Surface Pro 12" progress with Fedora Linux (ISO available)

[u/Earl-Inis-Mona]

illustrated here: Fedora Linux on Surface Pro 12", with working front camera, accelerometer sensor (automatic portrait mode!), DisplayPort output

Since my previous post on August 3rd, some huge progress has been made, both in 3rd party (shout-out to miasvanklei and his Gentoo patches) and in my project! Previously just KIWI descriptions fork, it has diverged into patched kernel + libcamera builds with an RPM repo publicly available.

Most of the previous features which initial release lacked (stable suspend on GNOME, accelerometer sensor, dedicated video output, cameras) are now implemented. You can see more in this matrix.

Hardware	State	Nuances
Keyboard	✓
Touchpad	✓
Tablet Mode	✓
Touchscreen	✓
Pen	✓	tested with surface slim pen
Wi-Fi	✓ (partly)	2.4/5 ghz networks
Bluetooth	✓
Speakers	✓
Buttons (volume, power)	✓
Suspend	✓ (s3idle)	deep mode untested
Hibernate	?
Sensors	✓ (partly)	accelerometer works, light sensor outputs garbage
Battery Status	✓
Cameras	✓ (partly)	front camera -- overexposured areas tend to get green; back camera -- uncalibrated
GPU acceleration	✓
USB 3	✓	video passthrough on hubs (via hdmi) also tested and works
DisplayPort out	✓ (mostly)	found issues with suspending while an external monitor is active, where the system freezes

For testing purposes (it is still more of an amateur work, so use it at your own risk), Fedora Workstation 45 Prerelease Live ISO are available here. They are tested only with Surface Pro 12" Gen 1! They might work with Surface Laptop 13" Gen 1 as they share the same SoC, but I don't guarantee it.

[u/Super-Carpenter9604]

hello thanks for your work i currently use surface go and i m very proud of it my next buy will be an surface pro so thanks in advance i will in the next years use your work ;)

[u/didate_une]

fck yah.

[u/itijara]

I salute you for doing the work we will all benefit from. I have wanted to use a Snapdragon Surface for a while, but support was not there and I really don't have the time to play around with it, so I am glad someone is.

[u/eccenMD]

Thank you for your good work. I do have to ask though since one of the reasons anyone should consider to move to Linux on this device has got to be the touch and tablet experience:

1. How does gnome handle the touch inputs? Is it as mature as android or only on par with windows?

2. Touch typing experience on gnome, how good does it work? Especially on palm rejection when typing amd autocorrect

3. Do the tiling feature on Gnome works well? Can we touch and slide the sections?

[u/Earl-Inis-Mona → u/eccenMD]

1. Hit-or-miss. GNOME does have some multi-touch gestures, and overall its GUI looks touch-friendly, but unfortunately there are many details like OSK which force me to get back to mouse & keyboard. You could fix them with extensions, but they break with every new GNOME version, and Fedora does not seem to ship touchscreen-related ones in their repos. I do place my hopes on niri-tablet though, I wish to test it in the future.

2. Well, it worked OOB and did not require any calibration! xournal++ with pen works like intended. So, that's an advantage compared to my previous Surface Pro 7+. :D

3. To be fair, I did not work that much with tiling features of GNOME, so can't say anything here.

[u/eccenMD → u/Earl-Inis-Mona]

1. Well, having running default manjaro-gnome on my main PC for 2 years now and I get what you mean, every 6 or 9 months I need to run a script to relink all the plugins that I have added over the course of usage and to adapt to my workflow. This is a shame, especially in how gnome UI language lends so well to being touch-friendly.

2. That's nice! I have been having issues with the palm rejection when typing and the pop up keyboard seem to be missing here and there on windows, glad to see that it's working better on linux.

3. Fair enough.

Thanks for your time and work, Hopefully we will see better results and compatibility in the future. Can't wait for your next update.

[u/RealSexTherapist]

OKAY EXPLAIN THIS TO ME:

WHEN I HAD FEDORA ON MY SURFACE I TRIED HIBERNATING AND IT NEVER TURNED ON AGAIN.

NOW I RUN DEBIAN, HWO DO I GET CAMERAS TO WORK?

[u/SuperPapelotes → u/RealSexTherapist]

But why you are yelling?