Surface Linux

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46861356

After a recommendation from Lemmy, I downloaded KDE mobile alongside plasma desktop to see if my touchscreen would work better. This took a little tinkering and figuring out but I really enjoy this interface. ^borrowed and reconfigured fastfetch theme from a Lemmy user (lost access to old account so I can't tag them, sorry ) ^ the slide-up app drawer for KDE Mobile. ^interatellar, gui client for Lemmy. ^Tuba, gui client for Mastodon.

Hey folks!

How is your surfacelinux-experience so far? Which hardware do you use and which distro brings the best experience for you at the moment in your opinion?

(Currently I'm using Ubuntu on my SP9, but I'm curious if there are already equal or better options, since I'm not really a fan of Ubuntu...)

Have a nice day!

~sp3ctre

Hi,

When connecting to a video projector in duplicate mode, the Surface monitor has to be set to a resolution with an aspect ratio of 16:9 because video projectors don't support 3:2.

Is there any way to keep the Surface monitor at optimal resolution and aspect ratio while sending a resized 16:9 video to the projector, i.e. displaying black borders on the external monitor instead of the internal one ?

Thanks

I'm looking to buy a new tablet for grad school. Mostly to read PDFs of text books and take handwritten notes.

Additionally, I'd like it to be powerful enough for some casual use in my down time. Maybe run some simple games like Balatro or others of that caliber.

I was wondering if y'all could speak to which of these options seem the best for me?

1. buy a new Starlite tablet (Linux pre-installed!)
2. buy a new surface and load Gnome
3. try to find a used surface and load Gnome
4. something easy I haven't thought of.

Some considerations:

a) From looking at the specs, a Starlite and a new Surface of around the same price have similar RAM. I don't know enough about processors to know which is better though.

b) I'd rather not support Microsoft directly, so I'm less inclined to buy a new Surface, but I'm not sure if the used market will be too limiting for me

c) I don't know how difficult it is to put Linux on a surface. I'm imagining as a Windows proprietary device it's going to be a little testy about it. My experience installing windows is putting Mint or Kubuntu on an older Win10 PC and laptop.

What does the community think? Any words of advice for me?

Hey there folks!

First of all, let me say that I feel very honored to make the first post over here, and I predict a great future for this sub!

I am a privacy-focused guy, who likes the idea of having a truly free operating system, so I came across the idea of installing linux on my surface pro 9.

Here some general questions for the more experienced people, who already made it:

• Is it a hassle to do this?
• Do you miss some functionalities for you everyday life?
• Are there things, what simply cannot be done anymore after installing linux?
• Does the surface pen still work good enough?
• Since I heard the camera is not supported for some surface models (like mine), is there hope, that it could be supported in the future?

In the long-term, I also plan to use it for university, so I want to make sure everything works well.

I guess this is it for now. I would be very happy hearing from you :).

~sp3ctre