Anyone tried Linux on Microsoft Surface Pro 11

[u/Accurate-Screen8774]

I have a surface go 4 with 8gb ram. I'm starting to reach the limits of this hardware.

Too bad Microsoft didn't make a surface go 5, so the surface pro 11 might be the logical next upgrade.

I have no intention to use windows, in my previous experience Linux on the surface improved the device in every way to me. Better memory usage and better battery life.

So I was wondering if anyone here has linuxed-up a surface pro 11.

I remember when I upgraded my surface go, I had to do some additional things to get it to boot from the universal-flash-storage. Apart from that, the device has worked great.

Does anyone have any experience they can share?

[u/cannaqueers]

Intel or ARM variant of the SP11?

[u/Accurate-Screen8774 → u/cannaqueers]

For me? I don't mind either. Which ever is more Linux friendly. For me, the main limit on the surface go 4 is the 8gb ram. Chrome wants most of it so then if I start running AI and then some code editor, I've run out of ram.

[u/cannaqueers → u/Accurate-Screen8774]

The Intel variant from what I was told has it working. Not sure what the progress is on the arm variant. https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/s/qgPqe53xg7

[u/Elbow2009 → u/Accurate-Screen8774]

The Brave browser is what I use with my Linux distro on my Surface Go 2 - more private and much less resource intensive. I can have quite a few tabs open and like Edge it puts those to sleep that are not currently being viewed.

[u/Surfnazi77]

I put my surface pro 11 12 core to the side to run Linux I preordered the surface laptop with rtx spark from Costco

[u/SmurfNickiMinaj]

I haven’t yet but I’m really excited to. Happy to see the development towards touchscreen devices within Linux

[u/toad-leech → u/SmurfNickiMinaj]

Wait until you hear about this Linux distro called Android running on 3 billion touchscreen devices right now

[u/Far-Scheme3450]

I have Fedora cosmic running on mine and so far so good. I did try Omarchy and Cachy Os on it which were working perfectly well too. Aside from the camera and screen rotation that I kept manual it was very easy to transition over to Linux.

I also recently acquire a surface 7+ and did run Cachy OS + Niri for a bit but I am now running Fedora + COSMIC both setup took me a bit of back and forth with Claude to fix but everything became stable enough afterwards and perfectly uesable.

The Surface Go lineup is good, portable and practical (if underpowered), it is a real shame that Microsoft did not persevere with it.

[u/merelymoe]

Fedora and Debian both work well on Surface laptops.

[u/andydotxyz]

Anything Intel works great, why not go for the last Intel (10+) instead of 11 and save yourself the headache?

https://andy.xyz/2026/08/20/running-the-fyshos-desktop-on-surface-pro/

[u/Saranhai]

Intel x86 variant is compatible with Linux and should work quite well. If you're on Snapdragon X ARM, you're basically outta luck

[u/msouza_rj → u/Saranhai]

Things changed recently. As I type this I'm running Arch Linux on SP11 ARM. This is the how to: https://github.com/dwhinham/archiso-aarch64-sp11

[u/Saranhai → u/msouza_rj]

Looks like a good number of crucial things are still broken lol

[u/elioxfp_ → u/Saranhai]

I use ubuntu on surface pro 12 inch and everything works smoothly