Linux Kernel 4.8 Adds Microsoft Surface 3 Support (betanews.com)

Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews:If you are a Windows user, and want a really great computer, you should consider Microsoft's Surface line. Not only do they serve as wonderful tablets, but with the keyboard attachment, they can be solid laptops too. While many Linux users dislike Microsoft, some of them undoubtedly envy Windows hardware. While it is possible to run Linux distros on some Surface tablets, not everything will work flawlessly. Today, release candidate 1 of Linux Kernel 4.8 is announced, and it seems a particularly interesting driver has been added -- the Surface 3 touchscreen controller. "This seems to be building up to be one of the bigger releases lately, but let's see how it all ends up. The merge window has been fairly normal, although the patch itself looks somewhat unusual: over 20 percent of the patch is documentation updates, due to conversion of the drm and media documentation from docbook to the Sphinx doc format. There are other doc updates, but that's the big bulk of it," says Linus Torvalds, Linux creator. Will Microsoft's lower-priced (starting at $499) hybrid computer become the ultimate mobile Linux machine?

Comments

Well, anything at the moment is better than Win10

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, with Win10 you pretty much accept that any of your info / personal docs / etc may be sent to Microsoft. So yes, an alternative would be fantastic to run on that hardware.

Hardware is nice, shame about the software.

Tablets with Keyboards?

[TechyImmigrant]

I need a keyboard to do the things I do with a computer.

A laptop cunningly puts the computer bit on the bottom, with the keyboard attached to the top side of the computer and the screen is attach to the computer with a hinge. This works because the computer+keyboard is heavier than the screen, so it doesn't fall backwards.

Then some bright spark said, "Hey! Let's put the computer bit on the back of the screen. So now you end up with a skinny keyboard and the computer and screen oriented vertically which will not stand up on its own, so ends up with ridiculous things like flip out screen stands to keep the screen standing.

This is why I don't have a surface. They put the computer bit in the wrong place.