Hello all, this is my first post here. I thought i would share my experience with doing away with that pesky Windows operating system and replacing it with Linux. I am also new to Linux so this has been a great task for me to undertake as every online guide that i read for some reason did not work at all for me so I just decided to go it on my own.
Some issues that i had were the keyboard did not work and also the built in wireless was painfully slow (i'm talking like 20-100 bits per second), which were easily solved by hooking up a USB hub and plugging in a keyboard and USB wifi dongle. Also most online guides tell you to turn off the secure boot option in the UEFI boot menu, my only successful install that i was able to do was after i had turned secure boot back ON, of course that was also the first try at the OEM install too... so it could have been one or the other.
The Distro that i used was Ubuntu GNOME 14.10, the only way to get the system to boot into the OS after installing the OS many times was to use the OEM install option.
After the OS was installed and i could boot into it (after many, many tries) I finally updated the wireless drivers using GIMP.
Next was getting the keyboard working. after some research i found out that the kernel 3.19 update had support for the keyboard, so i ventured out on the task of figuring out how to update the kernel. Eventually i just found the update straight from the ubuntu software center... durr... didnt think to look there first.... Now the keyboard works, but not the touchpad...Since the touchscreen works fine it really isnt an issue for me at all. After some more toying with it i may stumble across whatever i need to do to get that touchpad working again.
nice. if you just installed -- this is going to sound crazy -- but try 15.04. I've been trying to get it going with refind but.. its been squirrely. However I do like whats happening with ubuntu 15.04
This is tremendous in my book. I'm a student and I like to take hand written notes on a tablet pc (Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2). One of the main things holding me back from a complete switch to Linux is my dependence on this feature. The thinkpad tablet 2 processor is incompatible with linux (according to forums I've seen in the past). If the surface 3 can deal with linux I might be able to justify the cost.
Any further updates on your endeavor would be greatly appreciated.
I will give it a try when i get the chance. Ubuntu has always been my favorite distro, hell i used it back when i was in middle school which was when windows XP was just being released if not maybe a little before that.
I commend you guys for pushing people to jump to linux, after pulling some of my hair out, i found a suitable combover and am beginning to like it now.
I will keep posting my updates here. If i have the time tomorrow i will post the update to 15.04. The surface 3 can 100% deal with linux, getting everything working as the surface does out of the box is a different story though.
So I'm a bit late on this but what I want to know is how well will kali linux 2.0 work on a surface I would have to buy a usb hub for it to use an external wifi adapter as I don't think the one in the surface could do packet injection but it would be cool if I had a pentesting machine that was powerful and with the small form factor I'm thinking about getting a SP4 with 1tb/16gbs of ram and I7 for some light gaming on windows/editing and kali linux
I'd love to upgrade my Surface Pro 3 to linux but I'm really reliant on the pen functionality since I use the pen for all my note taking. Once the surface will have support for everything I'll be upgrading to it immediately. Thanks to everyone who are testing it and trying too make it functional.
