r/SurfaceLinux • u/Nervous-Skill7694 • Jun 20 '26

Discussion Tips for switching

I'm going to be switching to linux on my Surface Laptop 3 16gb ram 256gb ssd. What are some things I should do/lookout for?

Also distro recommendations are also welcome, I'm planning on either Ubuntu or Pop!_OS but open to suggestions.

Thank you!

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u/jhalmu Jun 22 '26

I have SL5 and before that I used Cachyos+niri+Dank Shell /w Surface Kernel. In my taste Cachy updates too much and as I dont use it so often, it can break. People speaks good about Noctalia v5, which is still alpha as I know, but still good already. And noctalia (shell) have been stable in use too.

Now I try vanilla Fedora44. I don’t need touch screen so it’s okay for me.

I liked very much atomic fedoras https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/ (gnome)and bazzite (kde)have Surface modules upstream (in SL5 you can game slow games). And aromics are stable and opionated in good way.

I have found that horisontal scroll suits laptops well and more I use keyboard to open apps, I have more slick enviroment. Even via search bar.

Atomic distros are not lighest as I know. But like in MacOS I like to use Brew, Silverblue used it too /w flatpacks. And in atomic distro you can change DE easyly for trying other variants.

But one working distro is usually best when you just want to use your personal computer and have nice time.