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Hmm okay. I like the fast booting on the Surface and basically never shut the thing down properly - I use it like a glorified tablet. I'm not sure it's worth losing that in order to get Linux on there... I do feel it's getting a bit sluggish though and a pared down Linux OS might be nicer to run. Any issues with the hardware - keyboard/touch screen drivers missing or whatever, etc? That's usually my stumbling block with Linux installs
I may or may not try it for something to do over Christmas - thanks for taking the time to write out the instructions
frankenbike
It was surprisingly easy.
But, if you don't understand disk partitions, boot records and the like, it may be a bit ambitious.
If you are up for it:
Put Ubuntu live into a USB stick, in Windows, using Rufus to write the ISO image to the stick. Ensure you use GPT boot option with the UEFI (no CMS) extra option.
Then turn off the SP4 and restart it whilst holding down the volume key. This should boot into the USB stick. From there there is a boot option to install Ubuntu rather than do a live instance boot.
Go through the install and setup your partitions manually, onto the micro SD card. I did a very naive install with a single 12gb partition that mounts at /
Make sure you are installing to the Micro SD card.
(I didn't bother with a swap file. I hope not to run out of RAM. Having said that, I will probably get a new, larger, faster micro SD card and shift it all on to there. Then I can sort out some swap space and some more intricate partitions.)
When the install finishes, it should have written Grub to the MBR and noticed your Windows partition, which it will offer you up on boot.
A few things are required to tidy up:
Use your new Ubuntu OS to run grub-customizer and make your Grub boot menu pretty and default to start windows after a few seconds (so that your less techy family and friends are not bamboozled)
Turn off Fast Boot on your Windows OS. If you don't, you can't shutdown Windows anymore. (YMMV)