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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

#51

Post by Mashimo »

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.

> I'll never understand how people pick mobile devices with such short battery life.

Some people don't need all that much battery life.

For me trains and buses, meeting rooms and at home there are outlets. It's a convenience thing when I want to sit at home on the couch without a cable attacked to my laptop.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#52

Post by hhh »

tjoff wrote: post #45
callalex wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there is a huge amount of cargo-culted cruft lying around in various Linux-on-workstation-wiki guide sites that hasn’t been modernized since the 2000’s. I don’t normally like to rant without providing a solution, but this is a problem I see my friends bump up against all the time when I tell them it’s finally the year of the Linux desktop. When something goes wrong they land on the same search results…

This is OS-agnostic. I love the old fact that you should have twice the amount of swap as your RAM size. I could rant but, no. Just don't. Today, don't buy a computer (regardless of size) with less than 32 GB of ram. Yes, this applies to fruity products as well. Part from making it a more enjoyable experience it will also extend the usable life of the computer immensely. (The weird crap about apple computers not need…

I don’t understand the sentiment. People should analyze what they actually use and what the need is. Sure, I bought a 64gb ram macbook because I like toys and don’t want to think about it, but for 80% of my workload 8gb is fine, and for my partner it’s fine for 100%.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#53

Post by jorvi »

tetha wrote: post #46
callalex wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there is a huge amount of cargo-culted cruft lying around in various Linux-on-workstation-wiki guide sites that hasn’t been modernized since the 2000’s. I don’t normally like to rant without providing a solution, but this is a problem I see my friends bump up against all the time when I tell them it’s finally the year of the Linux desktop. When something goes wrong they land on the same search results…

I have similar experiences. I've been digging into this more over the years and my two conclusions are: (a) Linux memory management is overall rather complex and contains many rather subtle decisions that speed up systems. (b) Most recommendations you find about it are old, rubbish, or not nuanced enough. Like one thing I learned some time ago: swap-out in itself is not a bad thing. swap-out on it's own means the ker…

It is not just advice.

Default configs of most distros are set up for server-style work, even on workstation distros. So they’ll have CPU and IO schedulers optimized for throughput instead of latency, meaning a laggy desktop under load. The whole virtual memory system still runs things like it is on spinning rust (multiple page files in cache, low swappiness, etc).

The only distro without this problem is Asahi. It’s bespoke for MacBooks, so it’s been optimized all the way down to the internal speakers(!).

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#54

Post by codeulike »

Note this is the lowest spec Surface Pro 4, it had a low power Intel Core m3-6Y30 so that it could run without any active cooling, making it a 'true' tablet. Most of the 'proper' Surface Pro 4s had an i5 or i7 processor with active cooling (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Pro_4 ) and were roughly comparable in performance to other PC ultrabooks at the time. I've been using the Surface Pro line for about 10 years to do everything I need to do, they are pretty solid.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#55

Post by deng »

Searching for a Linux tablet, I got a used Lenovo X1 Tablet Gen3. Linux works mostly fine, but as a tablet, it's mostly useless for reasons similar to the ones mentioned in TFA:

* Battery life. 5-6 hours for moderate use simply does not cut it, especially since sleep drains battery like crazy because s0ix is not working properly, and debugging why is almost impossible. It's absolutely crazy how something that used to work just fine was deliberately botched because MS/Intel decided everything has to be a phone.

* So because of this, you need to shut down the tablet if not used, which wouldn't be too bad, but as TFA says, you need a keyboard to enter the LUKS decryption password.

* As a pure reading device, it's too heavy.

Apart from that, Firefox is basically unusable because backspace does not work properly because of this bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1832876

So in the end, while it's working, there's still a lot of janky behavior, which makes the experience just frustrating.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#56

Post by goosedragons »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #3
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…

Does WSL handle multi-touch/gestures well?

No, it doesn't even handle Windows Snap.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#57

Post by tjoff »

hhh wrote: post #52
tjoff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is OS-agnostic. I love the old fact that you should have twice the amount of swap as your RAM size. I could rant but, no. Just don't. Today, don't buy a computer (regardless of size) with less than 32 GB of ram. Yes, this applies to fruity products as well. Part from making it a more enjoyable experience it will also extend the usable life of the computer immensely. (The weird crap about apple computers not need…

I don’t understand the sentiment. People should analyze what they actually use and what the need is. Sure, I bought a 64gb ram macbook because I like toys and don’t want to think about it, but for 80% of my workload 8gb is fine, and for my partner it’s fine for 100%.

8 GB can, even in this electron world, barely work. But it won't tomorrow. Buying something with 8 GB today is wasting an otherwise perfectly good computer.

And when your partner gets a new computer, for whatever reason, the old one can easily live on for many many years. But it's utility will be limited if it only has 8 GB of ram.

The product in the article is only 8 years old but already stretching its usefulness for no good reason.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#58

Post by [deleted] »

tjoff wrote: post #57
hhh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the sentiment. People should analyze what they actually use and what the need is. Sure, I bought a 64gb ram macbook because I like toys and don’t want to think about it, but for 80% of my workload 8gb is fine, and for my partner it’s fine for 100%.

8 GB can, even in this electron world, barely work. But it won't tomorrow. Buying something with 8 GB today is wasting an otherwise perfectly good computer. And when your partner gets a new computer, for whatever reason, the old one can easily live on for many many years. But it's utility will be limited if it only has 8 GB of ram. The product in the article is only 8 years old but already stretching its usefulness f…

[deleted]

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#59

Post by e12e »

alisonatwork wrote: post #7
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.

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…

> "if you don't have a USB keyboard, don't bother"

I think you should be able to hardware reset without a keyboard - but in my experience - you really want console access when messing with bootloaders and alternative os'. Even if it is just to get to a point where on-screen/Bluetooth keyboard works... Often an USB Ethernet dongle can be useful as well (avoiding the catch-22 of needing network access to download wifi driver).

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#60

Post by keepamovin »

codeulike wrote: post #54

Note this is the lowest spec Surface Pro 4, it had a low power Intel Core m3-6Y30 so that it could run without any active cooling, making it a 'true' tablet. Most of the 'proper' Surface Pro 4s had an i5 or i7 processor with active cooling (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Pro_4 ) and were roughly comparable in performance to other PC ultrabooks at the time. I've been using the Surface Pro line for about 10…

I also use the surface for everything I need: I like it a lot and I’ve never had a problem with it. I don’t get the hate, nor why the inaccurate idea that you cannot run things on it persists.
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