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I bought a Surface Pro 4 - Update (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So I posted a few weeks ago asking for opinions on the Surface Pro 4, trying to decide if I should pick one up and slap Linux on it.
Opinions were.....mixed.

I got a decent deal on one, and that's partly why it's taken me so long to post an update. It was cheap because the previous buyer had returned it to the seller claiming that there were power issues. The seller said they hadn't encountered said issues in the hour or so of testing they did, and I call fucking bullshit!
Once powered off or restarted it was taking up to 48hrs before it would grace me with booting up. And usable time ranged for 15mins to an hour before system lockup resulting in either a freeze until battery run out, or immediate system shutdown, and another 12-48hrs wait to power it up again. Obviously this is suboptimal.

Part of the issue, possibly unsurprisingly, was windows and the stripped down BIOS. After turning off secure boot, turning off the "battery saver" mode(restricts charging to 50% of total capacity) and scrubbing windows off the drive like a crusty booger...things have improved. I'm still unable to restart the device, restart powers down, but no power up. Wait times to power up again went from probably 36hrs average to 2hrs average, and if I just don't turn it off, the system is stable.

My time with Nobara on the surface has been really enjoyable, everything is just stock, I've not wanted to muck around too much and get attached in case I can't figure out the actual root cause of the power issues.
As such, not really much else to report other than Nobara running well, and pretty much everything running as well or better than when windows was installed. Touch functionality works slightly differently in Nobara than Windows, but that's not really a bother for me.

If any of you greybeard wizards has any ideas on what might be happening with the power cycle issues I'd appreciate some suggestions. I think it may be a battery issue, but I'm waiting on a hot air station to be able to open it up and have a proper look at it's guts. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with temps, that was my first thought but that didn't pan out.

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[–] glizzyguzzler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Ditch it, the Surface Pro 4’s are cursed via shit manufacturing.

Its screen will fail sooner or later https://flickergate.com/ . I had one, it started flickering after the “extended” warranty. The display is useless now. Nothing fixes it. At first the flicker stopped if something on the screen moved, so I used this https://github.com/Acie1998/Surface-Pro-Screen-Flicker-Solver to mitigate it. But within a day or two it was worse. I tried a reduced refresh rate, but that did not help by then. It quickly got worse when in use, within minutes after a week of the flickering starting. A used one is just pre-accelerated to its demise.

Replacing the screen - even opening the device - is egregiously dangerous because the screen often cracks when taking it apart. Microsoft abs sucks for making a device that can’t last when it clearly should. (Not to say anything about your specific problems! It sounds like the battery needs to be replaced, but it can run without a battery as far as I know so not sure why it can’t power up with it heavily depleted)

Edit: if you’re going to remove the sceeen, replace the battery and replace the screen with a surface pro 5 screen. They sell them. The batteries get fucked quick cause the heat sink cooks them, so it’s prob the battery causing your problems (mine had shit battery life at its end too)

Here is a blurb from Reddit describing what to get (ifixit apparently sells a surface pro 5 screen as well if you want one degree better than direct China): My advice, if you have a Surface Pro 4 with an Samsung Panel is to replace for an LG Screen from Surface Pro 5/6. You need to buy this LCD cable too for that conversion: M1010537-003

You can check in the device manager which LCD panel you have on your Surface

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

Noted. Thanks.

[–] FarLine99@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Good screen is made by LG, bad by samsung :)

[–] away2thestars@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is the SP5 working ok?

[–] glizzyguzzler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, it’s recommended to replace the SP4 screen with an SP5 screen - so you can rest easy

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Two hours to power on? Did I read this right? What happen during this long power up sequence? Is it stuck on POST, bootloader or kernel load?

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As in it won't post, no power to the screen, keyboard, anything. No fan spin. Regardless of charge level in the battery. And it's more like having to wait two hours before it deigns to respond to pressing the power button.

Edit: the other possible causes could be a failing power button, or a failing pms/bms or whatever it's using

[–] Pantherina@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Damn that sounds like a nightmare device.

Got an Acer chromebook once, wanted to install coreboot and Linux. Found out they have nearly no replacement parts, and I was not able to open that thing up.

Sent it back as quick as possible.

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I spent about £80 on it, can't remember exactly. And it was a "no givesies backsies" sale.

[–] HouseWolf@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I'm gonna highjack this post to ask what's a good lightweight DE for touchscreen devices?

My dad is currently using my old Surface Pro 3 I slapped Ubuntu LTS on, Gnome works great for touch but it's abit sluggish on the hardware. Also I couldn't get touch screen scrolling to work on Firefox.

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also I couldn’t get touch screen scrolling to work on Firefox.

Are you using wayland or X11? If it's wayland, are firefox running under native wayland mode, or xwayland mode (check about:support to confirm).

[–] HouseWolf@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No idea, It uses whatever Ubuntu 22 defaulted to I believe.

I'll check next time I can, Thank you.

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 1 points 1 year ago

I believe Firefox running under native Wayland mode should have touch input support enabled, but I can't personally test it myself because I have no laptop or desktop with touchscreen display.

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I would highly recommend the stock Nobara install, it's running Gnome with custom settings.

Https://nobaraproject.org

Comes preinstalled with the linux-surface kernel extensions.

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Haven't tried it yet, but Plasma Mobile?

[–] RHOPKINS13@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

I bought my son a used Surface Pro 4 for schoolwork. Luckily we haven't run into many problems, but there is a known problem where the processor still runs the battery dead when it's shut off. You're actually better off using standby.

If he runs the battery dead, we can plug it in and it will boot, but shortly die afterwards. But if we wait ~15 minutes to charge it a little, it stays on as long as we want it to.

[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

These things are totally unrepairable. Had one at work that needed an NVME upgrade. You have to melt the glue holding the glass screen in place to get to it.

[–] kale@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

Seriously? I was looking at a Surface product recently, and it appeared to have an access panel for the NVME drive. I read a ton of complaints about the dimensions of the drive being unusual, but access to it was easy. I don't think I was looking at a Surface pro though.

If a surface pro wants to be a full OS and not a tablet OS, it should be easy to replace the storage device.

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I am very well aware of the nightmare ahead of me with regards to opening the thing. I'm not even going to attempt it before my new hot air station arrives

[–] MasterNerd@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Surfaces are notoriously hard to repair so good luck

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I mean, if I fuck it up irreparably...I'm out less than £100. I spend that taking my wife out on a date night. I bought it to play around with. It's just a bit more of an involved game than I had thought I'd bought a ticket for...

[–] Interstellar_1@pawb.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you get the touchscreen working on yours? I couldn't get it working with mine

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Yep, worked out of the box with the linux-surface kernel. Worked in grub, before I had booted Linux for the first time.

[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have a surface go 3 and it actually works pretty well, especially with the custom linux-surface kernel.

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Other than the weirdness with power cycling, the thing's is a pleasure to use. I run a flavour of Arch(btw) on my desktop now, but for quite awhile I used Fedora so Nobara feels comfortable. Just wanna figure out the weirdness so I can do stuff like restart the damn thing so flatpack updates work properly.

[–] Ascend910@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there touch screen? If so how does it work on linux?

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

It has a touchscreen, and it works quite well on Nobara. Nobara is a Fedora fork with Surface kernel mods to get most/all of the extra stuff working.

[–] cdk@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I just got a thinkpad x1 yoga gen 4 with a touchscreen. Installed Ubuntu 23.10 and Im loving it, works well with touch. Although I only use touch with the lenovo pen in xournal++ for taking notes in some subjects. And monument valley.

[–] Evoliddaw@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been deploying and servicing Surface Pro's since the Pro 3, but now that I really think about it, I've never actually handled a Pro 4, just everything else in between.

Through all the comments I've noticed you don't appear to have tried the "hard reset" procedure yet? Any time our Surfaces have gotten funky, a hard reset usually kicks them in the butt for a few months until another wonky issue crops up. Your delay to power on sounds just like some of the wonkyness I've experienced but moved on from after 15 seconds of button presses. Hold power and volume up for 15 seconds.

I still have my Pro 3, I also have a Pro 5 and Pro 7. My Pro 3 still gets 6.5 hours on the battery, they're not without their problems but it's often how you treat them.

I've sold and supported hundreds. I've only had one come back after someone was unable to follow my instructions above. I was able to perform the above and resold it the next day.

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I appreciate the suggestion, but that was quite literally the first thing I tried. The first time it wouldn't turn on I tried pwr&v+ for 90 seconds, then either ctr+alt+b or ctr+sft+b can't recall what one it was, then alternating between v+ and v- in quick succession, all those are meant to be ways to hard reset/virtual battery disconnect

[–] signalsayge@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you're having power on issues, I would make sure you are using a standalone power brick. I've used a Surface Pro for work and I've found that sometimes when connected to the docking station, it wouldn't power on. When connected to a standalone power brick it usually would. For a standalone power brick, I've used both the one that came with the Surface and also a 65W USB-C adapter with a USB-C to Surface per cable.

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I'm using an official stand alone power brick.

[–] away2thestars@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Mine after one hour of usage starts flickering the screen...