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Thinking about buying a Surface Pro 4/5 (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Just putting out feelers, anyone here run Linux on a surface pro 4 or 5? What distro did you use, and how did it go?

Edit: I've pulled the trigger on a Surface Pro 4. I'll make a new post in a week with my early impressions, which distro I've gone with, etc etc etc.

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[–] 12 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

I dislike it. And it's got nothing to do with Linux, or even Windows for that matter.

I dislike it because the BIOS sucks. It's literally one of the most barebones, locked down BIOSes I've ever seen. You basically get just three categories, boot device selection, turn some hw components on/off, and set the date and time. That's about it. You can't choose enable CSM/Legacy mode, you can't set MAC Address Passthru options, no option to edit existing or add new UEFI boot order entries, and so many more options missing, compared to say what you'd find on other devices. Classic example of corporations unnecessarily locking down devices and abstracting things away from the user.

This may not be a big deal for you however, but as a power user who likes to tweak things and have finer control, having such a gimped BIOS is a deal breaker for me.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, the gimped BIOS is certainly not a selling point. But for my use case, I don't feel like it's a deal breaker. I'll be using it for light emulation gaming, and for tracking my self hosted bits. Maybe scrolling lemmy. Possibly distro hopping for the first week or two.
    It's essentially going to be a toy.

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