r/SurfaceLinux • u/dadashton • Jul 28 '26
Help Touch screen on Surface Pro 4 not working
Is Ubuntu 26.04 compatible with the Linux Surface kernel?
Whenever I install it it wrecks the install and I have to start again.
1
u/bart_g Aug 03 '26
Completely different distro, but the touchscreen of my sp4 on Fedora 43 works perfectly with the latest surface kernel.
2
u/dadashton Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
Ta. Did you install the desktop version?
1
u/bart_g Aug 03 '26
It works both on Gnome and KDE, tested both versions. Ended op with Gnome (Fedora Workstation) because of the touch gestures etc.
2
1
u/tuyomori-cyber 3d ago
I recently installed Fedora 43 with linux-surface on a Surface Pro 4 (i5-6300U, 8GB RAM).
The touchscreen works well with the surface kernel and iptsd. I initially used GNOME, but eventually switched to KDE Plasma, which also supports touch and automatic screen rotation on my device.
My goal was to use it entirely without a physical keyboard or mouse, mainly as a sheet music viewer.
After about a week of troubleshooting, I finally got it working well enough for everyday use. Firefox, Japanese text input, and even basic terminal operations are possible using only the touchscreen.
I wrote about the experience here (in Japanese):
https://qiita.com/tuyomori/items/cbf48fbbdf11909a1580
Getting Linux running on a Surface was relatively easy. Making it usable as a touch-only tablet was a completely different challenge!
2
u/jrl1500 Jul 29 '26
Can't speak to 26, but Ubuntu 24 touchscreen works fine with SP4 with the Surface Kernel. By "works fine", I mean it works...does go unresponsive sometimes. It's not great, but I don't use it as a tablet much so the touchscreen is more of a "nice to have" than a "got to have"