Lorenzo-
  
I have updated the Linux build of Surfice in two ways:

• Surfice will now do a more exhaustive search for Python 3 on Linux computers.While this takes more time, it only needs to happen once, the first time the user runs a Python script.
• If Surfice is unable to find Python3, it will assume that Python 2.7 on Linux expects UCS4 unicode (while MacOS and Windows use UCS2). I am not sure if this works with every version of Python 2.7 on every distribution of Linux, but it does work on my version of Ubuntu 18.04.

I share your desire to keep applications small and lean. I think you will find Surfice and MRIcroGL use far less resources (RAM, disk space, CPU/GPU demands) than comparable tools. As long as your Linux computer supports OpenGL 3.3 or later you can delete the "surficeOld" executable and save 5mb of disk space.