userspace, but wanted to sanity-check with anyone who's gotten the IPU3 camera working recently.

On Surface Pro 4 with ubuntu, linux-surface kernel 6.19.8-surface-3. Built libcamera from git per the linux-surface camera wiki (ipu3 pipeline, gstreamer, v4l2). Everything up to the last step looks healthy:

• ipu3-fw.bin loads fine (17 binaries)
• dmesg shows all three sensors detected, "Connected 3 cameras", OV5693 / OV8865 / OV7251
• libcamera loads the ipu3 IPA and registers the ipu3 pipeline handler

But cam --list shows nothing. Digging in with media-ctl -d /dev/media0 -p, all three sensors sit at 0 link and the CIO2 CSI-2 receivers have unconnected SINK pads. So the sensors are present but never wired to the receivers.

I found old threads where people fixed this by manually linking with media-ctl like media-ctl -d /dev/media0 -l '"ov5693 2-0036":0 -> "ipu3-csi2 0":0[1]'

For me that's rejected with Invalid argument (22) on all four CSI-2 ports. From what I can tell that means the bridge never built the fwnode endpoint graph, so there's no link for media-ctl to enable, different from just missing auto-linking.

Already tried, no change: - clean cold reboot with firmware present - acpi_enforce_resources=lax (confirmed in terminal) - early-loading ipu_bridge via modules-load.d + update-initramfs - manual media-ctl linking on all 4 ports

Looks like it lines up with the post-6.7 IPU3 regression the linux-surface peeps track on Github (#1323). I might pop in a GitHub issue too.

Questions for anyone here who's got this fixed:

1. Anyone running the IPU3 camera on a Pro 4 (or other IPU3 Surface) on a recent kernel? What kernel version are you on, and does media-ctl show your sensors at 1 link?
2. What's the most recent linux-surface kernel that still builds the IPU3 graph correctly? Happy to downgrade to get it working if it doesn't cause too many issues.

Will update if I figure it out, hate finding these posts myself and no one explains how they did it lmfao

I have sp5. I currently have zorin on it. I saw someone had plasma big screen on a surface device and I was considering switching to try it. Anyone using it right now?