Using a Surface Go 3 as a Linux-based RTSP Kiosk

TL;DR I wanted an always-on screen showing a camera feed. Something that boots straight into the stream with no prompts, survives Wi-Fi drops and camera hiccups, and can be maintained remotely. A used Surface Go 3 running Omarchy turned out to be a great fit, with only a few setup steps. Background I have my home kitted out with UniFi PoE cameras. Inspired by Casey Neistat’s studio door camera, I made a similar setup: a camera pointed outside with a screen mounted on a wall inside. In practice, this is meaningfully more convenient than a peephole (we also don’t have any windows with a good view of the entrance). When someone knocks, we can glance at the monitor from just about anywhere in the room and see who it is. Until now, I was just using a cheap Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet. My thinking at the time was to make this as simple as possible: get a cheap Android tablet, run VLC for the RTSP stream, attach it to the wall with Command Strips, leave it plugged in, done. This had some…