I run Ubuntu with Gnome on my linuxed Surface. Ubuntu because I wanted something that works and since I mostly browse the web with it. I personally prefer Gnome for touch interfaces because a lot of it works intuitively with a touch screen.
Note that there's the surface-linux kernel, with the default kernel, some things might not work out of the box.
I use it to browse products and content that I dont want in my ad profiles. Like, sometimes I'd like to take a look at what my resident right wing nut case posted, but without having the ad brokers think that I need an AR15 and a Trump bible.
It might just be local network traffic or a dev env. Not to mention that https is just unnecessary overhead for some usecases, especially when only GETting data.
You also have to consider that roots homedir is in /root and not home, so if you'd just assume it's /home/$USER you'd get in trouble when your programm is run or compiled as root.
Queue the "I'm still worthy" thor meme