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This page describes my experience installing Ubuntu 21.04 on a Surface Book 2. I have been away from Ubuntu since 2015 and much has changed, including my own requirements.

General Notes

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase a couple of Microsoft Surface computers, including a Surface Book 2. When I was researching Ubuntu, I found that there are a number of functions that aren't supported in Ubuntu for Surface devices. Since I do have multiple computers, running Windows 10, I made the decision that I could live with the unsupported features.

I am aware that there is work being done that includes a custom Linux core that supports some of the missing features. For now, I have decided not to use these custom cores. I can live without the features on this computer. I fully realise that other people would not be able to make this same decision.

Hardware

I have installed Ubuntu 21.04 on a Microsoft Surface Book 2 with the following characteristics:

• Hardware Characteristics

  Display Size	15 inch
  Display Resolution (Aspect Ratio)	3240 x 2160 (3:2)
  Display Scale	200%
  Memory	16 GB (15.5 GiB)
  Disk Space	1 TB
  Note on Disk	The disk is encrypted and using ZFS.
  Processor	Intel® Core™ i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz × 8
  Graphics	Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2)
  Installation Note	With the exception of the encryption, all other settings were applied with Ubuntu defaults. The encryption and ZFS were selections that I made as part of the installation.

Installation Experience

During the installation, I was given a number of options:

• I chose to install Third-Party drivers.
• I chose to encrypt the disk and use ZFS file system.

The installation was trouble-free, including the Wi-Fi connection and software updates.

Post-Installation

Online Accounts

• I was easily able to add my Google, Microsoft, and Ubuntu accounts.
• I was very pleased to find that my Google Drive shows up as a Network Drive in Nautilus.

• I haven't found a solution for getting similar functionality for my Microsoft OneDrive account. There may be some options such as rclone, so I will look at those later.

Google Chrome

I have chosen to not install Google Chrome.

Microsoft Edge

For the moment, I have chosen to not install Microsoft Edge. I will revisit that decision later - I quite like Edge on Windows, and it has all of my bookmarks.

Other Hardware

• BTLE Precision Mouse. This mouse is a Microsoft product and I have been using it for a long time. It connected easily through Bluetooth.
• Surface Headphones. This is a Microsoft product and I have been using them for a long time. They connected easily through Bluetooth.I have not tested the microphone part. When I was using them in VLC, the tap to pause did not work, but taking the headphones off did pause the playback.

Minor Issues

• In Windows, I set the option so that the touchpad would not work if there was a mouse connected. This solved the fat finger issue. In Ubuntu, I had to use a terminal command to set this, and it seems to have permanently turned off the touchpad.
  • The command that I used was: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad send-events disabled-on-external-mouse.
• All of my music is in WMA (lossless) format.
  • As a stopgap:
    • I copied the WMA files to a portable drive.
    • Loaded the files into the Music folder on my Ubuntu machine.

    • Used SoundJuicer to convert the WMA files to FLAC.

  • I haven't tested all of the music, but the ones that I have tested appear to be working very well.

  • I am assuming that there is some loss in fidelity, so I will purchase a codec pack from Fluendo. I have used their codecs in the past and they do include WMA (lossless). Once that is installed, then I'll use the original WMA files instead of the converted FLAC files.

• I have not been able to get the battery status to display.

Not Working

I knew going in that there are many items that will not work. Here is the list:

• Touch Screen is not working at all.
• Pen is not working at all.
• Integrated Webcams (front and back) are not working at all.
  • If I need to, I can connect an external webcam.
  • No point in installing Skype.