this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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You'll definitely need this: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
Gnome is probably the best with touchscreens. I had issues with Ubuntu though so you probably want something more up to date, like fedora or arch.
Also, highly recommend checking out Universal Blue's Surface images! It's pretty much everything you need out of the box! https://universal-blue.org/images/surface/?h=surface
That's even better! Thank you!
To add another comment to your reply, have you tried it personally?
I'd like to back up my system before doing the switch. What do you recommend I use? Clonezilla with an external USB drive all plugged in using a USB hub?
I haven't tried the Surface images due to not having one, but I am using their Silverblue images to make the whole NVIDIA drivers thing a bit easier on my system.
Also I haven't needed to backup my system in over a year now (I stopped hopping with Silverblue) so I don't remember the solution I used, but this seems good.
From your live stick, bevor install, do
# cp /dev/your-disk /your/image.img
or to save space:
# gzip < /dev/your-disk > /your/image.img.gz
or faster but might need to install it first:
# lz4 /dev/your-disk /your/image.img.lz4
To get a list of your disks, there's
lsblk
.I recommend partition-wise backup, it's always a bother to extract/shrink individual partitions in images of whole disks. That would be
/dev/your-disk
1 etcYeah, Fedora runs with wayland by default, which is really nice for touchscreens.
Don't want to be the guy shitting on Ubuntu, but Fedora is the way to go in my experience and afaik.
Because of Wayland?
Fedora uses Wayland by default at least and it's really smooth, and it has gotten much better in the last two years or so. It also is a rolling release, which means always the newest software and latest kernel, which further improves wayland performance.
Canonical has made some questionable choices for Ubuntu in the last years like pushing the users to use snaps (which are shot) or advertisements in the terminal. But then again you can always use Debian in the first place i guess.
Very cool. Thank you for this.