Utilities and Packages - linux-surface/linux-surface GitHub Wiki

In addition to the patched kernel, there are also some tools and packages you may want to install.

If you use the Gnome desktop environment, you should install the patched libwacom package. This allows Gnome to automatically detect your touchscreen and stylus input and rotate it along with the screen. To check if your device is identified correctly, you can run libwacom-list-local-devices. The patches can be found at https://github.com/linux-surface/libwacom-surface, ready-to-install packages (libwacom-surface) in our package repositories, or on the Arch user repository (AUR) for Arch Linux users.

The surface command line utility (surface-control package) aims to provide a unified command line interface to various aspects of Microsoft Surface devices. It allows you to change the performance mode (e.g. switch between Default, Battery Saver, Better Performance, and Best Performance) impacting the cooling behavior of the device, and, on the Surface Book 2 and 3, control the clipboard latch (e.g. trigger undocking) directly from the command line. Note that all these aspects can be manually triggered, e.g. via sysfs (see Surface Aggregator Module wiki), and this utility only aims to provide a central, easy to use interface for it.

For more information, please refer to the help functionality of this utility, e.g. by running surface --help or surface <command> --help.

The Surface DTX daemon (surface-dtx-daemon package) aims to improve and complete the clipboard detachment process on the Surface Books. Currently, only the Surface Book 2 is supported. It allows you to take actions in userspace before the clipboard latch opens, such as unmounting any currently mounted USB devices, and lets you abort this process in case of failures. Additionally, it speeds up the detachment process, as without this tool, the embedded controller will wait until a timeout expires.

In actuality, this package consists of two daemons, the main one run as root and the other run as the currently logged in user(s). The main daemon can be configured via the /etc/surface-dtx/surface-dtx-daemon.conf file and allows you to run scripts when the detachment process starts, when it aborts, and when the tablet has been re-attached. Please have a look at this file and the default script run when detachment has been requested for more information on how to configure it. The per-user daemon takes care of notifications, i.e. it notifies you when the latch has been unlocked and the clipboard can be detached, or when the attachment process has completed and the device can be fully used again.

This provides an easy tool to remap the actions (their key combinations) of the Bluetooth back button.