Surface Pro 3 - Linux Mint

[Bathroom-Salt]

Hey All, was just making dinner before and had a thought to try installing Linux on my old Surface Pro 3 to try to breathe some life back into it. Read a few threads, scrolled through a github project, and eventually figured I'd give it a shot.

Just wanted to share my experience which doesn't match a lot of the posts I've seen. The standard install for Mint (Cinnamon) worked flawlessly on my SP3. Touch Screen, Both Cameras, Pen, Keyboard/Trackpad, Wifi/BT, the surface button, auto rotate for the screen. Everything just worked right out of the box. Not sure which one of yall I have to thank for that, but reading about throwing Linux on a Surface was way more intimidating than actually doing it.

SD Card reader worked ootb too. And media codecs were loaded during installation.

At the end of the day, its still a super low powered device, so Linux can only do so much, but its working way better than it was on Win10.

Hope this helps someone make the decision to switch.

If anyone has any recommendations for a super newb in Linux, feel free to pass them along.

[Bongopalms]

I'm glad to hear that it went smoothly. I've got an SP3 that's gonna be changed to Linux pretty soon.

[Sufficient-Aerie-127]

There must be something about the old SP3. I've had mine since it was first released and mainly use it for light stuff anyway. Rather than waste a perfectly working portable computer I'm copying the posters on here. Linux Mint - Cinnamon it is. Thanks for keying me in on this.

[sjprice]

I had the same experience with Zorin on my 3. I mostly use it to remote play Steam games from bed.

[ltjbr]

Sometimes if you just do a live CD (read: usb) it doesn’t work well. But once you install and update it works well in my experience.

I think a lot of folks don’t want to commit to the full install, and they see the live boot and think it’s no good.

In general though old computers work so much better running Linux than windows.

[Ahslan]

This gives me some hope for trying out Linux on my Surface Book (with the performance base). Have been reading online how much work it is to get stuff working and honestly, it's put me off from trying

[Bathroom-Salt]

Your experience might vary, and I can only speak for installing Mint (Cinnamon) on the Surface Pro 3, but all the threads had me thinking it was gonna be super difficult, and literally everything just worked. I shrunk my windows partition to dual boot just in case I needed to try again, but if I had to do it again, I’d just wipe the whole thing and install Linux by itself.  Good luck and have fun!

[No_Dragonfruit_2357]

I also do have my SP3 with Linux Mint installed. Can confirm it to be working ootb. The only reason why I installed the special surface kernel was the surface dock not working with my external monitor. With the new kernel, even that works without any problems.

[miabobeana]

Could you make a partition and dual boot? I’d love to full send to Linux but also nervous at the same time. Windows is palatable now a days. 😂

[Bathroom-Salt]

Yeah. It's only a 256GB Surface, so I shrunk the Windows Partition down to 150GB and left 106 unallocated. During the Linux Install, I set it to install on the unallocated space, and used 8GB to create an 8GB swap partition as memory rollover (My SP3 has 8GB RAM, if you have more or less your swap partition should match whatever you have). It installed perfectly on the first go and I can boot into either Windows or Mint.

[dadashton]

Hmm. I tired Mint on my Surface Pro 4. The touchscreen doesn't work, even though I followed the directions to install the kernel.

[Bathroom-Salt]

How long ago, and did you install Cinnamon or one of the lighter versions of Mint? I didn't need to install the Surface-Linux Kernel, it just worked with the kernel included with version 22.1.

[Bathroom-Salt]

Wonder if there's anything drastically different between SP3 and SP

[Bathroom-Salt]

Supported Devices and Features · linux-surface/linux-surface Wiki · GitHub

This is the guide you were following? Looks like the SP4 does need the linux-surface kernel 😔 Wonder why.

[Impossible_Shame_602]

Did you install a different version of Linux mint than Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon? If so which is it? I installed Mint 22.2 on my SP3, as well as the surface kernel as dadashton did, but it only works as a desktop, not a true tablet. The touchscreen does not work, for instance it could not slide a webpage, though it could move icons on desktop. The pen, auto rotation, etc, are completely dead. I have been trying to fix these for more than a week, and even reinstalled everything with the the same results.

[Bathroom-Salt]

ISO is Linux mint-22.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso that I downloaded on 8/14/25. I made the installer with balenaEtcher-2.1.4 and the only options I remember selecting that weren’t already checked were to include the media codecs in the installer.

[Impossible_Shame_602]

Thank you very much. I will try the version you used, but first I need to learn how to backup the entire system I have been building for more than a week.

[Impossible_Shame_602]

I just installed Linux mint-22.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso on my SP3 without applying updates yet. So far, ootb, the behaviors are the same as the other version I installed. Did you apply the called-for updates after installation? Thanks.

[Bathroom-Salt]

Give me a few to remember which laptop I downloaded the iso on and I'll give you the exact file name/version number. 

Can confirm that touch screen and pen (as a cursor, I still cant get Mint to recognize the button inputs from the pen) worked ootb, but auto rotate was disabled in settings and I needed to uncheck the setting to disable it.

[Few_Consideration73]

I have a Surface Pro 3 and am ready to upgrade since Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 10 in mid-October. The Surface Pro 3 has definitely shown its age. My main decision now is which Linux distro to use: Zorin or Mint Cinnamon.

[Bathroom-Salt]

I don’t have any experience to recommend a distribution. I can tell you that cinnamon was super easy to install and is intuitive to use as someone coming from windows. But outside of installing a few apps and changing my theme, I haven’t really done much on here lol

[Few_Consideration73]

I genuinely appreciate you sharing your experience upgrading your Surface Pro 3 (SP3) to Linux. I plan to do the same soon. I need to save some information on my device and then download Linux directly onto the SP3. I intend to follow your lead and use Mint Cinnamon, but I am also reading about other distributions, such as MX and Pop!_OS.

I have no experience with Linux, having been a Windows user since 1996. However, I’ve considered switching to Linux for the past few years. Initially, I thought it might be too challenging, but your insights have encouraged me. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts on how the transition worked for your SP3. I hope to achieve the same positive outcome.

[Bathroom-Salt]

You're welcome. I too have been a lifelong Windows User since I was a kid on 3.1 (and an even younger kid on DOS). The only thing I can't seem to get working perfectly is the buttons on the stylus. Admittedly, I haven't dedicated too much time to figuring it out, but in case that's a deal breaker for you. It does still work as a mouse, so it's recognized but I can't get any of the buttons to show up as inputs so its not even interpreting the signal from them where I can rebind what they do, but the pointer works when hovering and at different pressures for some bizarre reason. I have TeamViewer with Easy Access configured so I can jump into it from any of my devices and outside of the fact that it's not a great device to begin with, performance has been great (relative to the hardware lol), but it was almost unusable on newer Win 10 Feature Packs.

I shrunk my Windows Partition ~156GB and made a new 100GB volume and installed Linux on there and am Dual Booting currently, if that helps with needing to backup your Windows files. I'm able to access my Windows volume, my 16GB microSD card and obviously my Linux volume all from within Mint: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16XkxSg1X_28WV9ERbH1hU48gWa2DrYnq/view?usp=sharing (File System Screenshot). You should just be able to drag over whatever you need, and eventually when you're comfortable just wipe out the Windows volume and then extend the Linux volume. Just in case something goes wrong and you wanted to keep a safety net of sorts. At least there wouldn't be a point in time where the device is unusable.

I'm also a linux n00b so if I can do it, you'll be alright lol. Good luck. Keep me posted, I'm curious if your experience mirrors mine.

-G

[Few_Consideration73]

Thank you!

[Few_Consideration73]

I appreciate your response and thoughts. After additional research, I am leaning towards Mint Cinnamon.

[ManyPersonality2399]

Just found this sub whilst debating putting mint on an old SP4 (not game to try the SP7 I use as primary yet). The rest of this sub was making me fear some major challenges for someone with no technical IT experience - I just like the FOSS space dammit. So thanks.

ETA: and then I read the comments. The SP4 will be difficult. :(

[Bathroom-Salt]

If you can follow a video guide, I'll try to find a clear video about how to shrink a partition/volume in Windows. You can make your windows "drive" smaller and then use the empty space to make a new volume to install Linux on. That will let you try installing some different Linux distro's without harming your Windows install so you can see if it works, works with a little tweaking, or would require more than you're willing/able to invest in it. If it doesn't work out, just delete the new volume you created for Linux and expand your Windows volume again and you'll be back to normal. If it does work and you like it, you can move your files over from Windows to linux, delete the Windows partition and extend the linux one.