Microsoft Surface Book 2

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Reason: Stub (Discuss in Talk:Microsoft Surface Book 2)
Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
GPU (Intel) Yes
GPU (Nvidia) Yes
Wireless Yes
Audio Yes
Touchpad Yes
Touchscreen Yes
Camera No
Card reader Yes
Bluetooth Yes

This page contains instructions, tips, pointers, and links for installing and configuring Arch Linux on Microsoft Surface Book 2 devices.

Compatibility

The laptop works surprisingly well with Arch Linux, but requires a kernel with modules and updated drivers, available on GitHub.

What works?

Note: Touchscreen only works in a Window Manager or Desktop Environment that has full support for it. It is recognized as a mouse click otherwise.
  • Touchscreen
    • Requires kernel with modules/drivers in link above.
  • Pen Input
    • Requires kernel with modules/drivers in link above.
  • Removal of keyboard base
    • A few seconds slower in Linux than in Windows
    • May cause touchscreen to stop working until reboot
    • May cause issues with dedicated graphics (if equipped)
  • Keyboard function and media keys, including volume and brightness adjustment of the keyboard and screen backlights.
  • Wireless Networking
    • Requires the installation of the linux-firmware-marvell package for the wireless network interface to be recognized by the kernel
    • May need a tweak from #WiFi if Wireless Networking hardware disconnects during use
  • Speakers / Headphones
    • Speakers sometimes have a hissing noise that can be fixed, details in #Audio
  • Dedicated Nvidia graphics (If equipped)
  • Hibernation
  • ACPI, Battery stats, power saving, etc.

What does not work?

  • Cameras

Nvidia

The Nvidia 1050 and 1060 cards in the Surface Book 2 Performance Base are recognized by the kernel and supported by `nvidia` and `nvidia-dkms` drivers. Without the kernel ([linux-surface https://github.com/qzed/linux-surface]), there was a bug which causes it to be effectively useless because when a load is put on the Nvidia graphics hardware, it immediately and severely throttles down to around 139MHz. The reason, as reported by `nvidia-smi`, is software thermal throttling. The cause is that, apparently, the fan cannot be controlled automatically, nor through `nvidia-smi` or `nvidia-settings`, even when the nvidia xorg `Coolbits` option is set to 8.

UEFI Setup and Disabling Secure Boot

Disabling Secure Boot is not necessary, but makes things easier.

Follow The manufacturer's directions for accessing UEFI setup:

  1. Shut down your Surface and wait about 10 seconds to be sure it is off.
  2. Press and hold the volume-up button on your Surface, and, at the same time, press and release the power button.
  3. When you see the Surface logo, release the volume-up button. The UEFI menu will appear within a few seconds.

Booting

The information in Boot loaders applies here. refind and Systemd-boot work well.

Boot from USB

Booting from USB is possible by reordering boot devices in the UEFI setup.

Graphics Drivers

The standard xf86-video-intel driver works with the Surface Book devices.

For devices equipped with dedicated Nvidia graphics, the nvidia or nvidia-dkms driver supports the dedicated GPU.

Audio

Surface Book 2 devices exhibit a hissing noise at times. This can be fixed by installing alsa-utils and running the following commands: 

$ amixer -c 0 sset 'Auto-Mute Mode' Disabled
# alsactl store

WiFi

Since September 2018, Surface Book 2 WiFi may power off during use. When this happens, it is not visible in lspci and rebooting is a way to get it back on. However, this behavior can be prevented (temporarily) by installing iw and running the following command as root: 

# iw dev wlp1s0 set power_save off

To permanently fix the issue with NetworkManager, add this to your NetworkManager config. (Such as /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf) 

[connection]
wifi.powersave = 2
[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=false

Console fonts

Because of the screen's resolution, the console font is barely readable - refer to Linux console#Fonts on how to change them.

Using terminus-font with 32pt looks good on Surface Book 2 on the vconsole (add FONT=ter-m32n to /etc/vconsole.conf after installing).

Hibernation

Hibernation with the qzed kernel only works when the touchscreen firmware loading is disabled (adding i915.enable_guc=0 to the kernel parameters).