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Open Source Driver For Microsoft Surface 2.0

Posted by timothy on from the anything-you-can-do dept.

dartttt writes "Florian Echtler has developed an open-source driver for the Microsoft Surface 2.0 touch screen. According to him, the open source implementation works surprisingly well on Ubuntu 11.10. The process requires you to boot Linux on your Surface 2.0 in the first place. However, it can be done by just booting Ubuntu from a USB hard disk without modify anything on the original Win7 installation."

4 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. This is an amazing achievement by Deathnerd · · Score: 5, Funny

    All five people who own a Surface will surely make great use of this.

  2. Might want to abbreviate that first name. by VortexCortex · · Score: 2

    I read the headline -- OK sounds cool, proprietary stuff being reverse engineered and getting FLOSS drivers for it.

    Start to read TFS - "Florian --" Nope! Next! If it wasn't for my lack of caffeine this early in the evening I'd have skipped right over this one.

    That aside: It's pretty sweet! I love that my Kinect has never been connected to GNU/Linux doing mo-cap for all but two days I've had it; IMO, wouldn't have been such a hot seller without the openness. I hope MS doesn't start locking down their interfaces like they did with the Zune (not that that's what killed it -- Just would have been nice for my Mom to use hers on the Ubuntu Laptop I gave her). Hardware should be OS agnostic.

  3. Re:Not that pricey by themightythor · · Score: 2

    Oh... I see what you did there. You used a "$" instead of the "S" in Microsoft's commonly used abbreviation. Because they're a company that tries to make money. Clever.

  4. Re:Not that pricey by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 2

    Maybe before 2003 or so. We moved on when they finally changed the gates/borg image.