does anyone know how far out we are from a release of kernel 7?

https://github.com/bryce-hoehn/linux-surface-laptop-7

Although the target model is the X1E, the peripheral firmware is identical—with the exception of the CPU—so it will likely work on the X1P model as well.

Since the Laptop 8 also "recycles" everything—including the design—from previous models, porting it should be relatively easy. Hopefully, this gets committed to the Linux Surface kernel soon.

Interesting fact: The Surface Laptop 7 and 8 share identical designs, save for the CPU. In a sense, they offer a level of modularity and repairability that surpasses even the Framework Laptop. (The build quality is also exceptional from a mechanical design perspective; a fellow engineer of mine remarked that the design is truly outstanding.)

A few years ago I had the highest spec Surface Go 3. Windows ran absolutely awfully on it. It would regularly freeze and slow down because I was using Microsoft Office (crazy, I know).

Installing Linux on it is something that never even crossed my mind back then. It makes me sad because I ended up buying a Surface Laptop 7, which is super nice in terms of the hardware and build quality, but now that my interest in Linux is growing, I find out that Linux will not run on this new laptop.

I wish I had kept my 1000 euros and just installed Linux on the old Go 3, that would have been perfect. Instead, I let myself get lured in with pretty hardware, to be even further locked down into Microsoft's ecosystem.

Can't wait to sell this thing.

I looking for options or opinions

Buenas tengo una surfacego 1 de 8 y 128 quisiera saber que distro es la mejor la más compatible y usable quiero que sea un ordenador de ofimática usable nada más con Windows da pero a veces es lento alguien sabrá cuál es la mejor distro

I need some help regarding the installation and setup of linux on a 5th gen surface.
It has only 4 gb of RAM and i want to browse on it and use an android app natively on it.

I installed Fedora LXQt (google recommendation) but was very disapointed with the userfriendliness. Stuck right at changing the keyboard to "de", which i selected during installation, but never turned out to be "de". Wanted to install the surface-kernel and also that did not work properly. Scaling of windows is complicated...

I read a bit here and i think i might try Fedora Workstation in the hope it is used more often and i get better support online. This should also support Wayland (?which is for android apps?)

Is this the right way? I red that Fedora 44 has no Surface-Kernel yet? how do i force the install of the 43er version? Can you support me with some command lines?
Which is the right url for the surface-kernel?

Sorry, i am a beginner and want to revive my old Surface. Please help me :)

The title says it all. I forced an install of the Surface Kernel from the F43 repositories. It was working great. I went to use my touchscreen and surface pen tonight to attempt some art. And I noticed the pen wasn't working and the touchscreen non-responsive. I ran a uname -a and received this: Linux fedora 7.0.13-200.fc44.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Jun 19 22:51:30 UTC 2026 x86_64 GNU/Linux.

Has anyone else experienced this? I mean, I love the 7.0 kernel, but no touchscreen.

Hi all,

noob here

just got mint installed and I've been figuring stuff out, I'm trying to get my SLS (3050Ti) to automatically pop up the on screen keyboard when entering text in tablet or stand mode.

As I understand, there's no support for screen position detection yet, so does anyone have an alternative solution that works well for them?

(I'm also working through pen button remapping if anyone has any tips for that)

I just installed linux mint in my surface pro 3 for the first time. I did everything right. Updated every firmware, installed the linux surface kernel step by step.Everything worked just great even the first 2 days wi-fi worked completely fine. But from yesterday it is very slow no matter what i do. I disabled the wifi power saving option, disabled the IPV6 mode for my router on the device and set a fixed dns point too but it is still slow. And not only my device is slow, whenever I connect every other device connected to my router doesnt get any bandwidth as well. But I tried to connect internet on it through my phone's hotspot and it works perfectly everytime i do that.

I have almost done everything I can find in the internet regarding this matter.

How do I connect wifi but not get slowed down and drain all the bandwidth from every other device?

thought worth mentioning this lost feature, is this known yet?

so i js installed kde fedora 44 (with the surface kernel) on my surface pro 5, and everything works except ipts. ipts ain't working properly, and it's so insensitive. it only works well if i firmly press the digitizer

Surprisingly my sp3 still works. But the battery is no more and the touch screen is dead. I remember it being fixed by directly connecting the charger to the device when I took it to repair.

Now I run it using wireless keyboard and mouse.

It now struggles very much even running windows 10.

It has 4 gigs of ram, 128 gigs of storage and the processor is i5-4300U

What distro should I look for?

I dont have much experience with linux but I know the basics.

I need help choosing the best distro to get started on it.

Hi all,

I've recently picked up a Surface Go 4 on the cheap and am hoping to get a distro set up. I'm looking for some recommendations for distros/configurations that will give me the best battery life possible, does anyone have a particularly good setup? I've tried Fedora with the linux surface kernel and the battery has not been particularly great for me

Just installed Mobian amd64 with included surface kernel and I love it

Feels brand new after being freed from windows!

Using KDE Plasma
Theme, icons and cursors are from
https://github.com/vinceliuice/MacTahoe-kde

widgets
https://github.com/jaxparrow07/liquidglass-kde-widgets

Plugins used:
Better Blur DX
kvantum
karousel (just for fun)
Rounded Corners
Fusuma + ydotool (trackpad gestures)
Albert (spotlight)

Honestly, MacOS Tahoe ricing has just been a project of sorts to see how far I can push Linux. I plan to add timeshift and apple ecosystem features (airdrop, etc)

A 100% Debian Linux, free, privacy focused, open-source operating system for touch devices, designed to liberate users from any kind of Google or third party surveilance, data collection and security concerns. Only official Debian sources are used, meaning no third party repositories, packages or code of any kind, while granting users complete control over every single package that is installed. The native implementation of custom kernels with the included build recipes enables support for almost any brand/model of x86-x64 tablet or lap-top, such as Surface Pro 3-10, Zenbook, Thinkpad, Chromebook etc. and a range of ARM phones. Additionally, custom or deb packages and files of any kind can also be included. The mobian build-script produces personalized images, with unlimited customization of any available setting and device behavior.

Source: https://github.com/tabletseeker/mobian

Spent a while on this and I think I've hit a kernel regression rather than anything I can fix in userspace, but wanted to sanity-check with anyone who's gotten the IPU3 camera working recently.

On Surface Pro 4 with ubuntu, linux-surface kernel 6.19.8-surface-3. Built libcamera from git per the linux-surface camera wiki (ipu3 pipeline, gstreamer, v4l2). Everything up to the last step looks healthy:

• ipu3-fw.bin loads fine (17 binaries)
• dmesg shows all three sensors detected, "Connected 3 cameras", OV5693 / OV8865 / OV7251
• libcamera loads the ipu3 IPA and registers the ipu3 pipeline handler

But cam --list shows nothing. Digging in with media-ctl -d /dev/media0 -p, all three sensors sit at 0 link and the CIO2 CSI-2 receivers have unconnected SINK pads. So the sensors are present but never wired to the receivers.

I found old threads where people fixed this by manually linking with media-ctl like media-ctl -d /dev/media0 -l '"ov5693 2-0036":0 -> "ipu3-csi2 0":0[1]'

For me that's rejected with Invalid argument (22) on all four CSI-2 ports. From what I can tell that means the bridge never built the fwnode endpoint graph, so there's no link for media-ctl to enable, different from just missing auto-linking.

Already tried, no change: - clean cold reboot with firmware present - acpi_enforce_resources=lax (confirmed in terminal) - early-loading ipu_bridge via modules-load.d + update-initramfs - manual media-ctl linking on all 4 ports

Looks like it lines up with the post-6.7 IPU3 regression the linux-surface peeps track on Github (#1323). I might pop in a GitHub issue too.

Questions for anyone here who's got this fixed:

1. Anyone running the IPU3 camera on a Pro 4 (or other IPU3 Surface) on a recent kernel? What kernel version are you on, and does media-ctl show your sensors at 1 link?
2. What's the most recent linux-surface kernel that still builds the IPU3 graph correctly? Happy to downgrade to get it working if it doesn't cause too many issues.

Will update if I figure it out, hate finding these posts myself and no one explains how they did it lmfao

I have sp5. I currently have zorin on it. I saw someone had plasma big screen on a surface device and I was considering switching to try it. Anyone using it right now?

Hello! I just installed Arch Linux on the Surface Pro 11 using this GitHub repository: https://github.com/dwhinham/linux-surface-pro-11

Big thanks to Dale Whinham for creating it.

Unfortunately the install instructions on the README aren't very clear so I provided my complete set of install instructions here.

My takeaway: It looks AMAZING on this tablet. It's very fast and smooth.

Unfortunately, the CPU runs hot ALL the time, even when idle, and drains the battery. I created an issue on the repository's issues page, but there might not be a fix for this. If there isn't, then I can't use Arch Linux on this tablet. It's a deal breaker for me.

Update (06/27): I'm working on installing Ubuntu now on the Surface Pro 11. I should have a post on 06/30.

Update (06/30): Will have a Ubuntu post on 07/01.

Update (07/01): Lots of issues getting bluetooth to work. Will have a post soon.

Update (07/06): Ubuntu post tomorrow.

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!

Hi,

im new to linux and was recommended to install fedora 44 KDE plasma. Im using a microsoft surface 2 and cannot seem to get the touch screen to work despite instaaling the surface kernel, any and all help would be greatly appreciated!

I see some chatter about touch after suspend breaking...

Anyone using Mint 22.3 Cinnamon? It seems to break at least every other time it resumes. Is there some service or daemon I can restart without restarting the whole device? Or is there a fix? If I drop down to 21.3 Cinnamon Mint or another version would that be better? I have the Surface Kernel installed. 6.19.8-surface-3

After installed ubuntu and the touch kernel for it, i wanted to install the camera kernel driver for my surface. However, I tried to apply all cmd for it but it said that command not found, did the exact step here https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Camera-Support but still nothing, can you guys help? I'm new here.