linux

Debian 9.0 / Surface Pro 3.0

Installation of Debian 9.0 on a Surface Pro 3.0. I started by following the directions here, but had to improvise as my surface had been upgraded to Windows 10.

Prepare USBs

Prepare two USB drives with the necessary iso images. To determine name of the USB port:

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blkid -o list -c /dev/null

Download the Debian 9.0 image from https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst and copy to the USB.

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dd if=debian-9.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso  of=/dev/sdb

Download firmware from https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/current/amd64/iso-cd/

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dd if=firmware-9.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdb

Prepare Surface

The first thing I did was save my recovery partition to a USB drive. I then shrunk the windows partition by right clicking on the C:\ drive in the Disk Management software. Once shrunk, open a command window and disable hibernation.

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powercfg -hibernate off

Turn the Surface off. Turn it back on and repeately press the ESC key during startup. This will take you to the harware setup window, where you can disable Secure Boot. If you have the bitlocker key, select that option and turn off encryption. Bitlocker will prevent booting into Windows if Secure Boot is turned off. Change the boot device order here selecting USB –> SSD. Shut down the Surface.

Gather hardware

You will need a USB hub so that both iso containing USBs can be plugged in simultaneously. I found that my Displaylink docking station served the purpose. However when I plug in the docking station, the Surface keypad no longer works. I had to plug a USB keyboard into the Displaylink to navigate through the installation.

Installation

Start up the Surface. At the Bitlocker screen select “Skip this drive” which will redirect you to the USB and start the Debian installation. Debian 9.0 retrieves the Wifi driver (and maybe other drivers) from the firmware iso without prompts. The most difficult part of the installation was the SSD partitioning. I was presenting with multiple partitions, one of which was empty space at 53.5GB. I reduced this partition to 53GB and used the 0.5GB for the boot partition. I also set up a swap space.

Though I use Xfce as my window manager, I selected Gnome for the Surface for its tablet support. I did not need any further configuration. Files were downloaded as needed. I rebooted when prompted and went right into Grub. Touchpad, keyboard, wifi, camera are all working.

Next I installed software of interest and deleted a lot of crapware installed by default with Gnome.

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# apt-get install conkeror thunderbird emacs ess guile-2.0 curl calibre sudo pass chromium rsync referencer nodejs electrum  flashplugin-nonfree xournal x11-server-utils
# apt-get remove gnome-games gnome-calendar gnome-clocks gnome-weather inkscape polari evolution
# apt-get install gnome-core
# apt autoremove

configure browser favorites, mail, electrum seed, conkeror with instapaper,

Copy over ~/.gnupg, ~/.ssh ~/.mutt

Pen info

https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/40ftek/how_to_get_ubuntu_gnome_working_almostperfectly/

References

http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-install-linux-on-surface-pro-3/

https://github.com/jimdigriz/debian-mssp4

Troubleshooting

Ctrl-Alt-F5 to get to a terminal

sudo chmod 1777 /tmp to fix correct password rejection problem

substitute lightdm for gdm3 for circular login problem (didn’t work on HP desktop debian 10)

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