Linux (Ubuntu/Mint) on Surface Pro 6

Hello,

I was wondering if any L1 users had experience with the latest gen of Surface Pros and how the linux experience was on them? I’ve been laptopless for years now and it’s starting to become a hinderence in my job, but I usually maintain a desktop for the bulk of my work and so I could certainly get away with remoting into a desktop from the Surface and running stuff remotely. However, it would be convenient to be able to dual boot.

So, in particular, if anyone has experience with Ubuntu-based distros on the Surface Pro 6, what are the quirks I should know about, and do you find you use Linux for the majority of your time on the Surface, or can you get by with Windows for a lot of it?

Thanks.

I have Ubuntu on Surface Pro 2 and it works rather well. However there are many hardware differences between the generations and things have gotten worse, not better from what I understand.

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This is the kind of things I wish Wendell would do more videos of…

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Personally I haven’t used a Surface running Linux, however I know the kind folks at /r/SurfaceLinux have experience and could offer you a bit of guidance. This thread that I linked has two github links Linux Surface accessories. With the only documented issues seeming to be dGPU support, cameras, and Connected Standby. I would still encourage you to go ask the subreddit as you may have better answers for your question. Here is the github repo for Linux on Surface devices however if you want to take a crack at it yourself.

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Well that’s disappointing to hear, thanks for the input!

I’ve seen that there are some patches for the Linux kernel to make it work better with the surface, but things like the cameras not working just seems like quite a big deal if I ever need to use Skype for work. This is what I was afraid of. I appreciate the links though, I’ll have a browse of the subreddit and see what the state of linux on the surface is.

Interestingly, I removed Ubuntu from my SP2 and installed Fedora last week and what few issues I had have evaporated. so it does look like support is getting better as the Linux distros adapt to the hardware.

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This is really good to know. I’ve always used Linux Mint or Ubuntu, so I wouldn’t have considered another distro. Thanks!