Surface Pro 4 touchscreen support

Product support balenaOS
1

Hi. I have started to use Balena for a prototype project and am really impressed so far.

I am using a Surface Pro 4 device on the generic Generic x86_64 (GPT) image and the balena browser building block to deploy a kiosk browser. Everything works perfectly except the Generic x86_64 is missing touchscreen support. This seems to require an alternative kernel which is available here: GitHub - linux-surface/linux-surface: Linux Kernel for Surface Devices

I tried flashing the Surface Pro 6 image instead but whilst it seems to boot, the device appears offline in the dashboard and never comes online.

What are the options to add touchscreen support to the Surface Pro 4? I have considered:

  • Building a custom Surface Pro 4 Balena OS based on the Generic x86_64
  • Keep with the Generic x86_64 image and use the Kernel Module Builder to build and run the alternative kernel.
  • Give up and sell my Surface Pro 4 and buy a Surface Pro 6

Thanks!

1 Like
3

Hi Dave,

Thanks for reaching out. It might be as simple as submitting a PR to have this added to our Generic x86_64 image, but let me check with our Devices engineers to be sure. We’ll be back soon with an answer. :slight_smile: