I absolutely loathe win11, so I turned to linux and have been trying to find a distro that would allow my surface pro 7 to work properly. I use this thing as a portable art station, so getting the pen and touch screen work perfectly is my first priority, and getting paint tool SAI 2 run properly the second (Krita works I know, but it’s like telling water colorist to switch to oil paints).
I run Mint on my extra laptop, but I can’t get SAI working properly so it’s out of the question. I tried Zorin OS since it’s said to work well with surface pro’s, and I really liked it and even got SAI running perfectly basically out of the box, but I could get both the touch screen and pen to work only barely even with the linux-surface-kernel.
I now have win10 back so I can keep drawing, but I’m searching for a distro that could work for what I need - and would be easy enough for a mint-level noob like me.
So, has anyone gotten surface pro’s touch stuff work perfectly with some distro or am I stuck with win10 until ESU runs out? Even the best answers I find searching online are basically “the touch works somewhat but I don’t need it anyway”
This isn’t a distro thing, it’s generally the Desktop Environment, though with the Surface devices, there is a custom kernel lots of people use that has some extra drivers for the rest of the hardware, so look for that. You can use it with any distro.
As far as the DE, Gnome has better general touch support over others right now, so it’s probably going to give you the experience you’re expecting. Every art app I’ve tried with a pen has great pressure support.
In recent tests that I’ve seen, KDE has better touchscreen and multitouch support. It’s long been thought that Gnome was gunning for the touchscreen market, but they got overtaken, because their release cycle is slower.
But I use a Wacom tablet with Gnome, and I agree that the pressure support is great.
I tried with the kernel, but it just makes the touch work barely with Zorin, so I’m trying to figure out would something else run it any better. And yeah, it seems people agree that gnome is the way to go
When it comes to Surface Pro tablets I find that going with this Kernel helps a lot:
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surfaceSeems that LTE and Camera isn’t working properly but that the rest works:
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#surface-tabletsYeah tried and failed, I get them working but not even close on the level good enough for art
Ah sorry, I see you mentioned the linux surface kernel in your Zorin OS text.
You could always keep using Windows 10 even after EOL and allow LAN access but forbid internet access for the Surface in your router. That would require you to save your art to some sort of network storage before using another device to upload it to the net though.Yeah… I might have to. Win11 is only the absolute last resort, since it’s such a garbage fire. It installed itself on the SP7 without my consent, and just kept getting worse and worse every update, until the machine barely worked without lagging. Insane that an os hogs something like 6GB ram just for being on, and even on a damn machine microslop made themselves
Just like 10, windows 11 reserves a lot of ram, but it’s not really using it. When you need more ram it will unload a lot of things. It’s just sometimes too damn slow at it, especially on a device like a surface which has pretty pokey hardware. (Despite on paper it supposedly being much better)
You can try those de bloat scripts. Instead of waiting for windows to unload the shit you can just stop it from loading in the first place. On a VM of mine it made a pretty big difference, but on my SP7 it seemed to not work(?) it didn’t seem to do much. I’m generally not a fan of those though because they tend to break a lot of things. Like one of them turns off hibernation which is a huge no no on modern standby devices.
I’ve not run those de-bloaters, but I checked one that scanned what could be done with 11, and I had managed to kill most of the bloat even without running it, but even that did not improve the performance. It even takes a lot of effort and needs to be repeated constantly, since the damn shit tries to install everything back with every update. Win10 is a bit more merciful in that regard as well, so despite “downgrading” it really feels like I upgraded this thing instead.
I’d really prefer something like Zorin, I got the memory consumption to 1,5 gb at it’s lowest when I tried intentionally, which is pretty impressive with the visuals I could still keep. I’d also rather not to have anything microslop-build, but sadly SP’s are still pretty much the only option available that’s small enough to really work as a tablet, has good enough pen sensitivity for drawing, but still works as a proper computer… I would never buy anything after SP9 though, it’s all some copilot infested shit.
Is yours an i5 model or an i7? Mine is an i5 and it’s worthless as soon as it gets hot. But my friend got an i7 model and it’s amazing what a fan can do. Just having any cooling makes a huge difference.
There’s 3D models for clips to strap a fan to the back of the machine and let me tell ya, it does wonders. They should have never shipped one of these without a fan. They thankfully fixed that on the SP8 and up, but that doesn’t help us much.
This is just i5, but I don’t really do much stuff that requires anything better. As long as SAI 2 and some basic stuff runs, it’s been enough for me. And yeah, the overheating really is a big issue if you try to do anything outside some very light usage. I do play minecraft with this sometimes, and that’s about the upper limit this thing can handle… it does still work well enough though, even if after some hours coretemp shows the temperatures get a bit high.
I definitely would not recommend this thing without an added fan. Well, I honestly wouldn’t really recommend any SPs with it either, unless you really need this specific combination of small/artsy enough/yet still computer.
I’ve had 0 issues running touchscreen and pen on Mint, and SAI can just run on bottles/wine, right?
https://github.com/TibixDev/sai2-guide
The solution on each distro is mostly going to be the same. Run sai in a bottle and edit the config.
Mint delivers a flatpak package of bottles, which is suboptimal, but can be fixed using https://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/1911/bottles-doesnt-work-on-linux-mint-because-its-a-flatpak
Tried and failed, I just can’t get it to work. I got the pressure working, but the cursor won’t focus properly and is all over the place, it’s something to do with the integrated touch screen somehow. Not with wine, not even with non-flatpak bottles :(
It might run on the SP7, but I just won’t risk an OS install without getting it work on some other touch screen mint first. I’ve considered trying zorin on this extra one too though, to see if it would work better with this touch screen, or is it just the SP that’s the problem.
Your exact surface pro isn’t there yet.
Switch to win 10 21h2 iot ltsc using massgrave and you can wait for linux support to get right till 2032.
That’s what I feared, oh well. Win10 it is for me then…
In my experience, Gnome is a lot better with touchscreens and pens than KDE Plasma (or any other desktop).
The Surface Pro 7 is old enough that it should be supported by any common distro.
The first one I’d try is Fedora, since they generally offer the “reference” implementation of Gnome.
But I don’t have any personal experience with the Surface Pro 7.I have used Pop! which is basically Ubuntu but very polished and customized to enhance what’s already there. But as others said it’s not strictly a distro thing it’s Desktop Environment and also the graphics system I’m probably not using the right terminology. But Wayland is very good with touchscreen and I’ve read that X11 has some support as well (?).
I’m coming at this from another angle, & your being stuck in an MS-Surface may break it, but please try UbuntuStudio, on something: it augments Ubuntu-family with an entire sea of fixes for creatives.
I’ve no idea how to get a kernel patched to work with such hardware, sorry.
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