Bitwig on a Surface tablet in 2025?

General
1

A Microsoft Surface Pro 5th generation (2017) from a relative has landed in my hands, and I’m wondering what to do with it:

a) Nothing. I have enough screens in my life.
b) Install latest Bitwig for Windows and see how it goes. Caveat: let Microsoft enter my life.
c) Install Ubuntu (can be done), then latest Bitwig for Linux, and see how it goes.

Bitwig support for the Surface tablets was announced in 2015, and I wonder how the combo works almost a decade later, with Bitwig 5.* and 2017 hardware.

I also wonder whether there is any loss of compatibility, functionality or performance when trying the Linux route.

Mu hypothetical use case is to just play around and learn in the couch (instead of lazily watch videos about Bitwig or not) those evening when I’m not feeling like turning on my home studio for more engaged production.

2

5th gen Surface is rather weak for current Bitwig imo, as there has been a bit of a downgrade in DSP performance from 4.x to 5.x, especially should be notiecable on older hardware I presume. But for just messing with one Grid patch at a time, or doing mostly stuff with audio clips, it should be usable.

1 Like
3

Hi!

Just stumbled on this post. I have a surface pro 6 and the thinking of installing Linux and Bitwig as I pretty much only want to use it for Bitwig and mainly for the grid.

Did you end up trying it?

Thanks!