SOLVED: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

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fabvir

SOLVED: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by fabvir »

I installed Mint in dual boot on a Surface Pro 4, nearly everything is working ok (including "most" of the keyboard-cover) except:
a. the touchpad works but changing the settings in the control center doesn't have any effect: e.g. turning off the tap to click, the status changes in the control center but tap to click remains; or selecting two-finger scrolling doesn't activate it;
b. light increasing and decreasing keys don't work (but volume increase and decrease do work!)
c. the touchscreen doesn't work, and neither the pen.
I looked everywhere for a solution or suggestions, but didn't find anything.
Can someone please help me?
Thank you very much
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
fabvir

Re: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by fabvir »

Thank you, did it using the first link and now it works everything except:

a. after the final restart, when I log in now I get a message that says that cinnamon is running in software rendering mode, and all now runs slower plus I see some strange graphic artifact every now and then, that disappears very quickly; the slowness is not a huge problem but it is very noticeable.

b. when I typed the command "sudo ln -s /usr/lib/systemd/system/hibernate.target /etc/systemd/system/suspend.target && sudo ln -s /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-hibernate.service /etc/systemd/system/systemd-suspend.service" I got the message "ln: failed to create symbolic link '/etc/systemd/system/suspend.target': File exists".

Can you give me some additional suggestions? Thank you very much
pdc_2
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Re: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by pdc_2 »

glad you have made such good progress; well done;

you might be best to contact Jake Day who did the github link you used; there is a PayPal link there so you could show support to him that way too! It is always nice to support those folks;

If Cinnamon is slow, you might be better with xfce as a desktop; Cinnamon is rated by its supporters as very good; but I understand it also uses resources
fabvir

Re: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by fabvir »

solved it:
reading https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/in ... ke_support
edited the file 20-intel.conf that is
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf
and changed the DRI line from false to true,
then rebooted
fabvir

Re: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by fabvir »

@pdc_2 thank you very much!
pdc_2
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Joined: Mon May 11, 2009 1:21 am

Re: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by pdc_2 »

delighted it is all working for you; it will hopefully be helpful for others following in your wake: interesting that the archlinux was helpful: I find their wikis are very good;

as it is your thread, you can go back and change the title to SOLVED ...... so anyone searching can find the SOLVED to help them ..........
fabvir

Re: SOLVED: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by fabvir »

one more little improvement needed: on the Surface Pro 4, when I toggle the on screen keyboard to use it with the pen or with my fingers, pressing the letters very often they are highlighted but are not written or they are written twice. This happens when the physical keyboard-cover is not attached, while when I attach it and begin to write on the virtual keyboard with the cover attached it works perfectly, even if I then detach it.
age6racer

Re: SOLVED: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by age6racer »

Hey guys, I bought a surface pro 4 yesterday and installed pop linux on it (dual boot with Windows 10) it all works nicely using the keyboard and track pad..

I've tried Jake's kernel from GitHub but my screen and pen still don't work.. it doesn't seem to have improved anything actually.
The steps are fairly simple and I've been using Linux on and off for a decade. I'm by no means an expert but I'm pretty sure I followed the steps correctly.

Can anybody give me some help with this?
I'd really like to get the functionality that others are enjoying with the surface 😁
age6racer

Re: SOLVED: Surface Pro 4 touchpad, touchscreen and pen

Post by age6racer »

Update:

I think I'm having difficulty loading the correct kernel.
The EFI bootloader only shows my original one.
I think that I need to select a different kernel but it doesn't show in the list available to me in systemd-boot menu.

Any ideas?
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