Greetings Terran, my struggle with the Surface Pro 7 running Linux has continued, to the point of a somewhat successful conclusion. Details below...
On-Screen-Keyboards
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE
This has been a constant problem since I got the surface from my friend. I wrote about some of this stuff before, but to summarize:
- First tried Debian+KDE, this currently has no functional built in OSK ("its coming soon"). I think the problem was Wayland or some other modern change broke their old one so they've had to rebuild from scratch?
- I then tried a third party OSK, Maalit, in Debian+KDE and it was fine except for certain apps wouldn't call this OSK to appear when interacting with dialog boxes. Found out this happens on apps that are Electron/Chromium based and there's no current fix, plus Maalit/KDE won't allow you to manually bring up the OSK on demand, so I gave up to seek something easier.
- Installed Linux Mint 22.2 with Cinnamon, I knew you could manually open the OSK from system tray when needed so I figured that'd save me. The built in OSK on Mint only had three awful layouts (QWERTZ, tiny 'tablet' style, and alphabetically arranged), so I tried using Onboard instead (third party OSK pre-installed on Mint). Onboard worked great! good layout, same Electron/Chromium issue, but could be opened from the system tray. Then it wouldn't work in the app menu and in password dialog boxes (unusable!). I resigned to just switching back and forth between the two, mostly running Onboard, opening the built-in OSK when needed
- After alla that, I decided to upgrade to Mint 22.3 when that came around because I read they had overhauled the OSK! Upgrading worked fine, didn't break the linux-surface kernel or anything, and the new Mint OSK just uses your system keyboard layout (multiple language/region support). Same Electron/Chromium issue (this won't go away), but still able to manually open it so that's fine. HOWEVER the new OSK is slow and buggy, unusably so for a tablet/touchscreen device at this point. It would sometimes take several seconds to begin registering inputs on a password dialog box, or I'd have to close and open it a few times. And even under normal use there is a noticable near-1-second input lag that renders this worse than it was before I upgraded (still using two OSKs). Maybe it'll improve at a later date, idk, but I wanted to move on to something functional
All roads lead to GNOME
Obligatory "hey guys, popular thing functions as intended". I did some more reading through the linux-surface info on github, it seemed like near everyone was using GNOME with their surfaces. I had put off even trying it for a while because I have no real experience using gnome, and the little I have I found customization really frustrating in that modern "here's less options than before, be happy about it" way. My ongoing issues with OSKs compelled me to try though, I initially thought to try Ubuntu and strip out the stuff I don't want from it (snaps, add flatpak), because their layout is very tablet friendly. Then I realized I could just do the Debian+GNOME live ISO and build up what I want from there (flatpak, firewall etc.) then customize into the Ubuntu style. The base Debian GNOME desktop is weird, you have to click the top left corner to open activities/workspaces (which I never use) to then be able to access the dock/application menu in the bottom centre of the screen. Awful interface, but I found a video that recommended two 'extensions' that gave it an Ubuntu like tablet-friendly look: Dash to Dock (fixes the dock to left hand side) and Desktop Icons NG (DING) (allows icons on desktop). It is now, far and away, the most functional it has ever been. I could honestly hand this to a normal person and they could use it. The built in GNOME OSK (gosk or josk? idk gnome likes to hide true app names for minimalism reasons) isn't the greatest layout ever, but neither is any 'real' tablet or phone I've ever used either. At least it changes contextually, like giving you essential buttons if interacting with a terminal, or swapping to a numpad in PIN like dialogs. I did encounter the Electron/Chromium app problem still, and couldn't manually call the OSK from the system tray, until I found out you manually bring up the OSK by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. I had gotten so used to crappy workarounds my brain had rewired to stop considering intuitive inputs as a solution XD. Anyway, if you are in a similar situation (in posession of a surface or other tablet/touchscreen PC), don't waste your time with any desktop other than GNOME, it's not worth it. Debian is also running well with less heat and fan noise than anything else I had put on here.
The camera might work one day
There's been even more recent developments in the linux-surface github on camera functionality of this device in particular, some testers managed to get some (pretty grainy) pictures. I didn't expect this to happen so soon because this model shares an image processing unit with only one or two other models I think, so I figured it'd be like a niche in a niche. Specifically this model uses intel's IPU4, but recently some of the source of IPU6 was released and is being used to try and estimate how the older unit functions (as far as I understand it).
That's it for now, thanks for reading! :)