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Surface Laptop 3 running Kubuntu, such an improvement over what it was "designed" for.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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I have an OG Surface Pro. The first one. It's running Windows 10 at the moment and it's doing fine except for the occasional wifi/Bluetooth bugs. I'm using it exclusively in tablet mode with the pen. No keyboard.
When Windows 10 is going to reach its end of life, I'd like to install Linux on it. But I need it to have a tablet style interface with gestures if possible.
Do I need any special distro or drivers on that hardware? And what would you recommend as the desktop environment?
You'll definitely need this: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
Gnome is probably the best with touchscreens. I had issues with Ubuntu though so you probably want something more up to date, like fedora or arch.
Also, highly recommend checking out Universal Blue's Surface images! It's pretty much everything you need out of the box! https://universal-blue.org/images/surface/?h=surface
That's even better! Thank you!
To add another comment to your reply, have you tried it personally?
I'd like to back up my system before doing the switch. What do you recommend I use? Clonezilla with an external USB drive all plugged in using a USB hub?
I haven't tried the Surface images due to not having one, but I am using their Silverblue images to make the whole NVIDIA drivers thing a bit easier on my system.
Also I haven't needed to backup my system in over a year now (I stopped hopping with Silverblue) so I don't remember the solution I used, but this seems good.
From your live stick, bevor install, do
# cp /dev/your-disk /your/image.imgor to save space:
# gzip < /dev/your-disk > /your/image.img.gzor faster but might need to install it first:
# lz4 /dev/your-disk /your/image.img.lz4To get a list of your disks, there's
lsblk.I recommend partition-wise backup, it's always a bother to extract/shrink individual partitions in images of whole disks. That would be
/dev/your-disk1 etc