Nope, it does not. You can install a kernel made just for surface devices and you'll get mouse emulation via touch, but Mint doesn't have Wayland yet and it's my understanding that Wayland is where all the good things, like gestures, lives. So, I'm waiting for that but it honestly works fine without the touch. I'd use it if it was there, but it's fine honestly.

That said, I've been using Linux/osx as my primary at work for a lot of years now so I'm super unfamiliar with even basic sysadmin stuff on Windows, so I'm happy that the surface is now on Linux. Need to move my desktop to it one day, but I honestly almost never use it.

My surface pro 4 still works great with windows also and even though I ran mint on the laptop I used before it I have no intention of replacing windows on the SP4 at least until support for 10 is done.

Even though I don't use the touchscreen often, it's not a feature I'd be willing to sacrifice either.

I don't know about this specifically, but in my experience with Mint, it's very plug and play with this kind of stuff. I'm always really impressed by just how little setup Mint needs.