Fedora Linux 24 was released yesterday. To my knowledge, this is the first fixed release Linux distribution which has all of the Surface Pro 3 basic functionality supported out-of-the-box, most likely thanks to the Linux 4.5 kernel. Things I have tested to work:
- Type Cover, mouse and keyboard features.
- Touch, with Onboard touch screen keyboard enabled when Type Cover is removed.
- Note: For some reason the browsers (Firefox, Chrome) do not work properly with on-screen keyboard. This is really a shame and limits keyboardless usage.
- Wifi works as expected.
- Device goes to sleep when idling, or by tapping the power button. Wakes up from the power button, or the Windows-logo button in the front panel.
- Battery state and charge level is correctly reported.
- Both cameras work, front and back.
- High DPI support works well.
I’ve only done some quick live boot smoke testing on the Surface Pro 3, but the initial expression is very good. Personally I am not a huge fan of Fedora, due to it’s bleeding edge nature and sometime sub-par quality standards, but the level support on SP3 makes it currently the strongest contended on this piece of hardware.
- Download 64bit version from GetFedora.org
- Dump the .ISO to a USB stick.
- Turn off your Surface Pro 3 and plug in the USB stick
- Press and hold Volume Up -button and then tap the Power button
- Modify the boot order so that the USB media is tried first.
- Save settings and reboot.
Thats it - enjoy your Surface Pro, freed from the annoyance of Windows 10. Please share your SP3 Linux experiences below!