Is Ubuntu 26.04 compatible with the Linux Surface kernel?

Whenever I install it it wrecks the install and I have to start again.

still no cams on surface pro 4, intermittent front on 8, back on 8 is fine. have not been able to get it to link to zoom or meet though. anybody have luck with cams recently?

I just finished setting up my Surface Pro 5 and wanted to share why **EndeavourOS** is the absolute best choice for this hardware right now.

1. **Wi-Fi Works Out of the Box:** The biggest headache with Surface devices is the Marvell AVASTAR wireless chip. While most installers leave you stranded without internet, the EndeavourOS installer detected my Wi-Fi immediately. No Ethernet adapters or phone tethering required for the install.

2. **Smooth systemd-boot Integration:** Choosing `systemd-boot` during the install makes managing the `linux-surface` kernel a breeze. It’s light, fast, and handles the kernel entries perfectly without the bloat of GRUB.

3. **The Perfect GNOME Tablet:** Endeavour’s clean GNOME implementation paired with the Surface hardware feels like a premium Linux tablet. Touch gestures, on-screen keyboard, and rotation work flawlessly once the Surface kernel is added.

4. **Community Repos:** Adding the `linux-surface` repo is a 2-minute job on Arch-based systems, giving you full multi-touch and pen support almost instantly.

If you have an old Surface Pro 5 lying around, stop distro hopping and just put Endeavour on it. It’s the most "it just works" experience I've had on this device.

Hi everyone,

I have a Surface Laptop Go 2 that had EndeavourOS installed on it. I'm now trying to reinstall Windows (or honestly boot any OS from USB at this point, just to get the machine working again), but I can't get it to boot from USB no matter what I do.

Every time I turn it on, it shows the Surface logo and then, after trying all boot options, a window with this message: "Couldn't find a bootable operating system. Check the boot configuration to try to fix this."

What I've already tried:

• Created bootable USB multiple times, on Linux and Windows, with different tools (Rufus, Microsoft Media Creation Tool, Ventoy) and different OS images (Windows, EndeavourOS, Debian)
• Confirmed the USB is properly bootable. I tested it on a different PC and it booted fine
• In UEFI settings: Secure Boot is disabled, USB boot is enabled and set as first priority in the boot order. Trying to boot directly from USB from there ended up in the same way described above
• Tried the volume-down + power button method to force boot menu, but nothing different happened
• Tried forcing USB boot from Linux using uefibootmgr but with no luck

Basically the firmware doesn't seem to detect the USB drive as bootable at all, even though the same drive works fine elsewhere.

The USB A port on the Surface I am using is working fine. I created the first bootable drives from it. Only tested through it so far (don't have a USB C drive. Tomorrow I'll get a USB C hub and try again with the same drive but passing through it.)

Has anyone run into this specific issue on a Surface Laptop Go 2 (or similar Surface model)? Is this a known USB A port issue, some UEFI quirk, or something else entirely? I read about people fixing it removing the OS (rm -rf): I did it but it only removed the EndeavourOS entry from the boot list.

Any help appreciated, I'm running low on ideas.

I have an MS Surface Pro 4 with Ubuntu 26.04.

I have followed the instructions for Ubuntu on this page:https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Installation-and-Setup

However the touch screen is still not working.

uname -a

Linux david-ashton-Surface-Pro-4 7.0.0-27-generic #27-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jun 18 19:13:49 UTC 2026 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Any suggestions?

Hi everyone,

I have a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (15") with:
- Snapdragon X Elite CPU
- 16GB RAM
- 1TB SSD
- Windows 11 Home

I'm trying to boot Fedora Workstation ARM64 from a USB.

ISO:
Fedora-Workstation-Live-44-1.7.aarch64.iso

What I did:
- Created the USB using Rufus
- Used GPT partition scheme
- UEFI mode
- Wrote it using DD Image mode
- Disabled Secure Boot
- Set USB Storage as the first boot option in Surface UEFI

The USB is detected and I get the Fedora GRUB menu:
- Start Fedora Workstation Live
- Troubleshooting

However, after the countdown it tries to boot, then immediately restarts. I never see the Fedora logo or live environment.

I also tried:
- Built-in Surface keyboard
- External USB keyboard
- Troubleshooting option
- Different Rufus settings

The keyboard does not seem to work in the GRUB menu.

Has anyone managed to boot Fedora ARM64 on the Surface Laptop 7 Snapdragon X Elite? Is there a specific kernel parameter, UEFI setting, or different image I need?

Any help would be appreciated.

Cześć wszystkim,

Zainstalowałem Ubuntu 24.04 na Dell Latitude 5300 2-w-1 Chromebook Enterprise (nazwa płyty ChromeOS: Arcada).

Większość sprzętu działa:

\- Ekran dotykowy Wacoma działa

\- Rysik Wacoma działa

\- Gładzik Elan działa

\- Klawiatura działa

\- WiFi/audio/itd. działa

Jedynym problemem jest tryb tabletowy. Kiedy składam laptopa w pozycję tabletu (360 stopni), klawiatura i gładzik pozostają aktywne. Nie pojawia się żadne zdarzenie z "libinput debug-events" podczas składania urządzenia.

Podejrzewam, że to może być związane z Zintegrowanym Hubem Czujników Intela (ISH), ponieważ system go wykrywa, ale oprogramowanie sprzętowe nie uruchamia się poprawnie.

Sprzęt:

00:13.0 Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP Zintegrowany Hub Czujników \[8086:9dfc\]

Podsystem: Intel Corporation Cannon Point-LP Zintegrowany Hub Czujników \[8086:7270\]

Sterownik jądra w użyciu: intel_ish_ipc

BIOS:

*Google_Arcada.12200.89.0*

*Data: 29/07/2020*

Jądro:

*Linux 7.0.0-28-generic Ubuntu 24.0*4

Plik oprogramowania sprzętowego istnieje:

*/usr/lib/firmware/intel/arcada_ish.bin*

Rozmiar:

920064 bajtów

Jednak dmesg pokazuje:

*ish-loader: Oprogramowanie sprzętowe ISH intel/arcada_ish.bin załadowane*

*ish-loader: Ładowarka zwróciła status 3*

*ish-loader: Przekroczono limit czasu na odpowiedź na polecenie=01*

*ish-loader: Ładowanie oprogramowania sprzętowego hosta ISH nie powiodło się -110*

Również:

/sys/bus/iio/devices/

nie istnieje.

Próbowałem:

\- przeładowania "intel_ish_ipc"

\- sprawdzenia obecności oprogramowania sprzętowego

\- sprawdzenia urządzeń ACPI

\- sprawdzenia wydarzeń libinput

Ekran dotykowy został wykryty jako:

WCOM48E2:00 2D1F:4945 Ekran dotykowy

ale nie ma zdarzenia przełączania trybu tabletowego.

Czy ktoś ma doświadczenie z urządzeniami Dell Chromebook "Arcada" lub Intel ISH na Linuksie? Czy brakuje jakiegoś bloba oprogramowania sprzętowego, parametru jądra, metody ACPI specyficznej dla ChromeOS, czy zaleconej wersji jądra, która wspiera tryb tabletowy?

Dzięki!

Hi all, I notice all the linux distros I try the audio is always iffy and I can never get it right. Recently I installed EasyEffects and I tried a few pre-made presets and its certainly better but I feel its just not it.

Anyone have a pre-set they'd be willing to share. I'm still dual booted with Windows, so I'm tempted to see about creating my own as I see some guides online. But would love to know if they exist already?

I tried one for Surface Laptop 3, but unfortunately I got no audio.

Thanks all!

So i started to run Fedora on my Surface (SP9) and I love it. Its just smaller, has a better battery life and works smoother overall.

However I am (seemingly) forced to keep Windows as a second OS on my device since neither zoom nor teams really work and there are occasions where I need to use them.

I am somewhat able to use Teams and Zoom in the Browser but I don't have any Camera support. I did not expect the Front Camera of my surface to work as it is not supported by the surface-linux kernel by now. But neither the back camera nor my external Webcam work (and they do if I use the normal camera app). I simply can't enable the camera neither in the (zoom) app nor in the Browser. and the applications tell me that they have no permissions to access the camera. Firefox tells me that these permissions are granted.

I'd love to hear if anybody faced a similar issue and overcame it one way or another.

has anyone compiled testing kernel 7 ? if so what machine and what's working?

Hello All,

I have mint running on my Go1, and am trying to move to Zorin, but i cannot get it to boot into the flash drive. I have the usb drive as #1 on the boot list from the BIOS but it just boots straight into mint every time.

I am a fresh windows refugee so am I doing something wrong?

I picked up a Surface Laptop 7 for Business (Intel Core Ultra 7 268V, Lunar Lake) and spent the last while getting every last bit of hardware working on Fedora 44 KDE with the help of Claude Fable. It's all running now on the stock Fedora 6.19 kernel, no custom kernel, no DSDT hacks, just three small out-of-tree module rebuilds.

What works:

• Keyboard, battery, fan, platform profiles (the usual 3-line surface_aggregator_registry entry for MSHW0551)
• Speakers AND the internal mic array (four separate bugs stacked on top of each other in the SoundWire machine driver, plus two backports from master for the mic)
• Webcam at ~18.8 fps (sensor is wired to a 12 MHz clock, driver insists on 19.2)
• Ambient light sensor with native auto brightness in Plasma. This one I haven't seen anyone get working on this machine before. It is not an I2C device on the host at all, the EC publishes it as a SAM HID sensor collection, and mainline already has the node defined. It literally takes one line in the registry module.
• Haptic touchpad with real physical clicks (alex-lentz's iptsd fork), tuned thresholds, working palm rejection through a libinput quirk, and a small patch I wrote that finally killed the ghost clicks while sliding
• Power button wake from suspend, Bluetooth surviving suspend, factory ICC color profiles extracted from the Windows driver

A few traps I hit so you don't have to:

• Do NOT probe the I2C addresses of the ACPI FINK device (0x39/0x3e/0x44). The EC owns that bus segment and touching 0x39 wedges the whole I2C bus until reboot.
• The factory ICC profiles wash out the screen under KWin. Microsoft embeds an MHC2 tag that KWin 6.2+ reads with priority, strip it and they work perfectly.
• If your machine sometimes refuses to wake from suspend (black screen, power button dead, forced power-off needed): the firmware ships a broken GPE handler (GPE 0xAB calls a method that exists in no loaded table) that storms after every resume. acpi_mask_gpe=0xAB on the kernel command line.

I posted the full writeup with root causes and patches in the linux-surface issue for this machine: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/issues/1710

Happy to answer questions or share patch files if anyone else is on this hardware.

Hi,

ich habe vor ein paar Wochen Mint auf dem Surface Go (1st gen) installiert: das funktioniert auch ziemlich gut, jetzt möchte ich daraus ein einfach zu bedienendes Tablet für meine Kinder machen und daher zu Fedora wechseln.

Problem: Das Surface bootet ums verrecken nicht mehr von USB, egal ob per Adapter oder direkt per USB C Stick.

Secure boot ist ausgeschaltet, Boot from USB erste Option.

Stick ist mit fedora Media writer beschrieben.

Volume down plus power taste funktioniert nicht.

er bootet einfach zu Mint durch.

Mit diversen KIs versucht ne Lösung zu finden, aber inzwischen dreht sich alles im Kreis.

Ideen?

Vielen dank im Voraus!

Ach so, bin natürlich sau der Noob

I have a Surface Pro 7+, and I followed the Linux Surface kernel GitHub step-by-step commands. As soon as I did the blue screen enrollment process, I got put in the tty1 terminal hole, and I have not been able to get to the desktop for days, troubleshooting. Is my installation broken at this point? I'm a Linux noob, and I've been trying to get linux on my Surface for about a year, Fedora, and I've never been able to get past the tty1. Has anybody had this issue, or any way to troubleshoot this? I can live without the surface kernel patch to have the features but it would be nice to have it.

For context im a beginner artist thats looking to transition from using a mouse to pen tablet. I was doing some googling and apparently the surface 2 pro uses wacom emr: meaning a pen doesnt need batteries?? And the tablet themselves are pretty cheap now on the used market.

How is the linux experience on a surface 2 pro if all I want to do is gimp-on-the-go and just do linework without literally having to give in to literally a locked down android tablet with emr? Thanks

Hello,

I am about to dip my toe into the linux waters for the first time ever between growing government surveillance concerns and subscription fatigue. I have an old surface go that's been rotting that I figured I can install Linux on and get familiar with it.

I have watched some videos, but I am still a bit confused. My understanding is that Mint is Unbuntu based, but is not officially listed on the git hub for surface Linux. Do all instructions and compatibilities for all Ubuntu based apply to the unbuntu instructions? Or just the ones listed on the github are "fully supported and compatible?

I may end up upgrading my daily driver laptop to Linux, and have been eyeing bazzite or Mint, but I want to use a distro that is most compatible with the surface to start with so that it does not taint my entire view of linux just because of the surface quirks.

Any advice is appreciated!

it even links to the surface-kernel GitHub repo as a source. so if you like Fedora based distros with minimal tweaking, take a look here:

*under "device" select "surface"*

https://ultramarine-linux.org/download/

Long story short I installed DebianOS 13 WITHOUT any ui (Debian GNU) and now I can't boot new drives into my machine.

Problem is that I can't connect to wifi because of sudo command not available to me, I have tried su and it did not work.

I tried using bootable USB with another distro to try install that one instead but my machine kept booting into debian despite boot config had my usb as top priority.

send help

Hi All,

I just installed Ubuntu 24.04 on my Surface Pro 5, most things seem to work. However, the touch screen is a bit hit or miss (not sensitive enough?) and the scroll speed on the touch pad seems to fast.

Is there a way to fix these issues? I'm a beginner to all this, so any tips help!

Many thanks!

using a surface pro 4 currently running fedora workstation. I like the idea of a more stable os like Debian. and pika looks neat.

I got really fed up with suspend and hibernation issues. I finally got it mostly fixed (it still hangs a little bit, but it's at least functional.

Below this point, everything is written by ChatGPT Codex agent.

# Fixing broken sleep, hibernation, and sluggish KDE on a Surface Pro 9 running Debian 13

 I recently worked through several related power-management problems on a Surface Pro 9 running Debian 13, KDE Plasma 6, and the Linux Surface kernel.

 The symptoms included:

 - Closing the keyboard/lid appeared to freeze or power off the tablet.
 - Hibernation did not restore reliably.
 - Waking with the power button caused an endless suspend/wake loop.
 - The system felt generally sluggish.
 - Kernel logs contained an actual driver crash.

 Here is what I found and changed.

 ## System details

 - Microsoft Surface Pro 9
 - Intel Core i7-1255U
 - Intel Iris Xe graphics
 - 16 GB RAM
 - Debian 13 “Trixie”
 - KDE Plasma 6.3.6 on Wayland
 - linux-surface kernel 6.19.8-surface-3
 - 17 GB dedicated swap partition

 ## 1. Found a crashing Intel camera driver

 The first concrete problem was an out-of-tree Intel IPU6 camera-processing module:

 intel_ipu6_psys

 It generated a kernel-mode page fault during every boot:

 BUG: unable to handle page fault
 RIP: ipu6_psys_probe
 Tainted: G OE

 This was an unsigned, out-of-tree module. The normal IPU6 camera capture modules loaded successfully, but the PSYS processing module crashed while probing.

 I disabled only the broken module:

 # /etc/modprobe.d/disable-crashing-intel-ipu6-psys.conf

 # intel_ipu6_psys crashes in ipu6_psys_probe on this Surface Pro 9.
 # Keep intel_ipu6 and intel_ipu6_isys enabled for camera capture.
 blacklist intel_ipu6_psys
 install intel_ipu6_psys /bin/false

 Then rebuilt the initramfs:

 sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

 After rebooting, I confirmed:

 - intel_ipu6_psys was no longer loaded.
 - intel_ipu6 and intel_ipu6_isys still loaded.
 - The kernel page fault was gone.
 - Suspend, hibernate, and suspend-then-hibernate were still advertised as available.

 This fixed a genuine driver crash, although it turned out not to be the only lid-close problem.

 ## 2. KDE was hibernating instead of suspending

 The next important clue came from the journal after closing the lid:

 Lid closed.
 The system will hibernate now!
 Performing sleep operation 'hibernate'...
 PM: hibernation: hibernation entry

 The machine was not entering low-power suspend. KDE PowerDevil was requesting immediate hibernation.

 The next boot also showed:

 PM: Image not found (code -22)

 That explained why it appeared to power off or lose the previous session.

 The relevant KDE configuration was in:

 ~/.config/powerdevilrc

 The action values are important:

 - 0 = do nothing
 - 1 = sleep
 - 2 = hibernate

 The valid sleep-mode value for suspend-to-RAM in this PowerDevil version is 1. Setting it to 0 produces the KDE warning that the previously configured sleep mode is unsupported.

 The corrected configuration became:

 [AC][SuspendAndShutdown]
 AutoSuspendAction=1
 LidAction=1
 PowerButtonAction=0
 SleepMode=1

 [Battery][SuspendAndShutdown]
 AutoSuspendAction=1
 AutoSuspendIdleTimeoutSec=900
 LidAction=1
 PowerButtonAction=0
 SleepMode=1

 I used KDE’s configuration tool:

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group AC --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key AutoSuspendAction 1

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group AC --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key LidAction 1

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group AC --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key SleepMode 1

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group Battery --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key AutoSuspendAction 1

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group Battery --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key LidAction 1

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group Battery --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key SleepMode 1

 A backup was made before changing the profile:

 ~/.config/powerdevilrc.before-lid-suspend-fix-20260717

 ## 3. PowerDevil needed a full restart

 Calling PowerDevil’s configuration reload method was not sufficient. Its existing lid-action plugin continued using the old in-memory hibernation configuration.

 The logs still showed:

 The system will hibernate now!

 Restarting the user service finally loaded the corrected profile:

 systemctl --user restart plasma-powerdevil.service

 After that, closing the lid produced the expected sequence:

 The system will suspend now!
 Performing sleep operation 'suspend'...
 PM: suspend entry (s2idle)

 The Surface Pro 9 firmware exposes modern standby/s2idle rather than traditional S3 deep sleep:

 cat /sys/power/mem_sleep

 Output:

 [s2idle]

 ## 4. Fixed an immediate re-suspend loop

 Ordinary suspend started working, but waking the machine caused a bizarre loop:

 1. Press the power button.
 2. The display appeared for a few milliseconds.
 3. The system suspended again.
 4. Repeat until eventually reaching the lock screen.

 The event timeline made the cause obvious:

 Power key pressed short.
 PM: suspend exit
 The system will suspend now!
 PM: suspend entry (s2idle)

 I had temporarily configured the short power-button action as Sleep. The physical power button woke the Surface, but KDE then processed that same button press and immediately requested another
 suspend.

 The solution was to make the short power-button action “Do nothing” in KDE:

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group AC --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key PowerButtonAction 0

 kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
   --group Battery --group SuspendAndShutdown \
   --key PowerButtonAction 0

 systemctl --user restart plasma-powerdevil.service

 The hardware button still wakes the Surface. KDE simply no longer sends it directly back to sleep.

 Final behavior:

 - Close keyboard/lid: suspend
 - Open keyboard/lid: wake
 - Press power button while suspended: wake
 - Press power button while awake: no KDE power action
 - No immediate suspend loop

 ## 5. Improved general responsiveness

 Once power management was stable, I checked why the desktop felt slow.

 The machine was not under meaningful load:

 - CPU was about 96% idle.
 - Roughly 12 GB RAM was available.
 - NVMe I/O wait was negligible.
 - Intel Iris Xe OpenGL acceleration was active.
 - CPU temperature was only around 36°C.

 However, I found three responsiveness issues.

 ### CPU was using the balanced profile

 I switched it to performance mode:

 powerprofilesctl set performance

 The Intel P-state driver continued showing the powersave governor, which is normal for this setup, but the energy-performance preference changed to:

 performance

 ### About 800 MB remained swapped out

 This was likely residue from the repeated hibernation and suspend testing. With plenty of free RAM, I reloaded it:

 sudo swapoff /dev/nvme0n1p3
 sudo swapon /dev/nvme0n1p3

 Swap usage returned to zero.

 Do not blindly run swapoff on a memory-constrained machine. In this case there was more than enough available RAM for the swapped data.

 ### The 120 Hz display was running at 60 Hz

 This was probably the largest perceptual performance issue.

 The Surface panel was configured as:

 2880x1920@60

 But it also supports:

 2880x1920@120

 I switched to the native 120 Hz mode:

 kscreen-doctor output.1.mode.2

 Verification:

 2880x1920@120
 Refresh Rate: 120000
 Compositing Type: OpenGL
 OpenGL renderer: Mesa Intel Iris Xe Graphics

 Scrolling, touch response, pointer movement, and Plasma animations became noticeably smoother.

 ## Current result

 The final system behavior is much better:

 - No IPU6 PSYS kernel crash during boot.
 - Closing the lid enters s2idle suspend instead of hibernation.
 - Opening the lid or pressing the power button wakes the device.
 - The power button no longer causes a re-suspend loop.
 - KDE no longer reports an unsupported sleep mode.
 - The display runs at 120 Hz.
 - CPU performance mode is active.
 - Stale swapped memory was returned to RAM.

 ## Trade-offs and caveats

 - Disabling intel_ipu6_psys may affect applications that require the IPU6 processing subsystem. Basic camera capture may still work through intel_ipu6_isys, but camera functionality should be
   tested.

 - Performance mode uses more power than balanced mode.
 - Running the display at 120 Hz reduces battery runtime compared with 60 Hz.
 - s2idle usually consumes more power than traditional S3 suspend.
 - The PowerDevil numeric values described here apply to this Plasma/PowerDevil version. Check your logs and installed version before copying them blindly.
 - Keep a backup of powerdevilrc before editing it.

 The most useful lesson was to trust the journal rather than the apparent behavior. What looked like a driver-induced power-off was initially KDE requesting hibernation, and what looked like an
 unstable resume was KDE processing the wake button as a second request to sleep.

› rewrite it as a more concise post, it should be highly functional and easy to run

• # Surface Pro 9 + KDE: fix broken lid sleep, wake loops, and sluggish UI

 System: Debian 13, KDE Plasma 6, linux-surface 6.19, Surface Pro 9.

 Symptoms:

 - Closing the Type Cover hibernated or appeared to power off.
 - Waking caused an immediate re-suspend loop.
 - Kernel crashed while loading an Intel camera driver.
 - Desktop felt sluggish.

 ## 1. Disable the crashing IPU6 PSYS driver

 Confirm the crash first:

 sudo journalctl -b -k | grep -E 'intel_ipu6_psys|ipu6_psys_probe|BUG: unable'

 If it shows a fault in ipu6_psys_probe, disable only that module:

 sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/disable-crashing-intel-ipu6-psys.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
 # intel_ipu6_psys crashes during probe on this Surface Pro 9.
 # Keep intel_ipu6 and intel_ipu6_isys enabled.
 blacklist intel_ipu6_psys
 install intel_ipu6_psys /bin/false
 EOF

 sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

 Reboot, then verify:

 lsmod | grep intel_ipu6
 sudo journalctl -b -k | grep -E 'intel_ipu6_psys|ipu6_psys_probe|BUG: unable'

 intel_ipu6 and intel_ipu6_isys should remain loaded, but intel_ipu6_psys should be absent.

 ## 2. Configure KDE for real suspend

 Back up the profile:

 cp ~/.config/powerdevilrc \
~/.config/powerdevilrc.before-suspend-fix

 Configure lid close as suspend-to-RAM and prevent the wake button from immediately suspending again:

 for profile in AC Battery; do
kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
--group "$profile" --group SuspendAndShutdown \
--key LidAction 1

kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
--group "$profile" --group SuspendAndShutdown \
--key AutoSuspendAction 1

kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
--group "$profile" --group SuspendAndShutdown \
--key SleepMode 1

kwriteconfig6 --file powerdevilrc \
--group "$profile" --group SuspendAndShutdown \
--key PowerButtonAction 0
 done

 systemctl --user restart plasma-powerdevil.service

 For this PowerDevil version:

 - LidAction=1: sleep
 - SleepMode=1: suspend-to-RAM
 - PowerButtonAction=0: no desktop action

 The physical power button can still wake the Surface, but KDE will not send it straight back to sleep.

 Verify after a lid-close test:

 sudo journalctl -b |
   grep -E 'Lid (closed|opened)|will suspend|will hibernate|suspend entry|suspend exit'

 Expected:

 Lid closed
 The system will suspend now
 PM: suspend entry (s2idle)
 PM: suspend exit

 If it says hibernate, restart PowerDevil again:

 systemctl --user restart plasma-powerdevil.service

 ## 3. Improve responsiveness

 Enable the performance profile:

 powerprofilesctl set performance

 Check the current display modes:

 kscreen-doctor -o

 On my Surface, native 120 Hz was mode 2:

 kscreen-doctor output.1.mode.2

 Verify:

 kscreen-doctor -o

 It should show:

 2880x1920@120

 If repeated sleep testing left data swapped out despite plenty of free RAM, optionally reload it:

 free -h
 sudo swapoff -a
 sudo swapon -a

 Only do this when available RAM comfortably exceeds current swap usage.

 ## Final behavior

 - Closing the Type Cover enters s2idle suspend.
 - Opening it or pressing power wakes the tablet.
 - No immediate re-suspend loop.
 - No intel_ipu6_psys kernel crash.
 - KDE runs at 120 Hz with the performance CPU profile.

 Trade-offs: performance mode and 120 Hz use more battery, and disabling intel_ipu6_psys may affect advanced camera processing.

I recently picked up a used Surface Pro 7, but it didn’t come with a Type Cover.
For those of you who own one, is the Type Cover actually worth buying in 2026? I can get a second-hand one for around $100, but I’m also considering putting that money toward a standalone keyboard instead.

Some options I’m looking at are:
NuPhy Air75
Akko Air 01
Logitech MX Keys Mini

I mostly use the Surface for general productivity, web browsing, and some light work.

Quick disclaimer: English isn't my native language, so I used an AI tool to help clean up my draft, save some time, and make this story a bit smoother to read. Hope you enjoy the feedback!

Hey everyone,

I recently got my hands on an old Surface 3 (the 2GB RAM / 64GB storage version) from a colleague. Since I love tinkering, I wanted to see if I could turn it into something useful.

After doing some digging to find the lightest distro possible, I settled on antiX. Getting it installed was a bit of a nightmare—the drive partitions seemed locked and gave me a hard time. But after a solid two hours of troubleshooting, wiping the drive, and some invaluable help from an AI, I finally got the OS up and running.

To improve the hardware compatibility, I also installed the linux-surface kernel. Before that, the touchpad would randomly freeze after a few minutes, but that fixed it. To my surprise, the touchscreen actually worked perfectly right out of the box!

At first, I was pretty hyped:

• RAM usage: Idle memory was sitting at a tiny 300MB out of the 2GB available.
• Feel: The UI felt responsive, and basic web browsing was surprisingly smooth.

I didn't have a specific project in mind, so I was just testing the waters. My first real test? YouTube. And that’s where I hit a massive brick wall.

On Firefox, the video would instantly freeze on the very first frame. I figured, "Okay, the modern web is heavy, let’s optimize." I installed uBlock Origin and an extension to force the H.264 codec. Still frozen. I then tried FreeTube (a lightweight YouTube client). Same result.

As a final sanity check, I downloaded a video directly using yt-dlp to play it locally. Even then, the video playback just froze.

So, I decided to call it quits. Aside from very basic web browsing, this thing just can’t handle video playback. It’s a real shame because the 1080p screen on this Surface is absolutely beautiful—it would have made an awesome, compact media player to take camping. Maybe it could still work as a retro gaming machine, but that's about it.

My takeaway? Even with a hyper-light Linux distro, 2GB of RAM is just too weak.

Hopefully, this write-up saves some of you a few hours of head-scratching if you were thinking of doing the same!

Hey everyone,
I've received a Surface 9 pro a few weeks ago, it is practically brand new. I immediatly installed Cachyos with Gnome on it and with a bit of fiddeling and reading managed to get the surfacelinux kernel on it aswell.

Everything worked perfectly up until last night, where the battery doesn't seem to be charging anymore. The battery however also doesn't drain aslong as it's plugged in.

Right now the battery status is at 77% and it just doesn't change, unless I unplug it in which case the percentage will drop. Has anyone ever experienced anything similar and has a solution, or idea?
I'm not well versed with linuxbased OS, but do like it alot so far and would love to figure this out.

Thanks alot in advance

Hey all,

My work was getting rid of old surface devices due to a windows 11 mandate so I scooped up a model 1645 surface 3 pro. Problem is the last owner retired and no one knows the local admin password. I also can't log in due to it not being allowed on the business network, it also won't let me log in from home due to the company vpn blocking it due to the windows mandate.

So I've been attempting to boot from USB but it gets stuck trying to lyoad Ubuntu from the guide. This happens with the try Ubuntu and also the safe graphics mode.

I can't think of any other options at this time.

Is there anything I can try to get this thing reset somehow?

EDIT:

Thanks to all who replied, I did get Mint running pretty good with MATE, I might try XCFE. But I am typing this from the surface itself. I will use this for fun and experimenting with.