Open Source Driver For Microsoft Surface 2.0

dartttt writes "Florian Echtler has developed an open-source driver for the Microsoft Surface 2.0 touch screen. According to him, the open source implementation works surprisingly well on Ubuntu 11.10. The process requires you to boot Linux on your Surface 2.0 in the first place. However, it can be done by just booting Ubuntu from a USB hard disk without modify anything on the original Win7 installation."

Re:

[perles]

I am currently experiencing such thing. I got my comment on how Google Gmail is getting worse in another thread (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2841713&cid=39955445). Even though some folks have evaluated as insightful I have seen it loosing points every couple of days. Also an anonymous commented there very angry. If you know how to get in contact with me through here let's get in touch (I have friended you). I sent an e-mail to Samsenpus last week but heard nothing so far.

This is an amazing achievement

[Deathnerd]

All five people who own a Surface will surely make great use of this.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, so 4 more people finally bought one?

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[Anonymous Coward]

All 5 of us are here reading this article, all realising we didn't have to a buy windows based OS, but knowing deep down that we'd never be able to figure out facebook on a none Windows machine.

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[roc97007]

Oh, c'mon, there's got to be more than five. I've seen Surface on several TV shows.

But now that I think about it, the same box could have been used for multiple shows.

Schweet!

[Lumpy]

Now to just get $25,000 to send to microsoft so they will build me one.

My luck 3.0 will come out when they ship it.

In case TFS/TFA is confusing

[subreality]

Having read the source, it IS a native driver. It does not use binary blobs from the Windows driver, unless you include parroting an init sequence which is apparently optional.

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[subreality]

That part made no sense at all. :)

Not that pricey

[MrQuacker]

The local M$ store at the Mall of America has them for sale for $5000. Looking at the specs, its not much more than it would cost to build a comparable desktop system.

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[mark-t]

What I don't understand is why people are bothering to make a display of that size touch sensitive at all. At that size of screen, you could easily and relatively cheaply use optics outside of the display to detect when something is coming in contact with the screen, and not notice any difference between it and an actual touch screen display. A suitably arranged array of IR optics around the rim of the screen could easily detect multiple shapes of objects or fingers that are being put on or resting on th

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[mark-t]

I would have expected optics around the edges of the display to be more cost effective for larger displays, since such the sensor cost increases linearly only with the linear dimensions of the screen. So, for example, an optical sensor array double the width and height of another would cost only twice as much, even though the area within has increased by a factor of 4. Since such sensors are extremely cheap, the biggest cost of a large display would be the display itself, sans any touch sensitive technlog

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[themightythor]

Oh... I see what you did there. You used a "$" instead of the "S" in Microsoft's commonly used abbreviation. Because they're a company that tries to make money. Clever.

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[MrQuacker]

No, its just that's how I've always seen it abbreviated on /.

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[Barlo_Mung_42]

Maybe before 2003 or so. We moved on when they finally changed the gates/borg image.

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[mark-t]

That's only for the base system that is essentially a consumer-level device. If you want to do development, expect to spend double or even triple that.

Might want to abbreviate that first name.

[VortexCortex]

I read the headline -- OK sounds cool, proprietary stuff being reverse engineered and getting FLOSS drivers for it.

Start to read TFS - "Florian --" Nope! Next! If it wasn't for my lack of caffeine this early in the evening I'd have skipped right over this one.

That aside: It's pretty sweet! I love that my Kinect has never been connected to GNU/Linux doing mo-cap for all but two days I've had it; IMO, wouldn't have been such a hot seller without the openness. I hope MS doesn't start locking down their interfaces like they did with the Zune (not that that's what killed it -- Just would have been nice for my Mom to use hers on the Ubuntu Laptop I gave her). Hardware should be OS agnostic.

It's a table-sized iPod Touch

[kholburn]

The Microsoft Surface - it's a giant iPod touch - the size of a table. I can see why it wasn't such a hit.

I owned one: my experience

[claytongulick]

I'm one of the few who actually owned one of these, so I'll share the good and bad points from my experience. Please note, this is in regards to the SUR40 manufactured by Samsung, Microsoft's Surface SDK is broadly applicable to a wide range of touch devices. It's based on WPF, so if you like .Net and WPF you'll be right at home.

First, the good:
- The SDK is decent, and well thought out. It's designed in classic OOP fashion, so folks who are familiar with WPF and .Net will feel right at home. The touch and g