Sure... And you're still stuck with the device compatibility of the surface-kernel project. Which while it's definitely an incredible work to maintain, it keeps getting further away from newer devices camera compatibility.

Whatever sinks your boat! 😂

Wonderful

Not a calanker. Just ham handed.

These clankers are getting even lazier than people.

(been using Neon lately and love it; only thing i miss from Mint is the deep package repository)

i prefer to destroy with utter contempt

I destroy my free time by using Bazzite

I have a surface pro 4.

What model Surface do you have?

There are lots of options out there, but what you can you use depends on the exact model. For example, SP1 & 2 used totally different technology.

You can find a decent surface used online. Got mine for $130

I keep telling myself that next time I will buy a "designed for linux" device. It's not that you can't make it work, but the accumulation of little things (webcam, wifi, whatever the that newest thing is that they wanted to try out for this one model), kind of wears on you.

Considering your rather minimal requirements (read PDFs and take handwritten notes), I would actually recommend something far different that either of those two paths... a supernote manta.

I don't know Starlite, but here's my Surface experience:

I've installed Linux on a couple of Surfaces (4 and 6, with Endeavour, Ubuntu, and Mint).

There's a custom kernel that's maintained just for Surface devices: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Right after a fresh install, it basically functioned but not everything worked.

After installing the custom kernel that includes all the right drivers, everything seemed to work really well!

You can get a used Surface Pro reasonably inexpensively online. For power, performance, and reliability, I probably wouldn't recommend going older than an 8 right now.