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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

#71

Post by chronogram »

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…

On my SBCs and VPSs I use a cache-heavy zram setup with LZ4 and `vm.page-cluster=0` being the most important changes to the default, and cache pressure and swappiness both to 200 off the top of my head, and things like only doing foreground IO when the background write buffer is full. This type of swapping is fast, and is easy on the CPU, and gives a lot of extra disk cache on this type of low performing storage. I disable disk schedulers because they haven't been necessary and would just add overhead.

This means there's a lot of available RAM capacity, that there's a hefty read cache to avoid the SD card, that when there are disk writes on writable storage it can still read from it, and with the lack of clustering and the speed of decompression there's no swapping lag whenever a page needs to be swapped back. This swap early, swap often is the complete opposite of the OOM-prevention swapping you used to use on disks, which was slow and interrupted IO whereas LZ4 in RAM is fast and doesn't interrupt IO.

I have been using this setup since 2022 and have not had any issues but I don't compile anything on those setups, though I see no reason why it would not be safer than compiling without zram at all.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#72

Post by andrewaylett »

speed_spread wrote: post #69
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…

Swapping in any form always sucks, period. The machine starts behaving strangely and does not tell you why because it's trying it's hardest to hide the fact that it ran out of resources. Experience has shown me over and over that you just want to feel the limits of the machine hard and fast so you can change what you're asking of it rather than thinking that there is some perf issue or weird bug. It's the idea that s…

But where else are you going to put your anonymous pages when you don't want them for a while?

Lots of the stuff you're using is backed by disk anyway -- and will be removed from RAM when there's any memory pressure, whether or not you have any swap. If you've got swap then the system can put anonymous pages in it, otherwise it'll need to evict named files more frequently.

Unless you have enough RAM that you're literally never evicting anything from your page cache, in which case swap still doesn't hurt you.

I'll absolutely agree that swapping out part of the working set is unwanted, but most swapping is benign and genuinely helps performance by allowing the system to retain more useful data in RAM. You don't want to get into a state where you're paging code in and out of RAM because there's nowhere to put data that's not being used.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#73

Post by alisonatwork »

gnarbarian wrote: post #16
tstrimple wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except now you have sandals and perhaps still can't install Linux on a Surface.

Seriously, though, it's kind of ridiculous to make a case that just because there is so much electronic waste already in the world, might as well create some more of it. I don't own a USB keyboard and haven't owned one for a decade or more. Because I exclusively use Surface. Imo Windows tablets are the true cyberdeck of the 21st century.

Touchscreen devices should not require plugging in a keyboard to enter text or plugging in a mouse to click on things. The whole point of these devices is that they can work on their own, without peripherals. If you need to plug in to use them, then you might as well have just bought a laptop in the first place.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#74

Post by weberer »

jbstack wrote: post #70
b3lvedere wrote: post #30

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…

IMO the advantage of the Surface is that it's one of the only tablets out there which is (a) reasonably priced for what you get, (b) has a x64 processor, and (c) can have Linux installed on it without too much difficulty. So if you want a Linux tablet, the Surface may end up being one of your only viable options.

The Steam Deck is also a great option nowadays. Its a lot bulkier than a tablet, but I personally prefer it having a controller attached. Its biggest advantage is that it comes with Linux out of the box, so you don't have to go through the headache of installing an OS yourself and messing around with drivers.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#75

Post by weberer »

ffsm8 wrote: post #40
makeitdouble wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your reference point, but IMHO there's no device right now that hits all the right point, so yes, Surface Pro is one of these flawwd machines. On the other side you'll have devices that feel really well built and graceful, but can actually do very little, or other ones fitting a very average vision of what a computer needs to do, and you'll be paying for additional devices to deal with the edge cases.

Imagine an iPad that automatically switches to MacOSX if plugged into an external monitor, keyboard/mouse. It'd be glorious, not that I'd ever happen - for multiple reasons. One of which being that ipadOS is essentially iOS, so no overlap with MacOS

>not that I'd ever happen

In my eyes, Apple's transition to ARM on Macbooks looks like a stepping stone on that path. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced something like that for the iPad Pro eventually.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#76

Post by jahnu »

ffsm8 wrote: post #40
makeitdouble wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your reference point, but IMHO there's no device right now that hits all the right point, so yes, Surface Pro is one of these flawwd machines. On the other side you'll have devices that feel really well built and graceful, but can actually do very little, or other ones fitting a very average vision of what a computer needs to do, and you'll be paying for additional devices to deal with the edge cases.

Imagine an iPad that automatically switches to MacOSX if plugged into an external monitor, keyboard/mouse. It'd be glorious, not that I'd ever happen - for multiple reasons. One of which being that ipadOS is essentially iOS, so no overlap with MacOS

As a first step wouldn't it be amazing to have multiple user accounts on an iPad that doesn't require MDM.

But such technological wonders are but a fantasy.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#77

Post by INTPenis »

jbstack wrote: post #70
b3lvedere wrote: post #30

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…

IMO the advantage of the Surface is that it's one of the only tablets out there which is (a) reasonably priced for what you get, (b) has a x64 processor, and (c) can have Linux installed on it without too much difficulty. So if you want a Linux tablet, the Surface may end up being one of your only viable options.

How about the new Lenovo Tab? It's very reasonably priced, but I have no experience with it.

All I can see right now is that it has a battery bump that people might object to.

My goals with any device is to be as slim and as vanilla Android as possible, which means Samsung can go to hell.

A friend said he liked the OnePlus tablet.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#78

Post by diffeomorphism »

ffsm8 wrote: post #40
makeitdouble wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your reference point, but IMHO there's no device right now that hits all the right point, so yes, Surface Pro is one of these flawwd machines. On the other side you'll have devices that feel really well built and graceful, but can actually do very little, or other ones fitting a very average vision of what a computer needs to do, and you'll be paying for additional devices to deal with the edge cases.

Imagine an iPad that automatically switches to MacOSX if plugged into an external monitor, keyboard/mouse. It'd be glorious, not that I'd ever happen - for multiple reasons. One of which being that ipadOS is essentially iOS, so no overlap with MacOS

So iDEX? There have been multiple attempts at that from motorola, the nokia n900, sailfish, ubuntu touch, linux on DEX, DEX, maruOS, windows whatever, citrix,...

Sounds nice in theory but people rarely actually use it.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#79

Post by inhumantsar »

b3lvedere wrote: post #30

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…

I use a surface pro 9 for development, diagramming, note taking, media, light fusion 360 (on the iGPU), and gaming (with an egpu). it's a great machine with a few minor flaws, primarily battery life and cooling performance. at a go anywhere device, it's hard to beat. the price is obscene though, especially considering it's not OLED.

I'm keen to try the arm version though, and the Minisforum V3 is interesting tho not much of an upgrade

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#80

Post by chrsw »

I run Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 without any issues as far as I can tell. I've done almost no tweaking. I just do periodic software and firmware updates. I close the lid, throw it my bag, open it hours later, or the next day and I'm right back to where I was. The experience as close to Mac-like as I've ever experienced outside of Apple.

But I still do wish someone would make a Linux laptop that's as tightly integrated with the hardware as macOS is on a MacBook.

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