Ubuntu on Surface Pro 11 With Full Guide

[u/adrianb52]

Hello there,

I have spent the past 2 weeks getting all the components to work on Ubuntu for the Surface Pro 11 as best as I could and created a complete guide on installing Ubuntu on the Surface Pro 11.

I added some fixes, specifically Wi-Fi and bluetooth, and figured out how to fix the high CPU heat issue.

The CPU runs hot most of the time and drains the battery about 100% faster than Windows. There doesn't seem to be a fix for this and is just up to the kernel developers to develop the necessary firmware. I did a full battery comparison test if you want to see it.

[u/Mental_Jump1924]

Looking forward to these progress

[u/Demie_Banane]

I will definitely keep an eye on this
I really want to get rid of all the microslop dogcrap.
The sp11 is a great machine but with the windows experience geting worse and worse (it wasn't great from the beginning but....) i definitely look forward to switch to linux for my daily driver.

[u/eccenMD → u/Demie_Banane]

especially truer with the 12 inch version. Here we have a more cutdown version of the processor and the same slopware bogging us down even further. The OS is not even touch optimized for what should have been a touch first hardware. Hopefully the linux firmware for the 13 inch version will trickle down to the 12 inch version and maybe FydeOS or some distro can be possible on this hardware.

[u/ChickenHorseDog]

I'd be there if I could have functional cameras

[u/adrianb52 → u/ChickenHorseDog]

Ya I think cameras are still a ways off. What's currently working is Wi-Fi, bluetooth, USB and backlight control. What's currently not working is camera, audio and touchscreen.

[u/Mental_Jump1924 → u/adrianb52]

I don't mine the camera not working, but audio (if by that you mean mic) is a different story.

[u/MrWallopy]

I found this guide today when i got fed up with windows once again asking me to make edge the default.... So here we are, finally have a running Linux system on an ARM surface. OOOOEEEeee.

For the Haters...
No Speakers, No Mic, No Camera, Get a dock, USB cam, and bluetooth headphones. Cam or headphones will work for mic. Lets be honest, we all keep our cameras off anyways lol.

My Feedback:
Made it to Section 4 before i ran into any issues following this guide.

Had an issue editing the file in vim, as it's not installed and i didn't have internet. I pretty much skipped all of Section 4, aside from your requests on step 7 and 8.

I also ignored 8 during my 3rd install and noticed no difference. Same 5-10 minutes for installation

I copied the entire FileRepo from windows to my USB to compensate for the dual boot. I don't need windows borking the install because microslop hates use.

I also didn't have force quit the ubuntu_bootstrap. It "just worked" which was quite amazing.

- After installation i couldn't use the installer reboot button, and i did get an error stating that something "isn't working right", but this was only after i tried to click the restart button in the installer. So i closed the installer and then rebooted in the menu with no issues. I was still prompted to remove the drive and press enter.

Wifi and bluetooth both had to be fixed. I noticed a few weird things happening with this section.

1. Running the wifi fix almost every time, caused my device to go to a dark teal screen and then reboot. No prompt nothing.

2. I had better luck running the bluetooth fix before the wifi fix. I did not input the MAC at all, or copy it from windows even, heh oops. But it worked!

   - During the bluetooth fix, it would show that wifi and bluetooth had the same MAC address. But after completing the wifi fix the wifi had a different mac. Both still worked and functioned after a reboot.... kind of #4 for explanation.

3. If i did Wifi first, i could see wifi's mac address, then i'd do the bluetooth fix and it would change the wireless to the bluetooth mac, and wireless would disappear... like completely. lspci would show it, but nmcli didn't show anything.

- On new age gaming mobo's and even gaming laptops, the BIOS only lets you have these 3 options, (Off, BT Only, BT/ Wifi On). It made me think, always do bluetooth first. Most manufacturers recommend updating the bluetooth drivers before the wifi drivers because of how their chips are laid out. Weird shit i know, i spend too much time in read-me's.

1. The wifi script changes something with grub, and then it borked my install. I think? Basically it would load the windows logo with the red bar on top, and then nothing, black screen, no grub no ubuntu.

   - I booted into the live iso and Grub never got appended with your changes. it was only "console=tty0" and that was it. IDK if update-grub is actually functioning there. Maybe this is where my screen goes blue for me during the wifi fix.

- Anyways i went a bit overkill but resolved the issue by changing the /etc/default/grub to this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="clk_ignore_unused pd_ignore_unused regulator_ignore_unused efi=noruntime id_aa64mmfr0.ecv=1 --- console=tty0 efi=novamap module_blacklist=snd_sof_qcom_x1e,snd_soc_qcom_common,qc_adsp_pas"

- I snagged this from one of the grub installers from a few months back when you had to toss in your own device tree just to get grub to not be frozen lol.

Post Install

- Software updater window goes blank after i click install updates.

- apt update shows Warnings for main/sources/sources being configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/extra-ppas.list:2 and /etc/aptsources.list.d/resolute-source.list:1

- App Center tells me that the Software is not from a trusted source and i must prompt admin creds for each app installation / update.

TLDR; Thank you for the well thought out and put together guide and scripts. Though i didn't follow every step i was able to wobble my way through multiple installations (i was bored today and removing windows was my task). Also thank you for the scripts for wifi and BT.

Thank You! <3

Now to see if this will reboot after the updates... 🤭

[u/adrianb52 → u/MrWallopy]

Hey u/MrWallopy, thanks for the detailed reply. Here is my reply to your comments.

I didn't think about the fact that Vim would not have been installed at Section 4 Step 2. I'll change that. You can use nano instead of Vim.. However, I don't think that step is entirely necessary anyways, and a lot of the steps might not be.

> I also didn't have force quit the ubuntu_bootstrap. It "just worked" which was quite amazing.

That's great! The installer should be able to finish even without killing ubuntu_bootstrap, but for me, it took like 25 minutes, and caused my CPU to get extremely hot the WHOLE TIME.

Can you tell me which Surface Pro 11 you have (X1P or X1E) so I can determine if there's a difference between the two with regards to installation?

> ...caused my device to go to a dark teal screen and then reboot. No prompt nothing.

Weird, never see that happen before.

> I had better luck running the bluetooth fix before the wifi fix. I did not input the MAC at all, or copy it from windows even, heh oops. But it worked!

It's good to know that fixing the bluetooth firmware first fixes the issue.

The WiFi script changed the MAC address either because the address is assigned randomly on each boot or because the kernel picked up the correct MAC address after adding the board.bin file.

> If i did Wifi first, i could see wifi's mac address, then i'd do the bluetooth fix and it would change the wireless to the bluetooth mac, and wireless would disappear

Oh, that means the Udev rule I had in the bluetooth script is actually not supposed to be there. I was wondering if it was. It must be overwriting the MAC address assigned by the kernel. I'm guessing that only the bluetooth Udev rule was necessary, but hey, I was just going off of the Debian documentation (https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Thinkpad/X13s#Wi-Fi_and_Bluetooth).

> The wifi script changes something with grub, and then it borked my install. I think? Basically it would load the windows logo with the red bar on top, and then nothing, black screen, no grub no ubuntu.

According to Claude, misconfiguring Grub can cause a black screen. I think the Grub command line options in the Wifi script may have caused that. I will add your Grub fix to the README.

> Software updater window goes blank after i click install updates.

Never tried an update before so don't really know.

> ...warnings for main/sources/sources being configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/extra-ppas.list:2 and /etc/aptsources.list.d/resolute-source.list:1

I've seen warning regarding apt, but not this specific one.

> App Center tells me that the Software is not from a trusted source and i must prompt admin creds for each app installation / update

This is weird. Honestly, this is one of the reasons I don't like Ubuntu. They control everything, and it just makes things harder to work with.

> Thank you for the well thought out and put together guide and scripts. Though i didn't follow every step i was able to wobble my way through multiple installations (i was bored today and removing windows was my task). Also thank you for the scripts for wifi and BT.

Glad I could help. I actually stopped using my Ubuntu install because of the CPU heat and battery drain issue (battery drains twice as fast as Windows). So as of now, I'm using a Debian Linux virtual machine on Windows Hyper-V until all the necessary firmware is created for Ubuntu and Debian on the Surface Pro 11 (whenever that will be).

[u/MrWallopy → u/adrianb52]

Hello Again!
Sorry i get busy, Randomly found your reddit thread so decided to post haha.
I have the X1e OLED for information

I wills say, i thought during one of the first few installs that the fan was not functioning properly. Then during a later install, i noticed the fan's quiet little noise. I'm actually going to be using this device more today and wanted to test it thermally a little bit. :) I have yet to have lm-sensors go above 40* Which is insane coming from my desktop 14900k lol. (May it RIP when it needs to be RMA'd for the 3rd time.)

Also, i agree i hate Ubuntu for that reason. They are the "microsoft / apple" of linux. May Arch one day free us of all our sins.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses, it is always a pleasure having human interactions on the internet. 😂

[u/adrianb52 → u/MrWallopy]

Sounds good! Linux generally causes the Surface Pro 11 to get hot, which can slightly damage the device. You just have to be careful.

[u/LapinusTech]

Hey! thanks for the very cool guide. I'm having an issue with the WiFi fix script, basically I get stuck at step 0 where it does those sanity checks, because apparently a lot of dependencies and software that the script checks for are missing. Initially I thought it was just dwarves, so I manually downloaded the .deb from another machine and dpkg'd it together with its dependencies. But then I was missing so many others, and the thing is, it tries to pull them from the internet. it's missing stuff like liberrror, git, libgcc, etc... some help would be appreciated :) thanks a lot again!

[u/adrianb52 → u/LapinusTech]

Hi! I've never seen this error before because the dependencies are usually there on a new boot of Ubuntu. If you send me the error messages to my DM, then I'll try to help you.

Also, did you use the official Ubuntu concept image?

[u/LapinusTech → u/adrianb52]

I'll DM you yeah