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A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

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Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#11

Post by tstrimple »

gnarbarian wrote: post #9
alisonatwork wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share a bit more about your experience here, in particular setting the system up? I have a bashed up Surface Pro 7 I took traveling with me. I upgraded my main PC to a Surface Pro 9 when I housed up and have been wondering what to do with with the Pro 7 because it's so battered from being thrown around and used outdoors for a year that it's not really sellable. I was thinking of turning it into a dedicated ou…

wouldn't you be able to plug in a USB keyboard?

I love that the Linux solution to a problem is just have this additional hardware to overcome it. I've run Linux as a desktop OS for years, so I'm not at all unfamiliar with all the hoops you have to jump through. Hoops that die-hard greybeards will deny exist because their personality is tied up in an operating system of all things. Surely 2024 is the year of the Linux desktop!

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#13

Post by 1oooqooq »

Linux surface kernel is a meme.

it's the same sort of hacks from teenage Android community to port binary blobs. if you're not familiar with that, just be glad.

in summary, old unpatched kennels with weird binary code nobody cares to understand.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#14

Post by divbzero »

tstrimple wrote: post #10
treesknees wrote: post #2

I know this doesn't fit the author's goals but I still think the trick with the surface line is using WSL instead of trying to run native Linux. Things have improved over time but when I was using my Surface Pro 4, Linux support was still pretty lacking. Maybe things will get better now that they're practically EOL with Win10 ending next year and no support for Win11. Unfortunately my SSD started to fail and battery…

I guess that works because Linux power management is almost as bad as Windows so not a lot is lost. I'll never understand how people pick mobile devices with such short battery life. I further don't understand how literally no company other than Apple is able to deliver decent battery life. Even Microsoft's first party offerings which aren't infected by OEM bullshit are garbage in this regard.

> how literally no company other than Apple is able to deliver decent battery life

Apple’s full vertical integration from chip on up gives them an advantage here. For example, the doubling of video playback battery life from iPhone 12 Pro Max to iPhone 13 Pro Max [1] probably came from a new low-power display plus a new video decoder in the A15 Bionic chip.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ppevl6/streamed_vide...

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#15

Post by commandersaki »

tstrimple wrote: post #10
treesknees wrote: post #2

I know this doesn't fit the author's goals but I still think the trick with the surface line is using WSL instead of trying to run native Linux. Things have improved over time but when I was using my Surface Pro 4, Linux support was still pretty lacking. Maybe things will get better now that they're practically EOL with Win10 ending next year and no support for Win11. Unfortunately my SSD started to fail and battery…

I guess that works because Linux power management is almost as bad as Windows so not a lot is lost. I'll never understand how people pick mobile devices with such short battery life. I further don't understand how literally no company other than Apple is able to deliver decent battery life. Even Microsoft's first party offerings which aren't infected by OEM bullshit are garbage in this regard.

These new Snapdragon Elite X laptops compete on battery life. But I need to build for Linux/amd64 and I don't want to emulate so it's either Intel laptop or Apple Silicon laptop with Rosetta 2 for Linux.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#16

Post by gnarbarian »

tstrimple wrote: post #11
gnarbarian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't you be able to plug in a USB keyboard?

I love that the Linux solution to a problem is just have this additional hardware to overcome it. I've run Linux as a desktop OS for years, so I'm not at all unfamiliar with all the hoops you have to jump through. Hoops that die-hard greybeards will deny exist because their personality is tied up in an operating system of all things. Surely 2024 is the year of the Linux desktop!

well you may only need the keyboard to install it right? there are thousands of USB keyboards everywhere. in the poorest most remote villages in Africa they probably have so many USB keyboards they make sandals out of them.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#17

Post by solnyshok »

1oooqooq wrote: post #13

Linux surface kernel is a meme. it's the same sort of hacks from teenage Android community to port binary blobs. if you're not familiar with that, just be glad. in summary, old unpatched kennels with weird binary code nobody cares to understand.

old? 6.9.x as of today https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/releases

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#18

Post by vitorgrs »

About the Fedora Gnome vs EndeuvourOS KDE... the issue here isn't Gnome. It's actually Fedora.

In my testing on a similar hardware (also Core M3 and 4gb RAM), Arch-based distros was the best with low RAM. And I tried like, probably 50 distros since last year...

Gnome on my HW with Arch, is as fast as KDE, and use less memory than KDE (in theory, I know RAM is a complicated subject).

Why fedora is problematic on low end hardware? Because well, Fedora uses packagekit, which is a ram hog, and this is pretty known. Is not the only reason though, I believe there's some other defaults that make it slower than arch on my HW, like zswap vs zram.

In my experience with weak CPU and low ram, was that zswap was actually the best choice. On such low RAM like 4gb, you'll really need a swap, you can't run from this. And zram won't be enough, in my experience.

Which I guess is one of the reasons why Arch go very well here, as is one of the few distros right now that does a nice default for zswap.

With Fedora, and most other distros, I get constant freezes when the RAM is full (which is pretty easy to do with 4gb), and this never happen on arch based distros.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#19

Post by jraph »

KTibow wrote: post #6

I'm using a Surface Pro 7 to run Fedora, and my experience is mostly the same, although it runs a bit faster and without the ghost touches. The main annoyance I face is probably the fact that touch in Firefox occasionally breaks.

> The main annoyance I face is probably the fact that touch in Firefox occasionally breaks.

I have this on the two touchscreen laptops I use (HP and Lenovo). So I guess that's not hardware related.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#20

Post by beacon294 »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #5

The Intel m3-6y30 used on this surface is just fantastically puny a core. 4.5W design spec, tdp down to 3.5 up to 7W. Tiny GPU. The 7200u on my Samsung Book 12 is a 15W configurable from 7-25W; so much more headroom. 0.8GHz vs 2.5GHz base clocks! Admittedly the 7200u is also a year newer but both are Sky Lake. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/88198/i... One interesting thing happening in Linux now…

I use hibernate on the Acer Swift X 2022 edition and it's incredibly nice. Sleep crashes the wireless card though...
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