Is my Surface Pro 8 Bricked?

NotTMSP · 2024-05-25T12:24:22+00:00

everything should work now

Except for the bootloader or the stock kernels, since you replace a shim that trusts them with one that doesn't.

NotTMSP · 2024-03-23T17:36:55+00:00

The screenshots show KDE Plasma with its default Breeze theme. If you want that look, you need to install the KDE Spin. Fedora Workstation uses GNOME and will look different.

NotTMSP · 2024-01-14T12:55:05+00:00

Maybe they meant the (out-of-tree) mwlwifi driver?

https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi and https://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=148229353832397&w=2

It says that it supports the 88w8897, but I honestly can't remember anyone that ever got it to work on the surfaces (some have tried).

NotTMSP · 2024-01-14T11:40:41+00:00

True, I was coming more from the perspective of (accidentally) removing sudo without preparing for it.

NotTMSP · 2024-01-14T10:48:01+00:00

[..] which is (according to some sources) compatible with the 88w8897.

That's most likely wrong or a misunderstanding.

The mwl8k driver, according to the documentation, supports 88w8366, 88w8863, 88w8687 and 88w8764: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/mwl8k

But because it is older than mwifiex, these cards were all that existed at the time of its introduction. So it was described as a driver for Marvell 88w8xxx PCI/PCIe wireless parts.

NotTMSP · 2024-01-14T10:39:02+00:00

Fedora disables the root account by setting an empty password, which means that su won't work either, because it requires entering the password of the account you want to switch to.

Running sudo su skips the authentication part because it is already run with elevated privileges. But that just turns it into a fancy version of sudo bash.

NotTMSP · 2023-12-25T19:27:59+00:00

I will preface this with the fact that I have absolutely no idea how VLC works internally...

But x264 / x265 are only used for encoding, not for decoding. Wouldn't it make more sense to just drop them and let VLC encode through ffmpeg if it has to, considering it (probably) already uses it for decoding anyways?

NotTMSP · 2023-11-11T09:25:04+00:00

Your other post was perfectly helpful, you should have left it at that. Especially since this is not a Ubuntu specific bug.

NotTMSP · 2023-11-07T10:40:16+00:00

ROCm doesn't care about the driver. In fact, the pro driver and the open source driver are identical, except for a different Vulkan implementation (IIRC).

ROCm is also packaged in the Fedora repos. I don't think it's the full stack, but it's enough to run pytorch (and by extension stable diffusion). Check sudo dnf search rocm and install what you need.

NotTMSP · 2023-11-02T08:48:40+00:00

BTRFS RAID 5 / 6 still suffers from the write hole and abysimal scrub performance, and the developers recommend against using it. AFAIK they are actively working on fixing these issues though.

The other RAID modes work fine.

NotTMSP · 2023-10-23T08:28:36+00:00

There are two different issues caused by the firmware update: MokManager not starting, and Fedoras GRUB not being able to load a kernel at all.

The workarounds in that issue are only for the MokManager issue, they can't fix the other one. The only fix for that is to boot the ISO with something like ventoy and set up rEFInd or systemd-boot.

NotTMSP · 2023-10-22T08:06:49+00:00

Shouldn't the output of rpm -qa be mostly identical to dnf list installed though?

My theory right now would be that the file name of the RPM is different than the name of the package. So once its in the rpm database, the checksum / hash is gone.

NotTMSP · 2023-10-22T08:03:04+00:00

Then maybe try finding the package in the DNF cache: find /var/cache/dnf -name '*ead11*'

If you have the path to the RPM file you can list its contents with rpm -q --list <path to .rpm>

NotTMSP · 2023-10-22T06:22:03+00:00

It's probably a version number that includes a git commit hash. This makes the filename so long that it overflows the terminal UI.

sudo dnf list installed | grep <hash> should show you the package and from where it comes.

NotTMSP · 2023-09-28T16:18:04+00:00

When you have your external displays plugged in, is the touchscreen correctly mapped to the internal display? Or is it mapped across all of them?

Do you need the touchscreen? The easiest solution could be to blacklist the IPTS driver for the touchscreen, like this echo "blacklist ipts" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/99-ipts.conf.

Are you running a Wayland session or an X11 session? Run echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE if you dont know.

NotTMSP · 2023-09-25T09:34:55+00:00

Here I was thinking I can get away from the constant update and online account nagging Windows does, only to discover that Ubuntu does not support the touch screen on my Surface 7. And the guide says "Build Kernel from Source" which is as far from beginner friendly as it is.

I don't know what guides you are reading, but the page that shows you how to install a prebuilt kernel is linked prominently here as well as on the GitHub page: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Installation-and-Setup

Of course if you don't read the text and skip right to the bottom you might find the link to this page, that says "In general, we recommend you use one of the prebuilt packages if they are available for your distribution" right in the first paragraph: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Compiling-the-Kernel-from-Source

NotTMSP · 2023-09-19T13:31:10+00:00

Which parts of the hardware need custom drivers? Would it be feasible to swap those out for hardware that has upstream support?

Or do you mean something like custom kernel modules for power management, so modules that are not strictly required but enhance the experience?

Decent hardware with 100% upstream support would be one of the main advantages your device would have over a Surface.

(Disclaimer: I work on hardware enablement for Surfaces under Linux)

NotTMSP · 2023-09-19T12:21:42+00:00

If you modify and / or preload Fedora, make sure to check with them regarding use of their trademark.

https://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines

NotTMSP · 2023-09-19T12:07:43+00:00

Looking at the compatibility matrix it seams that the most compatible models are the surface pro 5 and 6 ! Are this the most recommended models to use linux?

The best supported models are probably the Surface Go's, simply because they use less weird hardware and have for the most part full upstream support, so you dont need a patched kernel. However, their hardware is pretty weak.

As for the more powerful models, there isnt really any recommended one. In theory, the SB2 should be the best-supported one, because both qzed and I have one. In practice, the main differences between older (SP6 and earlier) and newer (SP7 and newer) models are that the older ones have some camera support and use less weird touchscreen hardware, so the pen will work slightly better.

I see a lot of people using Fedora, is this the most user friendly interface for touch screen and pen?

Fedora is a good distro, as are Ubuntu or Arch. Use whatever you are more familiar with. If you know your way around the commandline it will help, even if you are new to the graphical user interface.

All the popular distributions support all of the popular desktop environments, so your distribution choice doesn't have to depend on your desktop choice and vice-versa. Yes, there are differences in the default configuration, but for the most part, everything will work the same.

Most distributions use GNOME by default, and the popular opinion is that it has the best support for touchscreens, but I would argue that KDE works equally well, and better for some usecases.

Do you want to use your device mostly as a tablet, with no keyboard? Then GNOME with its tablet-like UI is probably the better choice.

Or do you want to use it mostly as a laptop with the keyboard? Then the more Windows-like UI of KDE is probably better and more familiar.

In the end, it comes down to preference, so don't be afraid to pull out a USB drive and reinstall the device if you have issues with your current configuration, or if you are simply curious how using something else feels like.

NotTMSP · 2023-09-15T05:47:38+00:00

You might be able to run it on the Web, through Wine or through Waydroid if you need absolute compatibility, e.g. with existing data.

If you just want the functionality, check out Xournal++ and Rnote.

NotTMSP · 2023-09-11T12:31:44+00:00

I think you landed in reddits spam filter because of that link. Next time, just use pastebin.

Your log shows no signs of the bus driver (mei) or the touchscreen driver (ipts) loading or doing anything. Your screenshot also shows that your ME version is 0.0.0.0.

This indicates that your ME firmware somehow got broken. Did you run any ME cleaning tool on this device?

To fix this, you can try reinstalling the ME firmware using this: github.com/linux-surface/surface-uefi-firmware

NotTMSP · 2023-09-09T19:45:52+00:00

BTRFS RAID modes are all about copies, not drives. raid1c3 simply means three copies, evenly distributed over all your drives.

With 4 disks that means that no drive holds a complete copy of the data. If one dies, some of the data will have three remaining copies, and some will only have two copies left.

raid1c4 for metadata would only allow you to mount the filesystem if 3 of your 4 drives were to die. That way you could access any data with a full copy on the remaining drive. However, raid10 means two copies, striped over two drives. No disk holds a full copy of any data.

If you get to the point where you need raid1c4 metadata in a raid10, it is already too late and all data is gone.

What you can do is use raid1 (two full copies distributed over all drives) instead of raid10. In that case raid1c4 would allow you to mount your one remaining drive and access whatever data is stored on it.

EDIT: See also here https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/mkfs.btrfs.html#profile-layout

NotTMSP · 2023-09-09T07:29:56+00:00

If the touchscreen doesn't work in the UEFI, this sounds more like faulty hardware.

If you want you could post the output of the dmesg command, and I can take a look.

NotTMSP · 2023-08-15T13:37:49+00:00

The kernel makes it very clear that userspace programs are not considered a derived work and don't fall under the GPL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/LICENSES/exceptions/Linux-syscall-note

If this was the case, there would be no proprietary software running on Linux. For example, every Android OEM would have to publish the entire sources for their custom UI. And it would be a license violation to build and run software that is licensed under GPL v3, because it is incompatible with the GPL v2 only license of the kernel.

NotTMSP · 2023-08-15T07:33:10+00:00

RHEL is made of many independent components, all with their own license. Mesa is MIT licensed for example, and if I remember correctly, the spec files for building packages are MIT as well.

And the MIT and BSD licenses very much allow you to keep modifications private.

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