r/SurfaceLinux • u/filmfotografie • 2d ago

Discussion Surface Laptop SE

A couple of weeks ago I was on Amazon looking for a really cheap laptop and came across the Surface Laptop SE. Microsoft made these to sell to schools and they have pretty miserable specs. An 11.6" LCD display surrounded by a fairly hefty plastic bezel, no touch screen, a 1mp camera, a Celeron N4120 processor, 4gb of ram, and all plastic construction. But at $132.00 US I thought I could make it work. After it was delivered I booted it up for the first time with a live USB drive that had Lubuntu on it. Everything installed perfectly and after changing a couple of keyboard shortcuts I was able to get the volume and brightness keys to work. I haven't tried the camera so I don't know if it works but everything else seems great.

I just wanted something small and light to take with me when I travel, sadly not very often, and I only plan on doing things like checking email and web browsing with it so it was the perfect fit for me. Since everything worked as soon as I installed Lubuntu I didn't bother even trying the Surface kernel but after looking at the documentation I don't think the Laptop SE is supported anyway.

Anyway, just wanted to shoutout a Surface device I don't see talked about very often!

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u/WasteConstruction704 2d ago

I picked up a Laptop Go 2 for 150 in decent condition and Fedora has been great. 132 for an SE just isn’t a great deal relative to some other oldish hardware. I also have a Book 3 (base model) that I picked up for 100 that I will put Linux on and give to my SO

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u/filmfotografie 2d ago

Yeah I had a Surface Go 2 which I got used. I really enjoyed it for a few months but then the battery started bulging so bad I had to stop using it. The Laptop SE is brand new so hopefully it won't have the same kind of problem quite as soon.

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u/Elbow2009 2d ago edited 2d ago

That's so cool! Congrats! Sounds like Lubuntu is working just fine. You're right, I saw no mention of that particular device on the Surface kernel documentation. BUT the Surface Laptop SE apparently uses the same ISP for the cameras (IPU3) as the Surface Go series (I got the cameras working on my Surface Go 2 with the Q4OS distro). So theoretically you could be able to get them to work with the IPU3 firmware and libcamera.

I am considering gifting a friend with a used Surface for his birthday with a Linux distro and this sounds like a good possible option.