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by hxn 4039 days ago
Did somebody already install Linux on it? I think my next laptop will either be a MacBook 12 inch or whatever this new very light apple laptop is called. Or a Surface 3. I just need to be sure it runs Linux.
3 comments

There is a subreddit for this, although I'm not sure what the current state-of-the-art is

http://www.reddit.com//r/surfacelinux

Here's a thread specifically about the Surface 3 (non pro)

http://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/35dmup/surface...

So the short answer is that it does not work. Lots of fiddling and they dont even get the native resolution working according to the posts.
That's the Surface 3 (not the Surface Pro 3). Apparently, some distros work on the Pro 3 fairly well (though not without issues).
Surface can run Linux since Surface 1.

http://www.geek.com/microsoft/linux-users-rejoice-heres-ubun...

I'd definitely look into just... installing Hyper-V and then installing Linux as a VM. But people have wiped the Surface Pro for Ubuntu.

You won't want to do that without Windows 10, enabling Hyper-V before Windows 10 resulted in you loosing connected standby, but with Windows 10 it works great.
Hyper-V "replaces" your NIC with a bridge adapter, sorta like how you use br0 that bridges to eth0 on Linux, so that could be the cause of that (ie, Hyper-Vs bridge doesn't know how to speak the connected standby API and pass it through to the real NIC).
Connected Standby only works for a couple of Windows Store / Metro Apps though. I don't think that's a big loss...
It also means that your startup resume is slower and such, as you have to do a full sleep instead. Personally I've used the alarm and stuff too.
I was using Fedora on it for daily software development for a couple of months. Almost everything was working perfectly. I ended up switching to a Dell XPS 13 2015 though. The main issue I had with linux on the SP3 was that I couldn't enter the hard drive password without an external keyboard on boot. (Lots of tips on /r/SurfaceLinux)