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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Ah sorry, I see you mentioned the linux surface kernel in your Zorin OS text.
You could always keep using Windows 10 even after EOL and allow LAN access but forbid internet access for the Surface in your router. That would require you to save your art to some sort of network storage before using another device to upload it to the net though.
Yeah... I might have to. Win11 is only the absolute last resort, since it's such a garbage fire. It installed itself on the SP7 without my consent, and just kept getting worse and worse every update, until the machine barely worked without lagging. Insane that an os hogs something like 6GB ram just for being on, and even on a damn machine microslop made themselves
Just like 10, windows 11 reserves a lot of ram, but it’s not really using it. When you need more ram it will unload a lot of things. It’s just sometimes too damn slow at it, especially on a device like a surface which has pretty pokey hardware. (Despite on paper it supposedly being much better)
You can try those de bloat scripts. Instead of waiting for windows to unload the shit you can just stop it from loading in the first place. On a VM of mine it made a pretty big difference, but on my SP7 it seemed to not work(?) it didn’t seem to do much. I’m generally not a fan of those though because they tend to break a lot of things. Like one of them turns off hibernation which is a huge no no on modern standby devices.
I've not run those de-bloaters, but I checked one that scanned what could be done with 11, and I had managed to kill most of the bloat even without running it, but even that did not improve the performance. It even takes a lot of effort and needs to be repeated constantly, since the damn shit tries to install everything back with every update. Win10 is a bit more merciful in that regard as well, so despite "downgrading" it really feels like I upgraded this thing instead.
I'd really prefer something like Zorin, I got the memory consumption to 1,5 gb at it's lowest when I tried intentionally, which is pretty impressive with the visuals I could still keep. I'd also rather not to have anything microslop-build, but sadly SP's are still pretty much the only option available that's small enough to really work as a tablet, has good enough pen sensitivity for drawing, but still works as a proper computer... I would never buy anything after SP9 though, it's all some copilot infested shit.
Is yours an i5 model or an i7? Mine is an i5 and it’s worthless as soon as it gets hot. But my friend got an i7 model and it’s amazing what a fan can do. Just having any cooling makes a huge difference.
There’s 3D models for clips to strap a fan to the back of the machine and let me tell ya, it does wonders. They should have never shipped one of these without a fan. They thankfully fixed that on the SP8 and up, but that doesn’t help us much.
This is just i5, but I don't really do much stuff that requires anything better. As long as SAI 2 and some basic stuff runs, it's been enough for me. And yeah, the overheating really is a big issue if you try to do anything outside some very light usage. I do play minecraft with this sometimes, and that's about the upper limit this thing can handle... it does still work well enough though, even if after some hours coretemp shows the temperatures get a bit high.
I definitely would not recommend this thing without an added fan. Well, I honestly wouldn't really recommend any SPs with it either, unless you really need this specific combination of small/artsy enough/yet still computer.