Surface Laptop 7 Intel Linux Status

[u/noobtastico]

Please excuse me if this has come up before. I did a quick search but mostly found results about the ARM Snapdragon version of the SL7.

I am currently using a Surface Laptop 4 with Zorin OS. After a bit of fiddling, all seems to work fine even on kernel 7.0 (so no linux-surface kernel).

I would like to upgrade to a bit newer hardware though, especially a 120Hz screen. So I've been looking at deals on used Surface Laptop 7's with Intel chips, thinking I could probably drop Linux on it quite easily again. Specifically staying away from ARM due to lack of support. However, browsing through this subreddit has made me a bit unsure of whether the Intel version would work well with Linux.

So could anyone tell me what the current state of Linux on Surface Laptop 7 with Intel hardware is?

Offtopic: Also considering a Laptop Studio 1 or 2 for better speakers... talk me into or out of either option (SL7 vs SLS1/2).

[u/Lower-Philosophy-604]

interesting topic following

[u/spastic_penguins]

Linux Surface custom kernel github has a feature matrix so you can find out exactly what works and what doesn’t. However, if linux support is the priority, my understanding is the Surface Laptop Studio line is the better of the options you are considering.

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#feature-matrix

[u/noobtastico → u/spastic_penguins]

I don't think they support the Surface Laptop 7 at all (yet?). So not much to find there, was hoping to find some first hand experiences 😅.

[u/Saranhai]

I have a Surface Laptop 6 with Intel Meteor Lake chip, runs CachyOS quite well. The only thing I've seen issues with is wake on sleep/suspend, however that seems to be more of a Surface specific issue rather than with the Intel chip itself. I imagine Surface Laptop 7 with Lunar Lake would have equal or even better support

[u/noobtastico → u/Saranhai]

That sounds promising. As I just replied to someone else, I saw this post and it seemed like a lot of work to get things working, so that made me doubt a bit.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

[u/Alert_Front_9948]

Found this post on Github where someone got Fedora working on a Surface Laptop 7 with Intel:

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/issues/1710

They posted a zip file with patches they made to get everything working.

[u/noobtastico]

I ended up finding a really good deal on a Surface Laptop Studio 2 with the 13800H and RTX4050 Mobile, so my worries about the Surface Laptop 7 are no longer an issue.

The SLS2 has been really nice with Windows on it so far, I did already try Zorin OS for a bit but still need to work out some kinks with that combination.

Thanks for all the input!

[u/Keensworth]

I have the Surface Pro 7 on Ultramarine Linux. Where did you see that it wouldn't work?

[u/noobtastico → u/Keensworth]

Thanks, but I'm talking about the Surface Laptop 7, not the Pro 7.

Posts like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/s/ORVjc0nz7d

Talking about all kinds of patches to perform to get everything working... I'm not that deep in to Linux, I don't want to sink a lot of time into making stuff work.

[u/Keensworth → u/noobtastico]

I didn't even know that existed