this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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Finally have a fantastic setup for my surface to act as a tablet. the extension Touchup is doing some heavy lifting for usability. apps are: files, Riff, Librewolf, Voyager. Heres more screenshots.

Edit: i forgot to show some portrait screenshots! Ill grab some when i get a min!

some essential extensions.Touchup has been a gamechanger.

stock gnome files. It works well.

app library, checkout voyager!

librewolf using a CSS to make it easier to use on touchscreens. note the bigger navigation buttons.

instagram running in librewolf tab

spotify app Riff. it is fantastic and runs well on my surface

VOYAGER! the best lemmy experience on linux.

fastfetch i edited and copied from someone else on lemmy

i tried to post a video of my osk but it wouldnt work. here is the link to imgur.

gnome osk the osk was acting crazy while was recording. it doesnt act like that normally.

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What's the OS?

Also, good work finding the one place I think gnome fits

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Ultramarine Linux. It has a surface OS variant and its built on fedora. Its pretty good.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Thanks for sharing .

You gotta show off the onscreen keyboard and a *fetch to make the show complete

Edit: and post to one of the unixporn Comms. !unixporn@lemmy.ml

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Oh man i forgot about Fetch!

[–] bleustenns@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Super cool goal they're achieving, installing this on my OG Surface Laptop. Thanks for making me aware of this.

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You can also use most any distro you want using Linux-surface kernel

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[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wow this looks really nice!

I’ve tried KDE and Cosmic, but Gnome+extensions is my favorite DE by far. It’s 99% of the time perfect😅

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

What extensions do you recommend? Aside from tray icons

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Legit the only one i HAVE to have is Touchup. It makes the tablet re hing so much easier. Plus it added the functionality oh HOLDING THE BACKSPACE BUTTON to delete multiple letters .

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[–] sunnyjim@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 month ago

I'm generally a KDE guy but this is clean af

[–] neonmagician@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Are you using linux-surface or have their patches been upstreamed to mainline now? I have a surface pro 6 I was running fedora on & haven't touched in a few years. Curious as to the current status

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The OS variant i use uses the Linux-surfacekernel. I dont think they are upstream yet.

[–] baronvonj@piefed.social 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

so .. which distro are you using? I've been using a Surface Pro 9 with Fedora 44 and the linux-surface kernel and supporting packages installed on top. I've been annoyed with sleep/wake overall (it often doesn't wake and I have to hold the power button and force a reboot).

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I hear that sleep/wake has been an issue for a lot of surface devices. Mine is fine at wake/sleep but think its draining the battery while suspended.

[–] baronvonj@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

yeah, honestly it makes no sense for this to be an issue. Like I can kinda get it if I'm doing things like unplugging the dock quick connect cable and attaching the type cover keyboard and then trying to wake and it freaks out and needs a reboot. But to be totally unresponsive until a hard power reset even without doing those things is just crazy.

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Mine is ,like i said, fine. Def had a hiccup or two while playing with this.

[–] TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Very nice!! I haven't looked at Surface support in a while. How well does the pen work?

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Perfectly! I havent looked into customizing the button functions yet but pen works and writes.

[–] dubs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago

I ran Debian on one of the surface pros a few years ago. It took a bit of hardware hacking, but it was great.

I use a TWM and spend most of my time in the shell, so I didn't get to utilize a lot of the OS features. But things like reading comics, and surfing the web were pretty cool.

I always wondered if Gnome would be a better interface for it. It seems like they've been leaning that direction for a while.

[–] doleo@lemmy.one 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is that what gnomes dock looks like, these days? I like it.

[–] save_the_humans@leminal.space 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Its close. This is more rounded. I don't think you can do that without an extension. And those aren't the default icons, which really helps complete the look here.

[–] doleo@lemmy.one 1 points 1 month ago

The only extension I ever used was Dash2Dock. OP, or anyone else, is that what's used here?

[–] djdarren@piefed.social 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This isn't helping my desire to pick up a Surface for Linux-noodling...

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

My bad.

...do it.

[–] patruelis@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago
[–] communism@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

yovday

Looks nice though, and it's cool how well Linux works for touchscreens these days.

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[–] sage_kase@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

Damn, this looks clean.

[–] ptt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

I basically don't use my keyboard anymore. Its a tablet all the way.

[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

What are you using the put the window title in the top panel?

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I'll give it a look when i get back. Its JUST below the sa ted extensions above 😂

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

ITs called window title is back

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Do your cameras work? Partially? Completely? I have a ThinkPad X1 Tablet Gen 2 that has similar hardware to some Surface devices but I just can't get the cameras to work. I tried all of the libcamera stuff and no dice.

[–] notthebees@reddthat.com 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I know there is a surface specific kernel. I wonder if that would work for you.

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

I highly doubt it though.

Also if it's that similar to the surface, maybe something related to the Intel ISP module? Only thing I can think of. All my Intel stuff is ancient and/or properly supported.

Edit: best I can tell, if it's truly based on surface hardware, the camera issues are due to the intel image processing unit (IPU3). So whatever you're missing lies here. It's not a true camera issue. Basically your camera isn't really USB, It goes into the blackbox that is the intel processing thing. Since there's a skycam driver on the Lenovo driver page for your tablet, it's probably along those lines.

Most cameras on windows are just USB. My 7th/8th gen Intel laptop is USB.

This is just me googling.

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/discussions/1352

This is the discussion for it on that same GitHub. Good luck with this.

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] notthebees@reddthat.com 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Did you get anywhere with this?

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago
[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

my front facing camera works but my rear camera does not! 🤷‍♂️

some things only work with The linux-surface kernel so it's worth it to use.

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago
[–] icecreamhunter@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

What is that spotify client

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

Its called Riff.

[–] Tiral@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How's the battery health on that bad boy? It's like 7ish years old and you can't change batteries without basically destroying the screen which is the most expensive part.

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Im at like 80% battery health. So it runs for 2 maybe 3 hours. The reparability of the surface line is the biggest factor to NOT get them. In the future i'll definitely look for different hybrid laptop.

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