Installing Ubuntu on Surface Laptop

Yes, I’ve installed Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on an old Surface Laptop 1. Took time to properly do it, but once I’ve done it, it’s quite easy, so I thougth I should explain it, so others could have the easy way.

You will be wondering why I did it, and it’s quite simple: First gen Surface Laptops are a bit slow, specially the i5 with 8G ones, and Windows 11 isn’t fully supported (yes, you can install it, but not recomended); so I took the other way: Install Ubuntu to refresh it!

Requirements

These are the requirements to aproach this post:

• An USB with at least 16GB.
• A PC.
• A Surface Laptop, obviously!

Create a bootable drive with Ubuntu

First of all, we will need to download Ubuntu’s ISO, to do so, go to Ubuntu’s official site and download.

Meanwhile, we can also download a software to make our USB bootable, and load it with the ISO. This software is recommended from Cannonical, its called balenaEtcher.

Once both downloads are donwnloaded, lets run balenaEtcher:

The interface is quite intuitive, just click on “Flash from file” and select the ubuntu ISO we just downloaded:

Now you must introduce the USB drive you want to flash. Remember that all the information it contains will be removed!

Select the apropiated drive:

And just click on “”Flash” to start, and wait until it finish.

Install Ubuntu on the Surface

Installing Ubuntu itself on the surface it’s not a big deal, but first, we must know how to launch the bootloader on the device, in the case of a Surcface Laptop Gen 1 works by pressing and holding the volume-up button on your Surface, and, at the same time, pressing and releasing the power button. Remember to do this with the flashed USB inserted into the laptop.

Then, Ubuntu’s installing screen should apepar, asking us for our language:

Once selected the language, it will ask us about our keyboar layout, select your preference:

After that, I recommend select minimal installation, some of the software, at least in my case, are unwanted:

And I will choose to erase the disk and install Ubuntu. If you select Something else you will be asked for partitions and mounting paths, but I won’t do it in this case.

This warning will apear, just clikc on “Continue“.

Now select your location:

And fill this with your information:

With all of this, Ubuntu will start to finish the installation process and dowloading all the needed software.

Configure Surface Linux

You probably noticed that the Keyboard’s backlight is not working, like the touchscrenn or other things. Don’t worry, there’s a project called linux-surface, which you can find in its Github repo. This project is made to fix all these issues we have mentioned. It uses a custom Linux kernel (maybe it sounds weird, but it’s completly clean and updated). And to install it, we first need to install extrepo:

sudo apt install -y extrepo

Now, we can enable surface-linux apt repo:

sudo extrepo enable surface-linux && sudo apt update

And install all the packages needed from there:

sudo apt install linux-image-surface linux-headers-surface libwacom-surface iptsd

Let’s enable secure boot:

sudo apt install linux-surface-secureboot-mok

Update our boot loader grub:

sudo update-grub

Now, reboot an select the surface-linux kernel at the booting sequence, and it’s done!

Summary

What we aproached so far:

• Making a bootable USB to properly install a new OS.
• Ubuntu’s installation process:
• How to install the surface-linux kernel.
• Keeping our old surface laptop up and working!

Hope you found this interesting, and you keep up with my weekly blog posts!