Linux

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

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?

I have some strange power issues with my laptop that may have a similar cause.

I put an additional drive in my work laptop so I could debian for work without nuking the system drive.

Shutting down usually always works properly but rebooting gets stuck sometimes. It's like it gets to the bottom of the reboot cycle and loses the ability to say "okay boot back up now". On my laptop, it's obvious that it is still on because of the light on the power button. I hold it down for about 12 seconds until it goes off and then I can power it back on.

I wonder if your surface is doing a similar thing where it is still powered on but not booted. You might try hiding the power button down for about 15 seconds and then hitting it again when it's in this state.

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.

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.

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.

I work with a company who distributes a mix of surface pro and Lenovo Yoga laptops. Right now they're on Surface pro 7s.

I've yet to hear anything good about them over the years and models we've handed out. Most of the guys with them call us back to get a Yoga instead.

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.

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

I owned a surface back during the 2014 Microsoft hype campaign, the absolute garbage windows 8 RT experience forever made me hate any and all laptops with surface in its name..

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

You couldn't pay me to use this...

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

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.

I also had people not praising them at work .

Back then it was Surface Pro 8s and Surface Book 3s They throttled a lot due to temp issues.

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.

Surfaces are notoriously hard to repair so good luck

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