Hi everyone! I know im not good with technology. I brought a surface pro 8, 3 years ago. I obviously understand that was a mistake and i should have listened to programmer cousin. Its gonna be slighty difficult to install linux on it.
I’ve researched several youtube videos, but i was wondering if anyone had any tips?Obviously the attachable keyboard has to work and i want the touch screen to work. The surface appealed to me when i brought for those features.
With all the privacy concerns of windows, i want to commit to switching my operating system! Thank you everyone for their help with all my privacy questions. Ive been getting into foss and learning kotlin.
to add to what others already said, the work from linux-surface is being adopted in the mainline, so it is possible that your hardware is already supported in a modern distro, like Fedora. boot it off a live USB image and poke around, you’ll get a better feel for it.
pro tip, at the GRUB menu press ‘e’ to edit the first item and then add
rd.live.ram
and that should load the image to RAM. you can then remove the USB and it’ll be way faster to navigate and it won’t touch your existing SSD install.Dude. I’ve been using Linux since 1995, and I never knew about
rd.live.ram
.I don’t use grub much anymore with UEFI around, but for those bootable USBs that’s gold.
MVP
that’s for Fedora, for Ubuntu it’s
toram
I think? or was that for older versions… Esc during boot to verify, if it goes “loading to RAM” then you know it’s working.It’s not a grub function? Bummer. My rescue images are either Arch or Alpine.
Use the surface-linux custom kernel https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#feature-matrix
It seems from the feature matrix that all features are supported except your builtin camera. I personally use this kernel (arch with hyprland) and it works perfectly. The nvidia dgpu is sometimes a pain tho
Thanks so muchh!
I’ve a Pro 7 with Fedora. Best decision ever. I don’t miss anything from Windows. And better yet, PRIVATE!!!
To get you started, check this: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
Im using my 8 Pro with Ubuntu. Some hickups here and there, the camera does not work, but nothing that has made me want to use Windows again (I have dual boot, but have never used it).
Thanks! i was thinking the same! I just backed up everything om a hard drive and think im gonna be done with windows in general. About to go full linux🤣
I have a surface 8 pro too and the easiest way to set it up was to use Aurora (or bluefin if you prefer Gnome). All the drivers were preloaded and if you want to use luks with the tpm it is a breeze to setup.
You can achieve the same with other distros, I’ve done it with Arch and Nixos too but if you don’t have a solid Linux background I strongly suggest Aurora or Bluefin for an easy and solid installation.
Ill check it out!! Thanks so much!
I run Kubuntu on my surface pro 8, with the surface linux kernal. Everything works except the webcam but I feel that will be fixed soon.
Thats what im concerned about! But i guess if you plug in a web cam you’ll have a camera? Thats what im hoping?
I have never tried it myself, but as it seems to be a driver issue with the built in cam, I don’t see any reason why a USB one wouldn’t work
Yeahh truu, sounds like a good idea! Honestly i hope someome figures that out because im not tech savvy enough for that🤣🤣
Definitely doable! I’ve run several Linux distributions on Surface devices. I had good experiences out of the box with Ubuntu and Mint, and not-great experiences with Debian Bookworm (even with the Nvidia driver, it could never seem to work out that the external monitor on my machine was a primary. I did not try the Surface-specific kernel, however. Good luck!
Thanks❤️ you can do it with mint? Good to know!
Your first Linux install? Definitely Mint.
I’ve been using Linux since the days of Slackware on floppies, and I still like Mint. It seems to just work – I’m not at all averse to “more hardcore” distributions, but would rather get on with my work. That being said, the Surface kernel is a nice piece of software and worth considering for an optimal experience on Surface.
Thanks so much! I definitely was look into that!