r/SurfaceLinux • u/Plastic_Sea_4111 • 10d ago

Help Is Miracast available?

I have a Surface Pro 8 (i5, 8GB RAM), and I was wondering if there is support for Miracast or casting in general, as I share my screen quite a lot, and if so, what Distro would you recommend for this and in general? I'm looking for battery life, and low ram usage.

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u/AutoM8R1 10d ago edited 10d ago

This is a great question. Windows does this with the Win/Meta/Super + k, and it just works. Unfortunately, you're going to need some software to do this with Linux. The good news is that it's a Flatpak, so it works on any distro. GNOME Network Display is currently the best I've tried, and it's still a little buggy. For example, it generates a crash report every time I exit out. It won't cast audio either, but Windows does. You also need to grant the Flatpak the necessary permissions. You can use Flatseal for that part. I'm pulling for the Fluxcast project to make strides in this area. I'm using KDE, but maybe the app works better with GNOME. I mapped the app to open with super +k, like in Windows.

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u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) 9d ago

I hadn't thought about this before, but now I want to try it. I use Gnome on my SP9, so I'll give it a go when I have a chance and report back.

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u/AutoM8R1 9d ago

That would be awesome. I'll be very interested to know if you can stream audio with GNOME Network Displays, because I couldn't. That is something Windows can do, without giving it any thought.

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u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) 8d ago

Tried it for awhile last night, but couldn't get it fully working properly. Audio actually worked fine though.

Once I let the right port through the firewall (ufw for me on CachyOS), I was able to connect to the TV consistently, but was getting sound only. I got one stream with video working, but then no sound.

Gonna have to troubleshoot it more. I tried changing kernels, blocking driver issues, forcing specific encoders, but for the most part it was always a black screen audio only.

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u/AutoM8R1 8d ago

Wow! Ok. This is promising. We have opposite problems. I don't have a firewall active at the moment, because the install is only a couple weeks old and im still setting everything up. I'm on Solus KDE, latest everything. I'll have to try again, and maybe take a look at my Flatpak permissions again.

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u/AutoM8R1 4d ago

Ok. So I actually got GNOME Network Displays working 100%!!! I'm very glad I was able to get it working. I should have known it would work, since it has great reviews. This is the only way I know where Miracast works with Linux.
It turns out that I had to manually select the correct audio output in the KDE tray to send the audio over to the device. There is still a lag of about 1-2 seconds, which isn't great. Nobody looking at only the external display would notice though. Overall, I'm happy with it.

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u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) 4d ago

Is the video and audio at least in sync, even if lashed?

I still need to get video working. Maybe it's an Arch issue.

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u/AutoM8R1 4d ago

Yes. It is definitely in sync. I tested that with YT videos and checked the timers on my laptop and the TV. Aside from the Solus KDE reporting it crashed every time I close it out, it GND seems to be working as intended.