I absolutely loathe win11, so I turned to linux and have been trying to find a distro that would allow my surface pro 7 to work properly. I use this thing as a portable art station, so getting the pen and touch screen work perfectly is my first priority, and getting paint tool SAI 2 run properly the second (Krita works I know, but it’s like telling water colorist to switch to oil paints).

I run Mint on my extra laptop, but I can’t get SAI working properly so it’s out of the question. I tried Zorin OS since it’s said to work well with surface pro’s, and I really liked it and even got SAI running perfectly basically out of the box, but I could get both the touch screen and pen to work only barely even with the linux-surface-kernel.

I now have win10 back so I can keep drawing, but I’m searching for a distro that could work for what I need - and would be easy enough for a mint-level noob like me.

So, has anyone gotten surface pro’s touch stuff work perfectly with some distro or am I stuck with win10 until ESU runs out? Even the best answers I find searching online are basically “the touch works somewhat but I don’t need it anyway”

  • doodoo_wizard@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Your exact surface pro isn’t there yet.

    Switch to win 10 21h2 iot ltsc using massgrave and you can wait for linux support to get right till 2032.

    • Autisti4@sopuli.xyzOP
      2·
      6 hours ago

      Tried and failed, I just can’t get it to work. I got the pressure working, but the cursor won’t focus properly and is all over the place, it’s something to do with the integrated touch screen somehow. Not with wine, not even with non-flatpak bottles :(

      It might run on the SP7, but I just won’t risk an OS install without getting it work on some other touch screen mint first. I’ve considered trying zorin on this extra one too though, to see if it would work better with this touch screen, or is it just the SP that’s the problem.

  • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    I have used Pop! which is basically Ubuntu but very polished and customized to enhance what’s already there. But as others said it’s not strictly a distro thing it’s Desktop Environment and also the graphics system I’m probably not using the right terminology. But Wayland is very good with touchscreen and I’ve read that X11 has some support as well (?).

  • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    I’m coming at this from another angle, & your being stuck in an MS-Surface may break it, but please try UbuntuStudio, on something: it augments Ubuntu-family with an entire sea of fixes for creatives.

    I’ve no idea how to get a kernel patched to work with such hardware, sorry.

    _ /\ _

    • Autisti4@sopuli.xyzOP
      2·
      6 hours ago

      Yeah tried and failed, I get them working but not even close on the level good enough for art

      • anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz
        3·
        6 hours ago

        Ah sorry, I see you mentioned the linux surface kernel in your Zorin OS text.
        You could always keep using Windows 10 even after EOL and allow LAN access but forbid internet access for the Surface in your router. That would require you to save your art to some sort of network storage before using another device to upload it to the net though.

        • Autisti4@sopuli.xyzOP
          3·
          6 hours ago

          Yeah… I might have to. Win11 is only the absolute last resort, since it’s such a garbage fire. It installed itself on the SP7 without my consent, and just kept getting worse and worse every update, until the machine barely worked without lagging. Insane that an os hogs something like 6GB ram just for being on, and even on a damn machine microslop made themselves

          • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            1·
            33 minutes ago

            Just like 10, windows 11 reserves a lot of ram, but it’s not really using it. When you need more ram it will unload a lot of things. It’s just sometimes too damn slow at it, especially on a device like a surface which has pretty pokey hardware. (Despite on paper it supposedly being much better)

            You can try those de bloat scripts. Instead of waiting for windows to unload the shit you can just stop it from loading in the first place. On a VM of mine it made a pretty big difference, but on my SP7 it seemed to not work(?) it didn’t seem to do much. I’m generally not a fan of those though because they tend to break a lot of things. Like one of them turns off hibernation which is a huge no no on modern standby devices.

  • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
    3·
    6 hours ago

    In my experience, Gnome is a lot better with touchscreens and pens than KDE Plasma (or any other desktop).
    The Surface Pro 7 is old enough that it should be supported by any common distro.
    The first one I’d try is Fedora, since they generally offer the “reference” implementation of Gnome.
    But I don’t have any personal experience with the Surface Pro 7.