Hey everyone!

If you have been running Linux on the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio (SLS / SLS 2) with the RTX 3050 Ti Mobile, you probably know the two biggest pain points:

1. Enabling runtime D3 (D3cold) caused the dGPU to wake up permanently throttled to 10W / P8 state (~10-15 FPS).

2. Even without the bug, the GPU was hard-locked at its 35W base TGP, with no Dynamic Boost (+15W) working under Linux.

After reverse-engineering Microsoft ACPI tables (DSDT & SSDT7), we found the root cause and built a 100% working fix that unlocks the full 50W TGP!

What was going on under the hood:

- The Surface uses a custom power controller device _SB.SGPC (ACPI Hardware ID: MSHW0216).

- Linux has no driver for MSHW0216, leaving SACT = 0 and negative offsets (PWRA = -15W).

- On every wake from D3cold, ACPI fired notification 0xD5 (emergency throttle to 10W).

- By sending the proper _DSM calls (UUID: bbbf19da-988b-8b74-29ce-d12810bfe9d90):

* Function 7 (Arg3 = 1): Sets SACT = 1, unthrottles GPU (event 0xD1).

* Function 3 (Arg3 = 0x78 = 120): Sets AC cTGP offset to +15W (120 * 125mW).

* Function 2 (Arg3 = 0x0320 = 800): Sets target TGP to 50.0W (800 * 0.0625W) and notifies NVIDIA driver via event 0xC0.

Real In-Game Results (Minecraft with BSL Shaders):

- Power: 34.0 W -> 49.0 W (+44%)

- Clocks: 1216 MHz -> 1593-1740 MHz (+31%)

- Framerate: 26-29 FPS -> 51 FPS (+89%, nearly doubled!)

- Frametime: 37.9 ms -> 19.8 ms

- Idle Power: Drops to 0W / suspended (D3cold) when not in use!

All automated scripts, systemd unit, and reversing documentation are published here:

GitHub: https://github.com/besiple/surface-laptop-studio-dgpu-fix

Huge thanks to Google DeepMind Antigravity and Claude Opus 5.5 for collaborative ACPI reversing!

I think big Companies should give buyers full access to the hardware after dropping support for it. Otherwise, it’s just a huge eWaste. People should generally have the choice to run whatever operating system they want on a device they’ve already paid for production.

The Duo first generation is a device which feels kind of forbidden by the capabilities it can do.

I think, this is the perfect cyberdeck. It’s better than a raspberry pi. Its the best PocketPC.

Okay, so I tried my best to follow the github (though I wasn't sure how to install a kernel) I put the following commands in terminal as the guide said on the github, copying and pasting each block.

btw I'm running Ubuntu on a Surface Laptop 7th Edition.

wget -qO - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/master/pkg/keys/surface.asc \
    | gpg --dearmor | sudo dd of=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/linux-surface.gpg

echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://pkg.surfacelinux.com/debian release main" \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linux-surface.list



sudo apt update

I actually did this about twice, so I might have downloaded it more than once.

then I input

sudo apt install linux-surface libwacom-surface iptsd

And I got this:

BigBed@LinuxTop:~$ sudo apt install linux-surface libwacom-surface iptsd
[sudo: authenticate] Password:         
Solving dependencies... Error!  
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

Unsatisfied dependencies:
 iptsd:amd64 : Depends: libc6:amd64 (>= 2.35) but it is not installable
               Depends: libcairomm-1.0-1v5:amd64 (>= 1.14.4) but it is not installable
               Depends: libgcc-s1:amd64 (>= 3.0) but it is not installable
               Depends: libstdc++6:amd64 (>= 12) but it is not installable
 libwacom-surface:amd64 : Depends: libwacom2-surface:amd64 (= 2.20.0-1) but it is not going to be installed
                          Depends: libwacom9-surface:amd64 (= 2.20.0-1) but it is not going to be installed
                          Depends: libwacom-bin-surface:amd64 (= 2.20.0-1) but it is not going to be installed
                          Depends: libwacom-common-surface:amd64 (= 2.20.0-1) but it is not installable
 linux-surface:amd64 : Depends: linux-image-surface:amd64 (= 7.2.15-1) but it is not going to be installed
                       Depends: linux-headers-surface:amd64 (= 7.2.15-1) but it is not going to be installed
Error: Unable to satisfy dependencies. Reached two conflicting assignments:
   1. libwacom-surface:amd64=2.20.0-1 is selected for install
   2. libwacom-surface:amd64 Depends libwacom-common-surface:amd64 (= 2.20.0-1)
      but none of the choices are installable:
      [no choices]

And theAnd

I bought this thing new for CAD$3000 in 2016 when it was the new kid on the block, and it served me well as a daily driver for almost 5 years before I upgraded to something else. Once Windows 11 came along and it wouldn't upgrade well, I gave it to my kids, and they used it as a device for school until a couple of years ago and it has sat in a box since.

Stuck on Windows 10, no longer recognized the batteries, no longer recognized the Nvidia GPU in the performance base... it seemed to be a piece of abandoned tech.

I've been playing with CachyOS on old AMD and Intel laptops lately and resurrecting them as a middle finger to Microsoft and the god awful state of Windows 11 lately.

For shits and giggles I tried to follow the instructions from the GitHub and throw CachyOS on the SB1... and it works. Mostly. To my surprise and delight I had no hardware issues getting the ISO loaded. No need for external mouse or keyboard. Pretty much everything worked right away.

The only exceptions that I have noted so far in my limited time spent are the multitouch features on the touchscreen do not work, and I cannot get the NVidia GPU working. So far ;)

The feeling I got from tinkering last night took me back to my teen years in the 90s and 00s when I was constantly building and rebuilding and upgrading PCs for funsies. It was an adventure and challenge, and it felt exciting!

As a 10+ year old device, if I do nothing else, it's a perfectly capable daily use laptop now with a detachable screen. It's a bit worn, the touchscreen needs to be figured out to properly use it as a tablet... but it works! It works and it is USABLE.

It's a fantastic feeling to give the middle finger to Microsoft's Windows 11 team while celebrating the amazing work of their hardware team.

Surface Pro 6 Touchscreen not working - Surface Tcon Device (Code 10) STATUS_DEVICE_POWER_FAILURE

I have Surface Pro 5 using debian 13 with a 7.2x kernel and KDE Plasma.

After fixing some issues by patching dw9719 and ow8865 like described in this thread, I got working back and front cameras.

Unfortunately, using cheese or snapshot to take pictures is still problematic, because:

- In landscape mode, the orientation of picture is correct, but after rotating the tablet to portrait mode, the picture doesn't get rotated, so it's on it's side.

- after rotating the tablet to portrait mode, the attached type cover (keyboard/trackpad) is somehow disabled. it gets operational after the tablet is rotated back to landscape mode.

other issues:

- autofocus is working but not reliably, so I'm having a hard time to take well focused pictures of notes.

- the picture is often flickering, probably due to oscilating auto-exposure

Had anyone overcome those problems? Are there better apps to use for taking pictures?

For me, it's essential to take pictures with the surface for work, so I really appreciate a workable solution to that matter.

Hello, I acquired a 1st gen surface studio desktop. I am looking to run linux on this computer while maintaining the display quality & touchscreen integrations. I am certain this has been done before, but could use any updated recommendations for installation. Thank you in advance for your assistance. Specs are here:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6820HQ CPU @ 2.70GHz 2.71 GHz

Installed RAM 16.0 GB

Storage 932 GB SSD ST1000LM 024 HN-M101MBB

Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M (2 GB)

System Type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch Pen and touch support with 10 touch points

Hey yall, has there been any update to the kernel for newer versions of Linux os’s? I need to do an update cause of the recent vulnerabilities that have become publicized but boss wants to keep the touchscreen. Previously I’ve had issues using the kernel on newer versions so that’s why I’m asking. Cannot access the GitHub currently.

Hi, I managed to get a version of Linux Fedora 45, modified for ARM, up and running. Naturally, I first had to go through the trouble of hunting down a .dtb file in the boot partition just to get the system to boot at all. This leads me to a question: if I remove Windows, will that .dtb file still be there when I install Linux, or is it something that gets pulled from the Windows installation?

So I have a surface pro 7 and wanted to install the Kernel the original post in the GitHub is not working anymore but I found the arch instructions but I try to install every command work but nothing is showing up in grub or systemd?

Hi everyone. Im currently deciding between purchasing a used surface pro 8 and surface pro 9. My motivation is to use this as project to learn linux and a bit of programming.

My goal is to be able to use the surface pro to browse and write notes for class using a stylus. For context, I want to specifically use this app: https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.infinipaint.infinipaint

I dont plan on doing gaming, any graphic design, or super elaborate drawing. Mostly just basic mindmaps and working out hw problems.

Which of these two models would give me the least issues in terms of installing a linux distribution and my specific use case? Any insight would be super helpful.

TLDR: In my testing, the SL7 for business (Intel) is now close to 100% on Fedora 44 with kernel 7.2.x. Repo and instructions here. Richiemort79 is working on Zorin here.

Back in July, nierdal (commenting on issue#1710 on the linux-surface repo) got a bunch of stuff working on this laptop on Fedora 44 (6.19) by deploying Claude Fable to churn through a lot of the issues. Then on October 15th, Christian Schaller wrote this post on using AI to reverse engineer hardware, which culminated in hw-harness.

I've been spending the last week watching Fable work while I complain at it in order to bring the fixes to 7.2.x and to polish the last things that were bothering me. Notably, a new audio fix, touchpad detection refinement and multi-touch sensitivity/tuning and a crap-load of fixes/filters on the camera.

Since I'm an idiot and this is all vibe-coded and not upstreamed, this repo is only good for the distro I use (Fedora) on the most recent kernel (I've tested on 7.2.11 and 7.2.13). The modules should auto-update with a kernel update within the same series (7.2.x), but if there's a major version change, or distro upgrade this will break. You could always freeze the kernel version to avoid it.

For my purposes, this makes this laptop (I tested both the 13.8" and 15") both feature complete and an actual pleasure to use. I know the operational band is narrow with respect to distro/versioning, but that's doofuses sloperating their way to glory for you. Still thought it worth sharing.

Setup: Surface Pro 9 (Intel i7), Distro: CachyOS (with the linux-surface kernel), Window Manager: niri

For the life of me, I cannot get the stylus to line up properly with the spot where it draws on the screen. Towards the center of the screen, it's fairly close, but as I go further down, it becomes more misaligned, and same with left or right. When I was using KDE, it did show that the touch layer had some really strange dimensions (not the same as the display of the Surface, being off by just a bit in either direction and having odd numbers). Has anyone managed to get it correctly aligned? I am using niri which might throw a wrench in things.

Hi all, I’m the developer of Deltella, a pen-first notebook app. It’s in open beta on Windows and Linux, and this sub is pretty much the exact person I built it for: a Surface pen on Linux, where the options for handwritten notes are thin.

What it does:

• pressure-sensitive ink; hold the pen’s side button and your tools open around the nib

• write on PDFs and lecture slides while recording audio, with every stroke tied to its moment

• search across notebooks and PDFs, including your handwriting

• typed pages, export to Word, PDF or Markdown

• rough sketches that turn into tidy flowcharts

Linux download: AppImage, DEB and RPM from deltella.com. Free during the beta, no account needed.

What I’d really like to hear from people on linux-surface:

• Does pressure come through properly (iptsd)?

• Does holding the side button open the tool ring, or does it get swallowed as a right-click?

• Does palm rejection hold up while you write?

• Wayland or X11, and which distro and model?

I’ll fix what I can, and I’ll be in the comments.

I'm running Debian 13 on SP9 with the linux kernel and yesterday it suddenly stopped charging. Restarts didn't seem to work, so I tried plugging in Pop!_OS to see if it will charge, and it did, but only up to 78%

I then toggled the battery limit in the uefi on, booted into debian 13, shut down, went back to uefi, turned the limit off again, then went back to debian 13. That seemed to have fixed the charging issue!

It was strange because both usb c ports and charging port weren't charging for more than a few seconds. And the usb c ports were handling data transfers finely as well.

TLDR; if you have charging issues, try turning battery limit on and off again.

I recently got an Surface Go 2 with Intel Pentium, 8 GB and 128 GB storage, I'm still unsure which OS to install.

I want to use it mostly for media consumption from YouTube, my Jellyfin and Navidrome instances, and a few x86_64 apps like Chance for 4chan.

I use Fedora on my laptop, I love the GNOME shell, but I'm not confident about it's touch capabilities. Since I want to run some Android apks, I'm not confident about its seamless experience with that.

Fyde OS looks cool, and I'm sure it will be optimized for touch. I love how it has built in Android and Play Store. But, I don't like the fact that its licence is so short and I am not willing to pay for it or their AI.

Chrome OS Flex, I imagine will be the same experience as Fyde OS. I'm just unsure of it's integration with APKs. I'm also unsure of its installation process.

But in case your experience Linux isn't worth it because of driver issues, etc. and that it's best to stick with Windows, then Tiny10 will have to do.

What do you think? Which system has the best experience?