Heck, my surface pro 3 makes a great Linux machine. Still tweaking it but the touchscreen works just fine with Mint, so even an old one could probably do just fine.

I remember when the first Surface released and Gabe from Penny Arcade was like "wtf this is better than iPad for drawing. why aren't they advertising this aspect of it?"

I don't know if that's still true, but I always tucked it in the back of my mind when I was looking for drawing tablets.

As long as you don't mind the webcam not working, which except for the oldest models seemed to be a constant with the Surface tablets.

Edit: i mean in Linux, as these camera modules are near impossible to support.

My Go 3 with fedora runs like a charm