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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

#21

Post by tommodev »

vitorgrs wrote: post #18

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 e…

yeah, I took the Ubuntu / Fedora perf for granted as well. Recently switched back to Arch on a whim across one low-end machine, one high-end machine, and both run like lightning compared to Ubuntu 24.04 / Fedora 40.

Expected the difference with Ubuntu as it packs more out of the box for the enterprise behaviours, not so much with Fedora. I've had no freezes, faster startup and shutdown, generally more responsive desktop etc. with Arch.

Generally, though a rolling release it also has fewer moving parts as well - only having to deal with the main repo + flatpak (and a select few AUR pkgbuilds) is nice compared to Ubuntu where I had to layer deb repos + PPAs + flatpak + brew to get my tooling in place without having to script my own git-driven installers.

One thing that tripped me up on any distro - the defaults for TLP (vs power profile daemon) seem hyper conservative wrt performance, probably by design. I never bothered digging in, just switched back to PPD, but it definitely prioritises power savings above all else.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#23

Post by vladvasiliu »

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'm actually rather fine with what WSL can do. Hell, many of the tools I use run fine on Windows itself.

But for me, the biggest shortcoming of this arrangement is having to put up with Windows' UX. I hate every single second I have to interact with this steaming pile of crap.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#24

Post by utf_8x »

Disables Swap and Zram, gets OOM killed, surprised pikachu face

Joking aside, is there an actual legitimate reason to do this on a workstation? I understand why you would want to disable swap on something like a kubernetes cluster node but in my head, heaving at-least zram enabled is a good thing on a workstation so you *don't* get OOM killed... I call on thee, Linux wizards of HN, to help me understand the reasoning behind this.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#25

Post by crabmusket »

langsoul-com wrote: post #22

Too bad that Linux support in laptops isn't the best. Especially for unique laptops like Asus zenbook 2024, the one with two screens. I want to get away from windows completely but their support for laptops is much better.

Having been using a Framework 13 running Fedora for ~2 weeks now... it's going great! I've plugged in a variety of external devices (monitors, a webcam) and they've all just worked.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#26

Post by Havoc »

Had one issued for work. Absolutely hated working on it. Though that was probably more a mismatch with work requirement (heavy excel use + teams = deathly slow). A lighter OS plus lighter use could be fine.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#27

Post by rtpg »

Havoc wrote: post #26

Had one issued for work. Absolutely hated working on it. Though that was probably more a mismatch with work requirement (heavy excel use + teams = deathly slow). A lighter OS plus lighter use could be fine.

It's unfortunate because I found that the Surface Pro "expensive" models are gerat, but the lower end really can't handle much of any workflow (dreaded latency spikes) and it leads to loads of people just having a middling impression of a product that theoretically could capture a lot of the high end Windows market IMO

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#28

Post by 1234554321a »

I’ve had had SP4 i5 8gb ram version since 2017. It’s unreliable when running Windows, let alone Linux. It had constant touch screen issues which never fully went away even after replacing the screen. When I tried installing Linux I decided to switch back to Windows after a couple of months as both wifi and bluetooth had constant issues. The battery life is 2 or 3 hours at best even if you replace the battery with a new one. I’ll be replacing it with an M2 Macbook as that’ll be way more productive than to keep using this Surface.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#29

Post by speedgoose »

utf_8x wrote: post #24

Disables Swap and Zram, gets OOM killed, surprised pikachu face Joking aside, is there an actual legitimate reason to do this on a workstation? I understand why you would want to disable swap on something like a kubernetes cluster node but in my head, heaving at-least zram enabled is a good thing on a workstation so you *don't* get OOM killed... I call on thee, Linux wizards of HN, to help me understand the reasoning…

I have swap, zram, and systemd-oomd enabled on my self managed kubernetes nodes. It helps dealing with JVM powered or memory leaking software at low cost.

I am not sure why you would disable those in many scenarios.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#30

Post by b3lvedere »

I never liked the Surface series that much. It looks very nice, until you actually start working with them. Then they feel like a weird tablet with slow Windows on it. You can optimize it a little, but not much. Quite expensive as well and sometimes support is horribly slow.

I gave my wife an old Lenovo Yoga 2 in 1. That thing works nice using it as a flipped tablet to watch Netflix, but here also the performance isn't great.

Maybe just don't expect that much from these weird computers pretending to be tablets.

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