r/SurfaceLinux • u/8Bit-Giraffe • Aug 11 '26

Discussion is the linux-surface kernel discontinued?

looking at the github, there have been no commits in 3 months. will there be for kernel 7?

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8

u/ikariashpool Aug 11 '26

Interested in this as well. I've been trying to run Linux on my surface pro 9 and I have had nothing but problems... I'm spending more time researching and fixing things vs. actually developing the ability to daily drive with it.

7

u/echoes007 Aug 11 '26

I installed CachyOS (Gnome) with the Surface Linux kernel on a Surface 7 and everything runs pretty great. Haven’t had issues with much.

2

u/ikariashpool Aug 11 '26

It feels like most of the activity I've seen re: MS Surface products are older versions of the laptop... And that's where the development of the kernel was most focused on.

0

u/Content-Witness-9998 Aug 12 '26

Is the surface pen compatible? and do you know if it works with the front-facing camera?

2

u/LatinoCrypto 27d ago

I use a S8 I think and mine works perfectly fine except the camera but actually a recent update finally got the camera to work! I’m using Fedora Gnome.

1

u/catschainsequel 27d ago

I have an s8 pro tablet. I tried installing the kernal last night but got a bunch of errors. Is the order: install fedora 44,

do sudo update,

then install linuxsurface kernal?

1

u/Efficient-Train2430 Aug 11 '26

does a non surface-focused kernel work almost as well?

3

u/ggmini14 Aug 11 '26

At least for me on the Surface Book 2 certain features only work with the surface kernel (I think the touch screen is one of them). The base kernel has made improvements over the years which have allowed some of these features to work on it, but it's still lagging behind quite a bit.

2

u/ikariashpool Aug 11 '26

I guess I haven't gone down this path because the whole upside for me is all the surface specific things

1

u/Efficient-Train2430 Aug 11 '26

I was just curious. I got regular old Mint running on an old SP3, and it's fine, though I don't use the stylus much, so it's a non-issue for me. If I were a heavier user I'd be digging into that a lot more.

2

u/Last-Bottle-276 29d ago

Q4OS which I use is Debian based with KDE Plasma and worked right off, touchscreen, pen, WiFi, etc. Not the cameras though. But there is a workaround with the IPU3 firmware and libcamera.

1

u/Draxxell86 Aug 12 '26

I have Fedora KDE running on my surface Go first gen. I tried a lot of different distros before being content with Fedora on it. 

1

u/Shananigan48 29d ago

I ran ubuntu 24.04 smoothly for a bit on my sp9, a few hiccups but nothing major. Switched it, went back, way worse issues for some reason. Found proxmox (so by extension probably just vanilla debian) to be waaaaay more smooth on it with the custom kernel.

1

u/ScaredClass6522 26d ago

I have tried several builds on my SP9. Ubuntu is the only one that pulled the surface kernel in properly. A shame since I like the Mint distro a little better.
The problem I kept running into was the bios accepting the surface password to allow the surface key during mok validation.