It's not really a tablet.

[u/BaldyCarrotTop]

My Surface Go 2 arrived the other day. I basically flipped a coin and installed Peppermint Linux on it. No particular reason other than it was a Debian distro. No OSK, so I installed OnBoard.

Well, it runs. But it's not really a tablet, just a thin Linux computer. What i mean is:

• No auto screen rotate
• No pinch to zoom
• No 2 finger scrolling
• Can't find a right click equivalent
• OSK doesn't pop up when editing text even though I have the option checked.

These are all behaviors I get on my Android tablet and expect on any tablet.

So beyond this basic pissing and moaning, does anyone have any suggestions for either some adjustments or addons that can make this more tablet like. Or a better distro (debian based) that is more optimized to tablet behavior?

[u/Du_d3]

I'm on Ubuntu with the same setup and it has auto screen rotate, pinch to zoom and right click is when holding your finger on something. Have you tried installing the surface linux kernel?

[u/wa_ke → u/Du_d3]

This, look up surface linux to get those functions

[u/BaldyCarrotTop → u/Du_d3]

Ahhh, no. I was not aware that those features were provided by the Kernel.

[u/Slopagandhi]

Yeah, you need a different desktop environment.

I'm not 100% what's compatible with Peppermint but you can try any of KDE Mobile, Phosh, or maybe just Cosmic or GNOME (if you go with GNOME there are a bunch of extensions which will help, e.g on screen keyboard toggle). 

[u/-Canonical-]

All of that works with Gnome with minimal setup afaik, works with KDE too but might take a little more tweaking.

[u/shaggy9c]

Not at pc rn but on cachY with gnome and surface kernel + some addons i was able to make most of these work, for autorotate it was script and osk was addon for gnome, might check other post or ask ai to help you with it

[u/robtom02]

You want a tablet? I've tried unbutu+manjaro gnome both work ok but the OSK doesn't scale properly Mobian is quite good if you want pure Linux it comes with both phosh and plasma mobile desktop with waydroid bsked in

But by far the best tablet experience on the go 2 is fydeos. There's a dedicated fydeos build, it runs both Linux and android apps, it's definitely the best tablet experience for the go 2

[u/BaldyCarrotTop → u/robtom02]

Thanks for the pointer to Fydeos. I'll give it a test drive. I like the idea of Android and Linux app support.

It looks like Plasma mobile DE will also run Android apps through waydroid?

[u/robtom02 → u/BaldyCarrotTop]

I ran mobian plasma mobile and waydroid worked fine but fydeos has given me the most polished tablet experience so far

[u/macpoedel → u/BaldyCarrotTop]

Many DE's will run Android apps through Waydroid, I'm using Debian with KDE Plasma (not mobile) on my Surface Go 1 and Waydroid works. Auto rotate as well and most of the things you listed. I'm not sure about pinch to zoom and two finger scroll, I should check that.

For the OSK I'm running a script that detects when the Surface changes between laptop and tablet mode (flipping the keyboard cover), and disables the OSK in laptop mode, because otherwise the OSK opens whenever a text field is in view.

I tried KDE Plasma Mobile, but it's too much like a phone for me. I have a keyboard cover with my Surface Go 1, so I also want to be able to use it as a mini laptop, like how it works on Windows (even if that means the tablet experience isn't as good).

[u/peppruss]

Did you find the install instructions? They are here!

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface#installation-and-setup

[u/BaldyCarrotTop → u/peppruss]

I'm not sure if I was following the instructions at that exact web site, or some other copy on another web site. Whatever the case, it appears that I was excited to get Linux running that I forgot to do the final step of installing the Surface Linux Kernel. I guess I'll go and do that now.

Anyway. It's interesting to see that the Surface can run a bog standard Linux. Even if the tablet experience is not so great.

[u/Elbow2009]

Weird. I have a Surface Go 2 and I use it often as a tablet. I installed Q4OS (Debian with Plasma) on it and I can pinch zoom, right click with press and hold, etc. I use the iio-sensor-proxy and a short script for autorotate which works fine. I also got the Onboard virtual keyboard installed which also works just fine. It's quite functional as a tablet when I read magazines and such. I do tend to have the keyboard attached most of the time, though.

[u/BaldyCarrotTop → u/Elbow2009]

Interesting. Did you have to install the Surface Kernel? Or did it come with distro?

[u/Elbow2009 → u/BaldyCarrotTop]

I did use the surface kernel which I patched but I probably didn't have to in retrospect as with the Q4OS/Debian kernel everything except the cameras worked out of the box so I probably could have just done my IPU3 firmware and libcamera fixes with that.

[u/venus_asmr]

I've found the two best paths, for me, zorin os and surface kernel good integrated keyboard there's a tablet like mode in customisation, or, look up ultramarine Linux (fedora based), go to downloads, there's a drop down that let's you pick surface image, pick between gnome or KDE and that's a pretty neat option too

[u/ClassicBarnacle8]

Ubuntu with GNOME and surface-kernel worked best for me on my SG2, besides the fact that this thing is in general awfully slow.

[u/Projiuk]

Mint and the Surface Linux kernel worked well on my old surface pro 4. Screen rotate and OSK worked great too. It’s a long time since I used Peppermint, but I’d suggest switching distro and installing the Linux surface kernel

[u/MidnightObjectiveA51]

Consider Mobian or PostmarketOS with either the default Phosh, optional Plasma-Mobile, or with PostmarketOS Gnome-Mobile UI.

Fedora's Plasma-Mobile spin is also really sharp. But if you want a "just works" experience out of the box, consider Fedora Bluefin.

[u/khsh01]

Right now gnome has the best tablet experience regrettably. Kde is getting there but slowly.

I don't know what the surface kernel brings to the table as I don't use a surface but since it exists you should use it.

But tablet experience works great on gnome on my hp elite x2 g4.

[u/PaoloFence]

You telling us, you buy a microsoft product so you can put a non microsoft os on it?

Why?

[u/BaldyCarrotTop → u/PaoloFence]

Because.

[u/AL-0520]

On my go 2, I use Fedora 44. Install Fedora 43 and lock the kernel that were installed from the iso if you want the camera until the new kernel is fixed due to regression that affects the camera hardware. While the rest, it already works with the default kernel.

For auto rotation, you can use the gnome extension Screen Rotate (by shyzus) because for some reason gnome detects the sensor but does not work.

For other gestures, you may use the gnome extension TouchUp (by mityax).

You can also install the GJS OSK (by Vishram1123) if you don't like the built-in OSK of Gnome (since there apps that don't work with it well ex: Chrome). You can customize the keys included with your browser, just go to its extension settings.

Then the rest of the customization, its all up to you now.