Surface Go2 with Pop OS

[wove]

A couple months back I tossed the Surface Go2 in a drawer. It is a very nice tablet, but Window 10 & 11 are not very good Tablet OSes. It was raining today so I dug it out to see about putting Linux on it. It is easier than the 2008MBP, but not by much. The web is full of anecdotes as to what is best and like all other hardware it is subjective and everyone seems to have their own opinion. But from reading it looked like PopOS has the best hardware support out of the box, so I installed PopOS.

It finds the wifi, and the screen resolution works alright. Screen rotation works with the sensors out of the box, and the stylus and touch follows the screen rotation without further configuration. Everything works with the exception of the cameras which do not work at well. And with the exception of those cameras, it is a fine drop in replacement for Windows.

The Surface Go 2 is not a high powered device. Running PopOS I would say its performance is on par with the X230. PopOS is as good a tablet OS as Windows, so I think I will be sticking with it for a while. KDE Neon was mentioned by many as being a nice working OS on the Surface Go2, so at some point, I might give it a try.

[tlmiller]

I wouldn't switch super soon to KDE Neon. They should have the new version out (rebased to 22.04 from 20.04) in a few weeks to just over a month, so you'd be installing just to have to do a full distribution upgrade shortly thereafter (which I've had issues with failing in KDE Neon, luckily I know Debian well enough that I just do it manually). Easier to wait until the 22.04 base is out.

[wove]

I was thinking that since both Pop and Neon are built on Ubuntu, that the hardware recognition and proper configuration is probably due to the Ubuntu base. I might be able to get similar decent results with other Ubuntu derivatives. But with Pop working pretty well I will probably just leave things alone for a while.

[crosscourt]

Many of the Ubuntu derivatives arent as up to date as Neon and Pop. I use Zorin which would not be a good choice for you as its a bit resource intensive.
You should try Peppermint OS based on Debian and see if you like it, granted its a XFCE distro. Its very light and good for older hardware but has excellent hardware support.

[wove]

The Surface Go2 was upgraded from Windows 11 Pro, to Pop OS, so I assume it has the resources to run most any distro. Probably the biggest bottle neck to performance is the emmc storage. It has a quad core 64bit processor, but the Pentium Gold, is in spite of its name not the gold standard in processors. It does have 16GB of RAM which is a big help, It is under powered for running virtual machines, not that a tablet would make a good platform for running VMs. I suspect that compiling software would be a chore on the SG2 as well.

It handles MS' new movie editor, so it would probably do alright with Kdenlive as well. Krita runs very nice and is fun to use on a tablet. I have not tried DigiKam yet, I suspect with its reliance on disk access it will struggle a bit. A group has brought Unity back to life with a Ubuntu Unity remix, which might be interesting in that Unity was sort of created to run on tablet/phones as well as the desktop.

[crosscourt]

I wasnt sure how much ram you were using and what processor you had in the Surface. Indeed you should be able to handle any distro with that configuration. Win11 as long as you have at least 8gb of ram runs fine on my much older laptops and they arent quad core, typically dual core i5.

[tlmiller]

That Pentium Gold is a lot more powerful than you give it credit for, Wove. Those aren't "Atom" Pentiums, it's a full on Amber Lake. AKA - Skylake that they turned down the frequency on so that it would run @ 6 watt TDP. But it's a full on Core architecture. Yeah, it's weaker than most other Skylake chpis due to the frequency drop, but it's the full fat Skylake architecture with all the features. Essentially that's identical to the Core m3 6y30 except without turbo.

[wove]

Yeah you caught me, I do not pay much attention to processor specs and Intel's consumer facing info does not shed a great deal of useful light on the matter. In use performance of the Surface Go2 feels about the same as the X230. It is more than adequate for the tasks that are convenient to do on the tablet form factor.

I was setting up Geary a Gnome email client last evening and I was impressed at the ease with which the Geary UI morphed as I changed from portrait to landscape. The developers had clearly thought through how changes in aspect and screen real estate necessitate a change in the usage of space. Overall it was a pleasant and easy to work with experience.

Overall there is still a lot of work to do. When changing orientations the screen goes black for 1 to 3 seconds then the new orientation pops into place. Many applications redraw to fit a new orientation, many do not redraw and you are left with a window going off the edge of the screen with parts of the UI becoming unusable. I hope that with time those matters will be dealt with.

[tlmiller]

Honestly, the orientation stuff sounds to me like it's not using the correct drivers. While the iGP is cut down even FURTHER from the alrleady pathetic iGP on standard SkyLake, the drivers for Intel GPU's are VERY mature in Linux, and should offer very good performance that's right on par with the performance on Windows. Unless...are you using Xorg or Wayland for the display server?

[wove]

Pop OS uses X11 along with the Intel UHD Mesa driver. My first tablet was an old Compaq tc1000. That was at least a decade ago and at that point to rotate the screen you needed to write a shell script and tie its action to a button event. At that point rotation was pretty horrid. Most applications had their window contents hard coded, and when rotated it was very common for UI elements to end up off screen. It also took some time, as the screen had to redraw, then the touch and stylus components needed to refresh to match the new rotation.

My X220 and X230 do not have orientation sensors, so changing orientation is still tied to a button press. The Surface Go does have a sensor and the orientation is tied to the sensor. I am not sure how all of that is handled in current distros. I would guess it has gone from a script to using a binary. I also have no idea whether the sensor has open source drivers and APIs or whether it some reverse engineering trickery going on.

The delayed orientation is just very noticeable when you accustomed to Android, iOS, or Windows where the change is done with a fluid animation. There are other oddities as. The pointer will disappear if you use touch input then go back to trackpad input. The logic to determine whether or not to display the on screen keyboard needs lots of work.

But with all that it is usable. There has been solid progress over time in improving Linux's usefulness on a tablet. Pop OS is built on Gnome, which has just really started to think about a tablet UI. I am going to check out Neon after the re-base. I think Plasma has been putting some substantial effort into creating a tablet UI.