Linux Distro for Surface Pro 3

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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I’ve got a Surface tab laying about which I pretty much just use for reading comics a, bit of web browsing, and occasionally I play some games on it.

I have been thinking about installing Linux on it to give it a new lease of life, but unsure what distro offers the best touch screen experience? I don’t own a typecover so will be using the on-screen keyboard to type.

The Windows 8.1 metro interface, although badly received on the desktop, is actually very good on tablets. Is there a desktop environment as-good or there abouts on Linux?

Does anyone have any experience with running Linux on this device in particular?

Any advice/experience/recommendations appreciated! :slight_smile:

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Its not really about distro, its more about what desktop environment you use. Gnome is apparently fairly decent, you could give it a try. KDE has a touch screen version, im not sure on the current state of it.

You’ll want to read this https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/7kazwp/current_state_of_surfaceseries_devices/

it is pretty much he definitive give to what does and doesn’t work.

Support is better on ditros with newer kernels, Fedora, OpenSUSE tumbleweed, latest Ubuntu (18.something)

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Manjaro or Solus for the linux desktop. (for extended gaming support) Steam native runtime on arch or steam integration tool on solus) Both are rolling release and pretty bleeding edge if you want them to be

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If you use it as a laptop then sure, Linux will be fine. Battery life might be an issue.

If you use the touch functionality, I would look into ChromeOS, which also supports Android apps these days. Hardware support is iffy, though. Most likely your best choice for touch is ultimately going to be Windows 10.

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Thanks there is a lot of info in that link. Has me wondering if I should just stick with Windows.

How good is the Budgie DE for touch devices?

I haven’t considered ChromeOS, I will give it a look. I downgraded from Windows 10 because I found the interface was worse for tablets than Windows 8.1.

Perhaps I will boot a few live USB’s and see how they work for me.

Thanks all for your input :+1:

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The support should be there (have not tried it) The solus site says:
Solus Budgie
A feature-rich, luxurious desktop using the most modern technologies.
https://solus-project.com/download/

And since it’s rolling, it should have even better support. I would say try it out and see if you like it

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Tried to boot Solus and Fedora from USB but get the error message "Boot_main() failed!" and "efi_main() Failed!"

Anyone know how to get around this? I’ve found a few people post this problem in various other forums, but nobody seems to have the answer.

EDIT:

Ok… so it seems this issue was lack of storage space. I uninstalled a heap of programs and it now boots from USB just fine. Time to try out some distros!

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I found that only Fedora had sound, but the touch screen was terrible. No scrolling. Tried Deepin and the scrolling touch screen worked but no sound. So I installed Fedora 29, and downloaded the Deepin desktop environment and I had both sound and a good working touch screen. Had to google how to fix the WiFi dropping but didn’t take long to fix. All great now.

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Cool, might try the Deepin DE. I’ve tried a few distro’s and environments but not really been happy with them. Thinking of just going back to Windows 8.1. Will give Deepin a shot first though!

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I am about to do the same thing. Does anyone know if it’s necessary to have windows in order to update the firmware on Surface Pro 3? Or can I just update it through Ubuntu?

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I’ve ended up going back to Windows 8.1. As much as I love Linux, Windows is just a much better experience in this case.

To answer your question, I do believe you need Windows installed to update the firmware unfortunately.

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My SP3 has Win 10 Pro. If I nuke it and install vanilla Win 8.1 will it work? Or do I need to install some additional drivers? Also the product key should be baked into the hardware so I shouldn’t need to worry about activating it.

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No, you need to get a recovery image from MS, put it on a flash drive, and boot off it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surfacerecoveryimage

Note win8.1 mainstream support ended Jan 9 2018, so you’ll only get security fixes until extended support ends in 2023. Not a big deal on a tablet as you aren’t going to be adding a PCIe USB 3.2 card or anything.

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I simply flashed a Windows 8.1 to a USB drive and installed it that way. I then had to install the Surface Pro 3 drivers from here.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38826

Without this WiFi was not working.

However @Ruffalo’s method looks like a much better option.

My license was picked up again by the OS and activated just fine. Not sure if there are any issues/differences between Win10 and 8.1 licenses though?

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A Win10 license won’t activate Win8.1, but a Win7 or 8.x license will activate Win10.

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Holy Shit it’s working. I managed to install Ubuntu 18.04 on it. I was getting worried because the SP3 was running very hot during the installation. After restart temp is back to normal. However the wifi droped for some reason and then it could not find any networks at all. I had to restart.

The biggest issue is that on-screen keyboard doesn’t work. It shows up only on login sreen and in Show Applications. But for example you can’t type in Libre Office or FF even when the setting in Accessibility says on-screen keyboard is ON.

My SP3 thinks I am in space. Look at the temperature LOL.

Surface%20pro
Surface pro.png2160×1440 592 KB

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Ok the wifi tends to drop sometimes and when it does it doesn’t come back.
I have to restart it. That is irritating,