Edit: I’ll try my luck with Kubuntu and see how things go. Wish me luck :D
So I have been happily using my Surface Go 2 for a couple years now and don’t really have a lot of complaints right now. However, Microsoft being Microsoft and Windows being Windows, I’d like to move to a Linux distro because foss is just cooler and Linux is cooler lol.
I’m mainly using my Surface for school: taking hand-written notes in Journal, annotating and highlighting text in PDFs with Drawboard, and browsing the web. Very basic stuff. Not gaming, not really a power user either, so I don’t need any fancy distro that allows me to go under the hood and tinker.
Before moving, I’ve got a couple of things I’d like to ask:
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Which distro should I choose? Something similar to Windows wouldn’t hurt but doesn’t have to be necessarily. I’ve previously installed and used (K)ubuntu on an old laptop of mine and it worked fine. I’ve heard that Mint is more or less one of the best choices for transitioning since it “just works” and has pretty much anything you could want right off the bat - settings and drivers and such. Is Mint fine for a Surface Go 2? I can add my specs if needed.
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Do you have recommendations for a notes taking app and a PDF reader that allows for editing, annotating, highlighting text? I’ve had a thorough chat with GPT (don’t judge) and have been recommend Xournal++ which is apparently also available on Linux. I’ve played around with it a little and it seems fine, but I’d also take recommendations from the community if you have any.
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Would I be fine running Linux off an SD card that I have inserted in my device? The interal storage of the Surface is quite limited with 120GB, so it has an SD card slot to expand its storage; my SD card has another 120GB on it. I’ve mostly been fine just using the internal storage, but it’s slowly running out, so I will likely have to use the SD card at some point. Should I make the effort of moving all my data - like documents, photos and stuff - to the SD card and install Linux onto the internal storage itself alongside Windows, or would I also be fine installing Linux onto the SD card? Apparently, this is not ideal because of slower read and write speeds compared to the built-in SSD (?) storage; moving all the data is not too much fun either, however.
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Is stylus/Surface Pen support a thing on Linux? And will the Surface keyboard work fine too? I imagine yes, but I don’t know for sure. That would be a must for whatever distro I choose since it’s the primary way of taking notes and typing for me.
That should be it, I think. Anything else that might be interesting for me or important to know?
I’ve been in-process trying to flip a surface pro 6 into a Linux tablet for a while now. Can’t answer all your questions but can provide a few. First things first: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
That’s your hub for most of tue stuff you’ll need to do it. You can look up your hardware in their feature matrix and see what is supported.
Generally touch and stylus work. Things like camera are much more hit or miss.
In terms of distro… welp it’s always kinda impossible to make a “right choice”. Everything will have pros and cons. Originally uninstalled arch just to see if I could. And yes, it turns out you can. Problem is, I use Ubuntu on a couple of spare computers as servers and such and I’m more familiar with how that works, so I thought ok I’m having some trouble getting a couple things to work I’ll just put Ubuntu on here and then I don’t have to remember two different ways of using the OS (mind you I was using gnome in all cases, so really wasn’t a big deal to have to research a few arch specific things).
Problem is, Ubuntu fails to install. I’ve tried about 4 times and it always fails out, and I can’t figure out a way to access any install logs after the fact.
So I’m probably gonna put arch back in there because it worked, mostly.
You’ll have to be willing to tinker a bit and get used to some different ways of interacting. Overall touch was pretty ok and gnome in my case was pretty nice for navigation.
I was using an app called xournal++ for stylus/notetaking, and it seems very well featured for a Linux stylus application. That said, my pen stopped working a while ago, and I could not figure out how to fix it, which is why I was gonna try again with Ubuntu. (Xournal wasn’t to blame for the stylus problems, just couldn’t use it because stylus was useless)
I still think it’s a good learning experience, and probably a good way to resurrect an older piece of tech to usefulness. Personally I wanted to replicate stuff I do on my iPad, but be able to fully Adblock YouTube, etc. my iPad is way better for reading and handwriting, but otherwise is an obnoxious locked down operating system that I find more and more annoying. Basically it’s a great tablet but limited. Whereas like the windows version the surface is not a great tablet, but an acceptable hybrid.
Oh and at least with my hardware, the surface keyboard and trackpad worked out of the box, no problems. I’d pay special attention to any special wireless drivers you might need because if wireless doesn’t come up, you can’t hardwire the thing to get the driver. (USB could do it though I guess)