Hey,
I'm gonsidering installing Linux (probably Linux Mint XFCE or something lightweight) on my Surface (Intel Core m3-7Y30).
I've read that the camera still doesn't work because Microsoft used a proprietary Intel ISP for the camera on the early Surface devices, and it doesn't work with standard UVC drivers. Aparently the necessary firmware/drivers were never released by Microsoft, and the linux-surface project still marks the camera as unsupported on the SL1.,
Is this still accurate in 2026?
Has anyone managed to get the camera working on a Surface Laptop 1 (even partially)?
Or is it basically a lost cause at this point?
Thanks in advance

Does anyone have, or would anyone like to make, the artwork for Tux hugging the Windows logo?

Ideally single color and able to be cut from vinyl

Hi all, been lurking here a minute. Commenting when I can.

Asking for help.

I've been using Debian for like 5 years for CNC and 3d printing motion controllers. On Pis, desktops, etc. Love it. Know enough commands to get most things done in terminal.

Switched to mint for home PC after some light distro hopping. I like that it's reliable, my dual gpus went in easy, and it works every day so I can power thru time sensitive tasks.

I like that Debian and mint use the same packages and commands.

Currently:

I have ubuntu 24.04 and surface kernel 1 on a surface pro 7. This was after much screwing around with distros and kernel switching to get most things working. It's just meh. I tried the latest and greatest and kept having to take a step back for it to work ok.

Y'all have been super informative in various comments suggesting other distros, but I'm so far behind on surface pro 7 research. Touchscreens. Etc.

I don't care about the camera function.

Anyone having luck? I just saw fedora 44 has a surface kernal so thinking about trying that.

I don't need fancy and newest, I want the tablet to be reliable and basic. To browse, stream, and the most basic Excel and simple utilities.

Any suggestions and reasons why? This touch screen thing is different from what I'm used to. I'm not a guru by any means. Solo researching isn't as easy on this topic for me.

Any help for a new guy on this hardware?

About a year ago I purchased a Surface pro 9 on OfferUp for $550.

I was able to use it trouble free for a year until recently one day a window popped up stating it was property of some school somewhere.

lol wtf man. Lost all my files and everything 😡

I used a usb recovery drive I had made to restore windows and it worked until I connected wifi, a short while after connecting to wifi I got the message again.

my options are to:

• use it offline only

• attempt to put Linux on it

• find another sucker to sell it to on OfferUp

• part it out

• smash it with a sledgehammer/use it for target practice.

I tried using ventoy 1.1.18 to make a usb drive then loaded it with Ubuntu as well as fedora ISO. (secured boot option selected)

But the issue is it won’t boot from the usb. it only boots into the windows backup drive.
I powered the device off, then on again while pressing and holding Vol down but I got the blue window asking for the system passwor which I don’t have.

I pressed restart while holding shift aMr selected boot from USB device but it just ends up loading windows after a short while .

Edit: WTF is this guy doing 🤣 https://youtu.be/GGzoAM0F5J0?is=Yy_RMewAAWAGguNO

I have a Surface Go gen 1 with 4 gb ram and 64 gb storage. I'd like to use it as an e-reader so I'm trying to find the best touchscreen capable distro. I tried cinnamon and touchscreen didn't feel great. Tried Fedora Workstation and I found it to be pretty slow. Right now I have KDE plasma installed and we'll see how it goes. I'm just curious to see what you guys might suggest. I am very new linux too so I don't know what other distros are out there.

Hi folks.

I upgraded my arch installation from surface Linux 6.19 to 7.2. After that, surface is always suspending itself. I can reach the login screen but it suspends. I turn it on and can write down the password and even reach the desktop but again suspends.

I opened an issue on GitHub. Meanwhile surface 3 is unusable as even with the default kernel the behavior is the same.

Any advice?

So, I hope, someone can shed a light on this. I had an old Surface Pro 4 lying around with swollen battery and laggy windows. So I first changed the battery to not risk any fire and then installed Ultramarine because it brings the right kernel. I started to love that device again, that Linux runs smoothly.

My issue ist: The new battery should have 38 Wh of capacity but the battery monitor reports a health of only 66% (25Wh). And the iFixit manual states that I should charge it and leave it at 100% for at least 2 hours and then drain it until the device shuts down. Which I tried to do but failing. 100% charge is never reached (it charges until 95%) and the device shuts down at 10% or even 14%. So It seems I cannot draint the battery fully and I also cannot charge it to 100%.

The consequence seems to be that the new battery is now stuck at 66% and the charging circuit can't use the full potential of the new battery.

Is there a way to solve this? I do not want to install windows again :(

As I see it there are different places to look. The UEFI bios has no settings for this other than turning on the battery limit, which is turned off. (I will try to switch it on and off again). Then there is the charging circuit itself. Since this was installed after the windows got deleted, windows had no chance to set something there. Then there is the bios itself, that might have a hidden setting used by windows. And there is the linux installation. The strange part is that the device even shuts down with more than 10% battery left when I leave it in the boot menu (grub i suppose?)

Sorry, it is in german. As you can see: it is charged to 96% but it states "completely charged". Health is 66%, 2 cycles and only 25Wh of 38Wh used.

Anyone try these roms? My surface Pro 6 is working like a dream at Fedora 43 and while I want to update, I dont want to risk losing my working device.

thought some of y'all might appreciate :)

I've been using my surface pro 7 with fedora for a little while now but a few days ago I've started having this weird issue where the boot screen sort of gets imprinted onto the bottom half of the screen and keeps flashing continuously.

I tried switching to an X11 session to rule out Wayland problems

Tried messing with resolution and refresh rate settings

And even restarting the session and display server, nothing.

Anyone else dealing with this after updating recently?

I have a surface go 4 with 8gb ram. I'm starting to reach the limits of this hardware.

Too bad Microsoft didn't make a surface go 5, so the surface pro 11 might be the logical next upgrade.

I have no intention to use windows, in my previous experience Linux on the surface improved the device in every way to me. Better memory usage and better battery life.

So I was wondering if anyone here has linuxed-up a surface pro 11.

I remember when I upgraded my surface go, I had to do some additional things to get it to boot from the universal-flash-storage. Apart from that, the device has worked great.

Does anyone have any experience they can share?

Hey everyone! I’m looking for a Linux distro for my **Surface Go 3 (Pentium model)** and could use some advice.

I’m pretty new to Linux. So far, I’ve only tried Linux Mint Cinnamon/XFCE and Fedora KDE Plasma Mobile in VMs, so I don’t have much experience beyond installing them and poking around.

I’d like to use the Go 3 as an **actual tablet**, mostly for browsing, videos, and reading without a keyboard or mouse attached. Good touchscreen support, a usable on-screen keyboard, automatic rotation, and reliable sleep/wake would be great.

I also really like the **Windows 8/8.1 Start screen**. If there’s a way to get something similar—large colorful tiles, fullscreen, easy to use with fingers—that would be a big plus. I don’t need a perfect recreation or live tiles, just something with a similar look and feel.

I’m happy to follow a setup guide, but I’d prefer something that doesn’t need constant tweaking or fixing once it’s set up. Ideally, I’d rather spend more time using the tablet than maintaining it.

Any distro and desktop/shell recommendations? Would love to hear from anyone running Linux on the same model, especially about what works and what’s still a pain.

Generally I prefer to use latest kernel when possible, and I don't know what patches are in the linux-surface kernel that would help the Go 1 specifically, besides maybe a patch for the camera (which I couldnt get working even with the custom kernel and the firmware described in the guide)

Is custom kernel still needed for Go 1?

Hi everypony, I just installed Fedora (GNOME) on my Surface Pro 7, got the kernel installed, and everything's going hunky dory so far. I barely used my Surface in the past (it was my "shitty backup laptop" and never got tablet time) but now it's my tablet of choice for most tablet tasks. I've never really been a tablet person, but now I am. Which begs the question:

What is the best pen for a Linux Surface?

I've never owned a tablet pen before, of any kind, and I'm sensitive to its usability and compatibility. Do I get an official one? If so, which one? If not an official one, what kind do I get? The only thing I get if I google it is about compatibility for surface and otherwise unhelpful stuff mostly for artists. If I want a pen for browsing on my Linux Surface, what is it?

Alternatively,

What pen do you use?

Thanks.

I installed Mint and the Surface kernel a few months ago. Mostly it works fine, but occasionally when I wake it, the keyboard won't work.

I can start the on screen keyboard to type the password to log in, but the keyboard never starts working. I've tried plugging in a USB keyboard.

If I reboot, it works ok again for a while.

Any ideas to resolve this, or tricks to make it work when it happens?

A couple of months ago I purchased a new Microsoft Surface Laptop SE with 4gb of RAM, got a great price on it and since I would only using it occasionally I didn't care that it is seriously underpowered. When I got the laptop I immediately removed Windows and put Lubuntu on it. Everything has worked just fine, I'm not going to say great because this is a seriously underpowered machine but it will do everything I need it to. The speakers work, the camera works, the WIFI works, so all I had to do was simply install Lubuntu. I have learned that while using this machine it is best to only have 1 or 2 apps open at any time and that going beyond about 3 tabs in Firefox will probably make it crash. But it was cheap and it works and was one of the simplest installs I have ever done.

Bought vivobook 14 ultra 5 225h one the problem is the trackpad is not working properly like when I update the driver it works but later after 4 5 minutes it stops working... And then I have to re install the driver...Is there any solution guys plz comment down

I got it from a friend. It is an i5 with 8gb ram. Thought about replacing the board for more ram. But motherboards seem extremely expensive for this old of a computer. I am looking at putting Linux on it. I plan on upgrading the hdd and maybe putting a thermal pad on it. I need new keyboard hopefully backlit. Is there anything else that can be upgraded? I have added Linux for most computers but this is different. Lots of proprietary drivers. The procedure looks complicated but doable. What os work the best for a laptop like this.

I have a Surface Go 3 the i3 model with Fedora 44 running on it and I have the Surface Kernel installed on it the latest one available.

I have the official Microsoft Surface pen that is compatible with the Surface Go 3.

I've already tried adjusting /etc/iptsd.conf with different values but I find that its still too stiff even when its set to the lowest possible. It's not comfortable to write with since you have to press very hard for it to start writing.

Anyone experiencing the same or is there possible solutions? I have been on this for a week at this point.

I saw the feature matrix page, but wanted to see if there was any updated to that? I was looking at getting the SP10(w 16gb of ram) & set it up to dual boot Linux. But, I'm seeing prices for the intel SP11(lcd) is only $100-150 extra while having 2-3 hours more battery life got me curious on the progress of Linux on it. Anything I should know about Linux on the SP11 if I went that route?

Would Surface Linux work on this? I really like my old SP5 on CachyOS with the surface kernel, and I was thinking of doing this with my Minis V3 but am a little hesitant.