Surface Linux

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This community is dedicated to discussing all things related to running Linux on Microsoft Surface devices. Whether you're a seasoned Linux user, a Surface enthusiast, or just getting started, this is the place to share your experiences, ask questions, and collaborate with the SurfaceLinux community.

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Newbie questions / Installing Linux on a Surface Pro 9 (feddit.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by sp3ctre@feddit.org to c/surfacelinux@lemmy.sdf.org

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Hey there folks!

First of all, let me say that I feel very honored to make the first post over here, and I predict a great future for this sub!

I am a privacy-focused guy, who likes the idea of having a truly free operating system, so I came across the idea of installing linux on my surface pro 9.

Here some general questions for the more experienced people, who already made it:

Is it a hassle to do this?
Do you miss some functionalities for you everyday life?
Are there things, what simply cannot be done anymore after installing linux?
Does the surface pen still work good enough?
Since I heard the camera is not supported for some surface models (like mine), is there hope, that it could be supported in the future?

In the long-term, I also plan to use it for university, so I want to make sure everything works well.

I guess this is it for now. I would be very happy hearing from you :).

~sp3ctre

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[–] aqua_cat@pawb.social 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

this is the project you are looking for in terms of support. for yours SP9 only thing not working is camera. As for the setup it looks to be just a packag you would intall and it would add a kernel and other fixes. As long as you follow instructions and choose a easy distro like Fedora or Ubuntu it should be easy enough.

[–] Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

I second this project. I used the manual and all the tips for my surface book 2 and it worked very well. Fedora was the best choice for me.

But still, next time I will try to install plain Fedora without this project. I feel like a lot of functions have already reached the standard kernel.

[–] Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

To answer your questions in my experience with my SB2:

was it a hassle? You could call it hassle, I had to figure some stuff out, as I was very new to Linux. But I enjoyed the journey and learned some stuff along the way.
I miss no functionalities. The camera looks a bit low quality, but I never use it, so it's fine for me. Of course the software choice is a bit smaller than on windows, but I always found a way with available open source software. Now I prefer my solutions to the point where I think of windows software way to constrained for my workflows.
pen works good. Thick, thin, eraser, ... Try it with krita or xournal++ (maybe a bit of configuration necessary, I don't remember)
I wouldn't count on a camera fix soon. Microsoft apperently uses very weird camera modules.

I wish I could go to university again, with my emacs/org-mode/org-roam setup I would document the crap out of those classes.

[–] sp3ctre@feddit.org 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for your reply! That's nice to hear, that it worked out for you.

The camera isn't that important for me because external cameras do exist. The gained privacy is probably worth it.