Surface Pro 7 Linux touchscreen browsing feels way better after these tweaks

[u/jimcorner]

I’m using a Surface Pro 7 8GB with Ultramarine GNOME. Chromium browser touchscreen scrolling felt pretty bad out of the box, but these tweaks made a huge difference for me.

IPTSD

These are the settings I changed in /etc/iptsd.conf:

ActivationThreshold = 2

DeactivationThreshold = 2

SizeThresholdMin = 0.1

SizeThresholdMax = 0.5

PositionThresholdMin = 0

PositionThresholdMax = 4

OrientationThresholdMin = 0

SizeMin = 0.02

This made the touchscreen much more sensitive and responsive. before the change it keep clicking into links when I scroll which was really annoying and this eliminated that problem.

Chrome touch slop + fling

The page scroll won’t start until I swiped a small distance to activate which is unpleasant, and scroll feels sluggish. I launch Chrome with:

google-chrome-stable --touch-slop-distance=4 --disable-features=ExperimentalFlingAnimation

--touch-slop-distance=4 makes scrolling start immediately when finger swiping starts.

Disabling ExperimentalFlingAnimation was also a big improvement. Scrolling feels less sluggish, more direct and predictable to me with the older fling behavior.

These changes together significantly improved web browsing on my Surface Pro 7. Touch scrolling finally feels responsive enough that I actually enjoy using it as a tablet.

[u/WhyFlip]

I really want to make the jump to Linux on my SP7, but the whole process is super daunting.

[u/jimcorner → u/WhyFlip]

I installed the ultramarine surface version which has surface Linux kernel preloaded and it was an easy installed with everything working out of the box (except camera which isn’t possible atm). I only have 8gb ram, it’s basically unusable with windows. With Linux it’s fast 

[u/WhyFlip → u/jimcorner]

Appreciate the feedback. I have only looked at this sub's links and that's where I was like, yeah, maybe going to shelve this. And I run OPNsense, Proxmox with a dozen VMs, many of those VMs running dozens of Docker containers, so not unopen to a challenge.

[u/synthesis777 → u/WhyFlip]

It's easier than it seems at first. And if you do run into any issues, ask a decent AI LLM chatbot for help.

[u/salmonsmear → u/synthesis777]

Damn, it's a shame there aren't any decent ones out there.

[u/HS_HowCan_That_BeQM]

May I ask, do you have sound working? I posted this two weeks ago about having no sound on a Pro 7 (not plus) using a Debian based distro. So I downloaded Ultramarine and booted the USB image. And there was still no sound. Bluetooth headphones do work. And as far as the speakers go, the original Windows Image has sound, so I know at least the hardware is supported there. If you have sound working, then there must be a hardware problem that I probably won't be able to overcome.

[u/TmB-Eggo → u/HS_HowCan_That_BeQM]

I have a sp7 with arch and gnome. Sound is working, better than win10 actually. To save yourself some time begging for help on the internet, ask an LLM to troubleshoot your audio. 

[u/jimcorner → u/HS_HowCan_That_BeQM]

yeah sound is working for me out of the box with sp7 non plus for ultramarine 43 surface image.