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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[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours 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.

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 56 minutes ago

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.

[–] notthebees@reddthat.com 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 58 minutes ago)

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.

[–] sunnyjim@lemmy.zip 6 points 11 hours ago

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

[–] sage_kase@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 hours ago

Damn, this looks clean.

[–] laggytoast@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

What's the home page you are using on librewolf and can you share the CSS you used to make buttons bigger?

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] laggytoast@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

tysm, I have an old surface that I've just been using as a display for monitoring my homelab but I'm gonna try out something like your setup and see how it goes.

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 48 minutes ago

BEST OF LUCK AND GODSPEED!

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Its Bonjour.fr and i will upload my css to my codeberg and post it.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

yovday

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

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

Very cool. I opted for this over a new ipad.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What's the OS?

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

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day 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 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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

Oh man i forgot about Fetch!

[–] bleustenns@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day 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 22 hours ago

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

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

I like the look and usability for a tablet but hate everything behind the surface in Gnome. Any standalone launcher that works like Gnomes?

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

🤷‍♂️

[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day 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 17 hours ago (2 children)

What extensions do you recommend? Aside from tray icons

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 37 minutes 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 .

[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

This is what I use. I don’t remember what does what, bit I wouldn’t enjoy Gnome as much without them.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago

Beautiful thank you, I'll check them all out

[–] TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day 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 23 hours ago

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

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

[–] neonmagician@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 day 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 day 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 23 hours 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 23 hours 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 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

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

[–] doleo@lemmy.one 4 points 1 day ago

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

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

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

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

ITs called window title is back

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

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

[–] patruelis@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago
[–] ptt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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