I found a good deal on a Surface 3 and have a 300 dollar gift card to blow. I need a mobile laptop for work and productivity.
My only concern is upgrading storage and putting Ubuntu on it, there's an old TekSyndicate video on putting Linux on one but was hoping it was easier now.
I'm on the fence really, I care nothing for touch screen that much and enjoy classic laptops, all I've ever really used is ThinkPads.
Please help me
I put Ubuntu on my original surface. Wasn't too difficult but the onscreen keyboard is not good.
Also the screen is tiny. It functions as a tablet but uses battery like a laptop. I don't find it particularly useful, I can't condone purchasing one.
I'm always turning to my 17” laptop.
Surface 3 or Surface Pro 3? Huge difference.
Honestly, if you're concerned about that, I wouldn't do it. The Surface (as a platform) is not built to be modified or have Linux put on it. You can do it, but I won't say it's flawless.
The ONLY benefit (in my opinion) to the surface is the form factor and the touch screen. If you're not interested in that, I'd go out and get an xps 13/xps 15. You'll have much better performance and you can upgrade storage/battery easily.
@Wendell, if I remember correctly, you use a surface on a regular basis, maybe you could chime in here?
Would be looking at the Pro 3, they're pretty cheap right now and work is hitting me with the need for a laptop.
If I didn't have to run Windows or Linux programs I'd just get a chromebook but that wont work.
Last I heard the Surface 3 was working but required a custom kernel/modules?
I have no idea if the patches were upstreamed by now, nor can I find any current/recent docs
except for some youtube videos and fedora based guides.
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/stephenjust/kernel-surface3/packages/
https://stephenjust.ca/fedora-surface3.html
But what I can find is that apparently there exists a ppa for ubuntu 16.04?
https://launchpad.net/~tigerite/+archive/ubuntu/kernel
Where you can then simply make things work via
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tigerite/kernel
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-surfaceNote this will likely have you using a year old unpatched kernel.
If anything I would give arch/or recent fedora build a go and see if enough stuff is working. But I suspect not.
Self employed? If not, make them pay for it.
Contractor, basically same thing.
True. I'm sorry 
As far as @catsay's comment, sounds like the surface will work with Ubuntu, but I would caution against trying Arch or Fedora. They require significantly more work to get things working properly.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microsoft_Surface_Pro_3
I'm going to try to convince you to go the other way and buy either a used Surface Pro 3 / Surface Pro 2. I don't know how you'd use the gift card on eBay, but perhaps you could sell it. The Surface 3 has a cherry trail Atom in it. Now, I've had an cherry trail tablet before and while it was much better than the ARM-based Surface and Surface 2, it was still horrendously disappointing. For very minor tasks it is adequate but it suffers at everything heavier than a youtube video.
I recently picked up a Surface Pro 2 for less than $300 and it is a fast, capable machine with a very respectable amount of power for its size but with good battery life to match. I'm very happy with it.
If you don't really want/need a touch screen, a Lenovo X220 or T420 would be a good option as those can be had for as little if not less money
Chances are just that with this hardware if anything will have the stuff in the kernel it'll be arch or fedora, everything about this says: is going to require work.
He's using a surface pro 3, so I'm assuming that is the one that uses the Intel Core chips.
This. I'm surprised OP is looking at surface when he's familiar with thinkpads. If I had $500 to burn, I'd probably get a T420, upgrade the panel to 1080p, upgrade to 16GB ram, and replace HDD with 500GB SSD.
Yeah, but I find installing a PPA and packages to be easier than pulling from AUR every time.
Ah, ok, didn't read the thread properly. My bad.
@_hill If you're looking at the SP3, so long as you understand the differences it is going to have from an actual laptop, I think you're going to be very happy indeed with it. Wendell has an extremely in-depth video about it so that you know what to expect. It has the same functionality as a laptop and the same capabilities, but the way that you handle it and use it is going to be ever so slightly different. If that appeals to you or you're okay with that, go for it, I think you'll like it. If not, old business-grade laptops (T420 as mentioned) will be a great alternative as well.
You guys are right, it's a great deal for a Pro 3 right now but i think sticking with ThinkPad is the way to go...
It's what I know and they've all worked great.
Glad we were able to help.
I've used a SP3 for IT work before. It was absolutely horrendous when it comes to anything outside of outlook or a terminal.
I've quite a bit of experience with thinkpads and in terms of build quality, laptops from other brands that can match the Sandy Bridge and older models are hard to come by imo. The older thinkpads I have, you could beat someone to death with them and go straight back to your spreadsheets.
Good luck m8, glad we could help 
I have some old ones laying around but I'd rather just say fuck it and get the t420 you were talking about looks good has had an i5 and is cheap. Thanks for steering me clear from a bad decision.
@wendell uses a surface book, major difference in quality, but his usefulness in answering questions shouldn't be understated.
version 3 works pretty much without issue on any decently up to date distro.
Very nice to see that the patches have all made it upstream into the release kernels.
Do new Lenovo ThinkPads still have the proprietary HDDs? I've got a 1tb laptop HD I hoped to use.