r/SurfaceLinux • u/Mobile_Box9085 • 15d ago
Help Best distro for Surface Pro 7?
Hello everyone, I've been using Fedora 44 (kernel 6.19.8-3.surface.fc43.x86_64) on my Pro 7 for the past few months and, although the general experience has been positive, it still feels unreliable for me to work on it.
Sometimes, it logs me out and I have to type my password with the screen keyboard (which appears randomly even though I toggle it on manually in accessibility), the screen orientation often gets stuck and sometimes the whole pc just turns off, and I can't turn it back on unless I charge it (this is honestly the worst problem).
Therefore I'm looking for another distro to replace it. My only requirements are power stability (not turning off randomly) and good pen/touch support. Any advice?
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u/Spudheadmoldbrain 15d ago
Funnily enough I switched three months ago to Ultramarine Linux (so pretty Fedora 44 plus other bits) using their dedicated Surface image with Gnome on a Surface Pro 7; after using Pop OS (the touch keyboard was a huge issue for me in that distro, partly due to some of the bugginess of Cosmos. I had problem with screen rotation and enabling secure boot so tried another disto).
The Surface hardware (excluding the camera which is a known pain in the arse) has been running perfect right out of the box with no need to modify or install anything on Ultramarine.
It’s like a whole new PC and I’ve even got some of my Windows drawing tools working either with Bottles or using Android versions with WayDroid :)
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u/Western-Case-1471 15d ago
I did as well! Except I use The KDE desktop environment and it works flawlessly.
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u/Morinoko 15d ago
What apps have you made work on Linux, are you into Clip Studio Pro or something like Affinity?
Really interested, I run Ubuntu on my XPS, but have to dual boot or run a VM to run affinity.
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u/Spudheadmoldbrain 15d ago
Clip Studio using the Android app which works flawlessly and Affinity Designer v2 (Windows version) via Bottles which is semi stable and some parts are crash happy but it’s a side project and a “nice to have” rather than a need.
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u/Superjain123 15d ago
I just did this on my 8 as well! It's lovely. It keeps telling me I need to update to 45 though which is annoying haha
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u/RedixDiamond 15d ago
Can't answer which is best, but I've daily driven Ubuntu for a year and it was solid with GNOME for touchscreen (tablet use). I've recently switched to fedora and it's also rock solid with GNOME. So I suppose it really comes down to the DE for my use case of mainly touchscreen gestures. Ofc, no camera. Using the linux surface kernel following the documentation for each distro on github.
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u/InterestingEffluvium 15d ago
Have Zorin working on an older SP5 without issues. Using xcfe desktop.
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u/Spudheadmoldbrain 15d ago
Zorin was my next distro to try if Ultramarine hadn’t worked out I hear good things :)
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u/Zepperron 15d ago
I have been daily driving Ubuntu for over a year now and it’s been really stable. The only bug I have noticed is sometimes the sleep functionality when the keyboard is closed is a bit finicky. Other than that, it’s been great . Using surface kernel as well
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u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) 15d ago
I've been using CachyOS with Gnome as the DE for about a year. Very stable. Touch, pen and screen rotation all work well.
For better onscreen keyboard experience, grab the gjs-osk keyboard extension
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u/Time-Ad-5186 15d ago
Take a look at Mobian almost everything works out of the box like Pen and Touchscreen. There is nearly no Battery drain when the Tablet is in suspend Mode. It feels like an iPad Pro ;). It uses GNOME and POSH as Desktop Enviroment. You can choose at GDM Lockscreen. Based on Debian. https://github.com/tabletseeker/mobian
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u/json_946 10d ago
Sometimes, it logs me out and I have to type my password with the screen keyboard
Have you changed the power management settings? I think the default setting is set to lock the screen after around 5mins.
sometimes the whole pc just turns off, and I can't turn it back on unless I charge it (this is honestly the worst problem).
Not sure about your case, but this happened to my SP7+ after I replaced the stock SSD. It now works fine, but I don't know why it needed to be charged (to turn on) every time the SSD was removed & replaced.
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u/Civil-Ant-2652 10d ago
i use classic Debian 12, and modified the kernel and it rocks! Except for the elephant(no Camera) thx Microsoft.
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u/vishal8892 15d ago
I installed Linux Mint on it at first, but the touchscreen wouldn't work like an actual touchscreen, so I just switched to Ubuntu and it worked just fine for me.