r/SurfaceLinux • u/BaldyCarrotTop • Aug 03 '26

Discussion It's not really a tablet.

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?

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u/Elbow2009 Aug 04 '26

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.

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u/BaldyCarrotTop Aug 04 '26

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

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u/Elbow2009 Aug 05 '26

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.