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submitted 4 days ago by Autisti4@sopuli.xyz to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I absolutely loathe win11, so I turned to linux and have been trying to find a distro that would allow my surface pro 7 to work properly. I use this thing as a portable art station, so getting the pen and touch screen work perfectly is my first priority, and getting paint tool SAI 2 run properly the second (Krita works I know, but it's like telling water colorist to switch to oil paints).

I run Mint on my extra laptop, but I can't get SAI working properly so it's out of the question. I tried Zorin OS since it's said to work well with surface pro's, and I really liked it and even got SAI running perfectly basically out of the box, but I could get both the touch screen and pen to work only barely even with the linux-surface-kernel.

I now have win10 back so I can keep drawing, but I'm searching for a distro that could work for what I need - and would be easy enough for a mint-level noob like me.

So, has anyone gotten surface pro's touch stuff work perfectly with some distro or am I stuck with win10 until ESU runs out? Even the best answers I find searching online are basically "the touch works somewhat but I don't need it anyway"

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[-] GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I use Mint, and a drawing tablet.

I know this can be a problem with Huion tablets, since their drivers are closed source. I bought a Wacom tablet for this exact reason, their firmware is open-source, and so it's bundled into Ubuntu's software and all of its forks.

I'm sorry that there isn't more I can tell you. I could only afford to buy a high quality drawing tablet once, so I wanted to make sure the firmware was compatible with Linux. If you get very frustrated, you can likely find a secondhand Wacom on eBay.

[-] Autisti4@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 days ago

I do have a cintiq as my main art station (wacom definitely is worth the money!), but sometimes I really need the portable one, and a separate computer + tablet doesn't really work for that... And also sadly the portable wacom tablet machine things themselves (movinkpad, I think) don't really cut it for other computer stuff either.

this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
25 points (96.3% liked)

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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