Fedora 22 on the Microsoft Surface Pro 2

calendar Jul 17, 2015 · 1 min read · equipment  ·
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Im sorry to say that Fedora 22 on Microsoft Surface Pro 2 exhibits many regressions as compared to Fedora 21 on the same hardware.

I have a dual boot setup so I can boot between the two versions and compare.

Heres the regressions I have found so far.

  • I can't get the Marvell wifi chipset to work.

This was problematic with Fedora 21 as well, but there I could replace the distributed firmware with firmware from the Marvell kernel git repository, and make wifi function. This seems to no longer work with Fedora 22. I can use a usb wifi dongle as a workaround, but since there's just one usb port on the Surface, it becomes quite inconvenient.

  • The pen interface no longer works. This worked rather well on Fedora 21.

  • Suspend/resume no longer works. After resume, the surface randomly suspends itself again frequently, so often that I need to reboot.

The last problem I noticed is with battery power monitoring. This problem is not a regression since it was manifest on fedora 21 as well.

All of these problems have made me seriously considering building my own portable workstation with an Intel NUC as a base. How hard can it be?