A surface pro 8 is not good enough? According to linux-surface repo (https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface) it's supported.

The ROG Flow Z13 is another candidate but it's not clear how support is. With differing reports I can find online. Also way out of budget.

Personally I'm holding on to the faint hope of Asahi Linux getting far enough and a kind soul jailbreaking an IPad Pro.

SP 8 is great; the only reason I didn't upgrade from SP6 to SP8 immediate is that that pen support for SP8 is currently still experimental, while it's stable on SP6. I'm okay with tinkering, but I do need that pen support to work in a relatively reliable manner.

I would say your best bet is to restore your SP6. It's not so bad, I replaced the battery and screen on a SP5 a few years back. The screen is hard to remove but the rest is extremely straightforward.

Where did you get the replacement parts if you don't mind me asking?

It was a local website: https://www.caasi.nl/ they don't carry them anymore.

12" display is a killer requirement here. Lenovo (Duet) and Asus (CM3) make detachable Chromebooks, but neither tops 11". The CM3 has an integrated pressure-sensitive stylus. The HP X2 11 is right at 11" with a pen and dockable stylus, but in a 3:2 aspect ratio.

IIRC all modern Chrome OS devices support Linux containers, which probably won't be what you want either, and none of them are remotely very powerful. I don't know about the CM3, but I've installed Ubuntu on the Duet and I can find videos of people installing and running Ubuntu on the x2 with touch working.

Even 12" requires a bit scaling down of a typical page of sheet music. 11" will be kinda difficult to read at playing distance, unless I can resize and reflow the sheet music somehow.

I would love to have the new Dell XPS tablet [0] with Linux, unfortunately, unlike the XPS laptop, there don't offer to buy it with Linux pre-installed so we have no idea how well it is supported..

[0] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/xps-13-9315-2-in...

I'm using the samsung galaxy book pro 360 since over a year just with linux and my experience with it is really great so far. Only thing that bothers me, is that the fingerprint sensor doesn't have a driver for Linux.

And the S-Pen works great on applications like Krita/Xournal++/rnote etc.

It's possible to run various Linux distros on a Microsoft Surface. Explaining Computers on Youtube put out a video on the limitations of using Linux on a touch screen though see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaCwLjIf3sU

Try looking for either a laptop or a 2in1 PC and you will have greater success. System76 has some well engineered equipment with Linux preinstalled that is worth purchasing.

Use a "Live distro" version on your existing touchscreen laptop and boot from USB to test it before you install it on hardware.

Sadly, System76 doesn't have anything with a touchscreen.