Just putting out feelers, anyone here run Linux on a surface pro 4 or 5? What distro did you use, and how did it go?

Edit: I’ve pulled the trigger on a Surface Pro 4. I’ll make a new post in a week with my early impressions, which distro I’ve gone with, etc etc etc.

  • phx
    4·
    1 year ago

    I’ve had Surfaces up to the Pro 3, which all worked wonderfully on Linux. Also had a Surface Book which required some non-mainline kernel additions in order to use all the hardware (camera, touchscreen).

    The Pro’s lasted like champs. The book eventually ran into issues with the digitizer (non-OS related), was repaired, and got the same issue 8mo later after the warranty had run out.

    I was looking at a current generation SPro when I came across the Lenovo X12 on sale (+Rakuten). For half the price of a Pro6 I got more storage, RAM, and a more powerful CPU. The only thing it lacked versus the SPro was a microSD slot and dedicated video out (though USB-C hubs work for the latter).

    There were some initial issues with the soundcard and weirdness with storage going into RO mode periodically, but the sound has been fine in current Ubuntu/etc versions and a firmware update seems to have fixed the storage issues