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[–] 11 points 8 months ago (7 children)

When it comes to Surface Pro tablets I find that going with this Kernel helps a lot:
https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Seems that LTE and Camera isn't working properly but that the rest works:

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#surface-tablets

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  • [+] [S] 2 points 8 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Ah sorry, I see you mentioned the linux surface kernel in your Zorin OS text.
    You could always keep using Windows 10 even after EOL and allow LAN access but forbid internet access for the Surface in your router. That would require you to save your art to some sort of network storage before using another device to upload it to the net though.

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  • [+] [S] 4 points 8 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Just like 10, windows 11 reserves a lot of ram, but it’s not really using it. When you need more ram it will unload a lot of things. It’s just sometimes too damn slow at it, especially on a device like a surface which has pretty pokey hardware. (Despite on paper it supposedly being much better)

    You can try those de bloat scripts. Instead of waiting for windows to unload the shit you can just stop it from loading in the first place. On a VM of mine it made a pretty big difference, but on my SP7 it seemed to not work(?) it didn’t seem to do much. I’m generally not a fan of those though because they tend to break a lot of things. Like one of them turns off hibernation which is a huge no no on modern standby devices.

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  • [+] [S] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Is yours an i5 model or an i7? Mine is an i5 and it’s worthless as soon as it gets hot. But my friend got an i7 model and it’s amazing what a fan can do. Just having any cooling makes a huge difference.

    There’s 3D models for clips to strap a fan to the back of the machine and let me tell ya, it does wonders. They should have never shipped one of these without a fan. They thankfully fixed that on the SP8 and up, but that doesn’t help us much.

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    This isn't a distro thing, it's generally the Desktop Environment, though with the Surface devices, there is a custom kernel lots of people use that has some extra drivers for the rest of the hardware, so look for that. You can use it with any distro.

    As far as the DE, Gnome has better general touch support over others right now, so it's probably going to give you the experience you're expecting. Every art app I've tried with a pen has great pressure support.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    In recent tests that I've seen, KDE has better touchscreen and multitouch support. It's long been thought that Gnome was gunning for the touchscreen market, but they got overtaken, because their release cycle is slower.

    But I use a Wacom tablet with Gnome, and I agree that the pressure support is great.

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    [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I've had 0 issues running touchscreen and pen on Mint, and SAI can just run on bottles/wine, right?

    https://github.com/TibixDev/sai2-guide

    The solution on each distro is mostly going to be the same. Run sai in a bottle and edit the config.

    Mint delivers a flatpak package of bottles, which is suboptimal, but can be fixed using https://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/1911/bottles-doesnt-work-on-linux-mint-because-its-a-flatpak

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    [–] 0 points 8 months ago

    I'm coming at this from another angle, & your being stuck in an MS-Surface may break it, but please try UbuntuStudio, on something: it augments Ubuntu-family with an entire sea of fixes for creatives.

    I've no idea how to get a kernel patched to work with such hardware, sorry.

    _ /\ _

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    I have used Pop! which is basically Ubuntu but very polished and customized to enhance what’s already there. But as others said it’s not strictly a distro thing it’s Desktop Environment and also the graphics system I’m probably not using the right terminology. But Wayland is very good with touchscreen and I’ve read that X11 has some support as well (?).

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    I use Mint, and a drawing tablet.

    I know this can be a problem with Huion tablets, since their drivers are closed source. I bought a Wacom tablet for this exact reason, their firmware is open-source, and so it's bundled into Ubuntu's software and all of its forks.

    I'm sorry that there isn't more I can tell you. I could only afford to buy a high quality drawing tablet once, so I wanted to make sure the firmware was compatible with Linux. If you get very frustrated, you can likely find a secondhand Wacom on eBay.

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    [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Your exact surface pro isn’t there yet.

    Switch to win 10 21h2 iot ltsc using massgrave and you can wait for linux support to get right till 2032.

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    [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Looks for Linux drivers for your device, OS is not the issue

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