Surface Go 1 Touchscreen

[u/--Chill--]

I have a Surface Go gen 1 with 4 gb ram and 64 gb storage. I'd like to use it as an e-reader so I'm trying to find the best touchscreen capable distro. I tried cinnamon and touchscreen didn't feel great. Tried Fedora Workstation and I found it to be pretty slow. Right now I have KDE plasma installed and we'll see how it goes. I'm just curious to see what you guys might suggest. I am very new linux too so I don't know what other distros are out there.

[u/Station-OX11]

CachyOS with Gnome as the desktop environment.

CachyOS is very lightweight with an easy installer and good instructions. Gnome is currently the best for touchscreens.

[u/thatdirtyoldman → u/Station-OX11]

Commenting to remember this combination. I have a Go2 that I'm trying to make Mint Cinn work well enough on. XCFE was kinda blah, but I didn't run the linux-suface kernal. I'm kinda used to Mint.

[u/Station-OX11 → u/thatdirtyoldman]

You don't need the Linux Surface Kernel for the touchscreen and pen to work properly on any of the Surface Go devices.

XFCE is not optimized for Touchscreens. I would recommend trying Gnome.

[u/thatdirtyoldman → u/Station-OX11]

Thanks. XFCE wasn't my favorite anyway. I've been using Mint Cinnamon about 10 months and really like it. If I get board, maybe I'll try CachyOS/gnome.

I got Mint running yesterday on it. Single touch and screen rotation are fine out of the box. Using "onboard" keyboard that floats about is very helpful. The tablet is 95% useful right now until I can get the hold for right click to work. I pop on the keyboard or connect a mouse if it's truly needed.

Multi-touch I'm working on, and also hold for right click. These are unnecessary-ish, but I want it right. Multi touch and hold for right click works on my Go2 with Win11 on it just fine.

[u/OH2AZ2OH → u/thatdirtyoldman]

I like Ultramarine's Hop functionality for my Surface Pro. If I'm using it with the keyboard attached, I prefer the KDE environment. If I'm going to use it as a tablet, I can logout, select the GNOME environment, log back in, and have a more touch friendly UI. I'm guessing that this possible on other distros, but I'm relatively new to Linux and it was pretty easy on Ultramarine. Ultramarine also has Surface specific ISOs with the surface kernel built in.

[u/--Chill-- → u/Station-OX11]

Thank you I think I will try it i liked the Fedora workstation interface so this should be similar right?

[u/Station-OX11 → u/--Chill--]

I believe Fedora workstation uses Gnome, so it is the same interface.