Ubuntu – Ubuntu for Surface Pro 4

keyboardsurface

I know the Surface Pro 4 is new, but has anyone tried to support the keyboard and mouse pad for it? None of the input devices (screen, key/mouspad, stylus) appear to work when I load the live USB. I'd be willing to try my hand and creating something to support these devices, but I would need someone to point me towards reference material where I could teach myself about drivers.

Best Answer

Here was my solution, which worked using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Took me 1.5 days to figure out :-/

I could not do this without a multi USB adapter. I needed at least 2 USB ports. Here's what I did.

  1. Plug the multi USB adapter in.
  2. Plug the wireless keyboard & mouse dongle.
  3. Load Windows 10 and shrink the C drive so that you have enough room for a Ubuntu partition and a swap drive (note that Windows will prevent you from doing this, so you need to follow instructions here)
  4. Create two new partitions: one for Ubuntu and one for swap - swap doesn't have to be huge. I use a couple of Gig, but I don't think you even need that to be honest.
  5. When you turn on the SP4, hold down the + volume button until the UEFI screen appears.
  6. Disable Secure Boot and TPM.
  7. Make sure USB Storage appears at the top of the list in Boot config.
  8. Boot up Windows, open a command prompt as Administrator and type bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes and hit enter. This will make sure the Windows Boot menu appears on turning on the SP4 - note this also gives you many more boot options, so can be very useful.
  9. Now put your Ubuntu Live USB in and reboot and install Ubuntu from the USB stick (your wifi/bluetooth USB and mouse will hopefully work - mine did but only with the multi USB adapter). Note that if "Install alongside windows" is missing, then click "Something else" instead. You need to assign ext4 root (/) partition, swap partition, and also select the Windows Boot Loader partition as the Ubuntu EFI partition. Do NOT format the EFI partition !!!

When I rebooted, the Ubuntu GRUB2 loads up and gives you the choice to either load Ubuntu, or open the Windows Boot Loader.

Note - it may not actually be necessary to enable the Windows Boot Loader menu, but it didn't work when disabled for 15.10.

If anything goes wrong you can always download an SP4 Windows 10 Recovery ISO from Microsoft's website, and there's always the recovery partition on the SP4. Overall I'd recommend turning on the Windows Boot Loader menu as it gives you more boot options.

Anyway, good luck !

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