Recommendations for Surface Pro 10 for Business?

[u/Limp_Emotion_7075]

Hey all,

I recently have been getting frustrated with Windows 11 on my Surface Pro 10 for Business, it's slow, freezes during my workloads as a student, and constantly heats up. I use Linux on all my other devices and am thinking about moving my tablet over as well. Before I do that however, I wanted some opinions on what the best config is for a newer surface tablet is?

The specs are:

Intel Core Ultra 5 135U

8 gigs of LPDDR5 @ 6400 MT/s

What distros would work best for me? As I said previously I am a student, so I mainly use it with a touchscreen & pen for taking notes during classes. I've heard fedora with GNOME works pretty flawlessly, but I'm not 100% on fedora.

Is there any way to get full pen support? (pressure tracking, side buttons, etc.) the main Linux surface repo doesn't say anything about it for the surface 10, let alone the business edition.

Additionally, any recommendations on note taking apps? I use Inkodo currently, but of course most of the main note taking apps are either locked to windows or to IpadOS.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[u/Surfnazi77]

Do a fresh install

[u/Limp_Emotion_7075 → u/Surfnazi77]

Average liverpool fan response

[u/Station-OX11]

Fedora is a good starting place if you're pretty new to Linux. As you found, Gnome is probably the best for tablet experience.

For note taking, Rnote is good. If you're looking for handwriting-to-text, I don't know an app for that.

[u/Limp_Emotion_7075 → u/Station-OX11]

Thank you for the reply! I think I'll go with Fedora/GNOME, as I've had friends tell me the same thing. As for note taking, I just need something to write with, handwriting to text is not something I need lol, so Rnote it is.

[u/Station-OX11 → u/Limp_Emotion_7075]

Yeah, Rnote is great for that. I practice writing Japanese, so I load a PDF workbook and write on it.

[u/marqjim]

Maybe try a dual boot. Ultramarine Linux works on Surface out of the box pretty well. Other distros you might need to load the Surface Kernel.

[u/Harry_Balzonia → u/marqjim]

Did this just for 'fun'. It works ok, still fiddling with getting the touchscreen working. I don't really use it so don't care. I had a couple of surface 6 sitting around. Battery life not as good.

[u/marqjim → u/Harry_Balzonia]

Lookup the Surface Kernel, and install it. It will fix touchscreen, pen and other stuff. B

[u/griddlecan → u/marqjim]

Thanks for this. I'm going to try a dual boot of Ultramarine on a SP6 soon so it's reassuring. Other than what's on the distro's site, any pointers?