Ubuntu 17.10 on surface pro 4

Today I tried to install Ubuntu 17.10 on my surface pro 4. At the beginning, I can't get the boot from USB to work. Later I realized in the UEFI setup page, there is a switch to enable boot from USB. Also swiping the "USB storage" item from the list can boot immediately from the USB device.

The installation itself runs smoothly since I already used the windows disk manager to shrink the volume to make some space for the linux installation.

During the installation, the typecover keyboard and mousepad works already, which means no USB hub is needed to have an external keyboard and mouse. After I've got the linux surface booted up, I find that The wifi works quite unstable. It drops the connections very frequently. I've tried to use the firmware under git://git.marvell.com/mwifiex-firmware.git. However, doesn't help much. I also tried the following suggestion from reddit

Edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and add the following lines at the bottom: [device] wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

Sadly, the problem still didn't seem to be completely solved. Finally, I've gone to this site https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface, git-cloned the files and downloaded the patched kernel 4.14.0. Following the instructions, I've got the touch screen working and now the wifi is also quite stable. From time to time I still get lost typecover when the system sleeps.

Another strange issue I've got is the when connecting using openconnect to corporate network, the name can't be resolved by nds. I have to run "systemd-resolve -status" to find out the DNS used by corporate network and add the following line to /etc/network/interfaces:

dns-nameservers  [ip of coporate DNS]

Downgrade a package to fix package dependency issue

I've got the following error message when I tried to install g++ on ubuntu 17.10.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 build-essential : Depends: libc6-dev but it is not going to be installed or
                            libc-dev
                   Depends: g++ (>= 4:5.2) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.












After checking that dependency using following command:
apt-cache policy libc6-dev

It looks like it depends on an earlier version.
libc6-dev:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2.24-9ubuntu2
  Version table:
     2.24-9ubuntu2 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful/main amd64 Packages


So I went ahead to downgrade this package
sudo apt install libc6=2.24-9ubuntu2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
  glibc-doc
The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
  libc6

...
dpkg: warning: downgrading libc6:amd64 from 2.24-9ubuntu2.2 to 2.24-9ubuntu2

After this downgrading this package, I can install the g++ again!

setup fcitx for xfce4 under WSL in Windows 10

After setting up xfce4 under WSL(Windows Subsystem for Linx) in Windows 10, I tried to add chinese input support.

Looks like the following steps need to be taken:
1. Install a Chinese font, for example:
    sudo apt install fonts-noto-cjk
2. Install fcitx
    sudo apt install fcitx fcitx-googlepinyin
3. Configure environment variable and start fcitx with xfce
    Create a file under /usr/bin/xfce4 with the following content
     #!/bin/sh   
     export GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx
     export QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx
     export XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx
     xfce4-session
     fcitx
   Add executable permission to the file
   sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/xfce4
4. quit VcXSrv. Close WSL console
5. Start VcXSrv, run WSL console(i.e. BashOnWindows) and start xfce4 again.

    /usr/bin/xfce4
    

Upgrade from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to 17.04

Today I want to upgrade my linux 16.04 LTS to 17.04. However, even I've chosen "For any new version" in the "Updates" tab of "Software & Updates", when I run
sudo do-release-upgrade 
It still always says "No new release found".

Finally found an article mentions an alternative way to check new release.

sudo /usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release-gtk

This one works wonderfully for me!