Fedora KIWI image descriptions, modified to build & launch for Surface Pro 12" Gen 1

It is the fork of the original KIWI image descriptions, modified for launching Fedora Linux Rawhide Live ISO on Surface Pro 12" Gen 1 (and further installing it on the device).

I bought this device as I viewed it as a great Linux GNOME tablet, but after several days, many hours of work of trying to do so, I must say that installing a distribution here (and then having it work fine) is a huge pain in the ass.

Special thanks to harrisonvanderbyl, this project wouldn't be possible without his huge contribution to this whole Linux on Surface ARM business!

How to run

The compiled ISOs can be downloaded here.

This KIWI project is built mainly on the base of Fedora Workstation Rawhide LiveCD ISO. Trying a stable version (the latest is Fedora 44 at the time of writing this) is possible, but not tested for now.

If you want to compile this image manually, the build arch must be aarch64. It means that if you are on an amd64 machine, you would have to use aarch64 instructions emulation tools like binfmt. Unfortunately, such a tool will drastically increase the compilation time.

To build this on Fedora Linux:

# Fetch submodules (if you haven't yet)
[]$ git submodule update --init --recursive
# Install kiwi
[]$ sudo dnf --assumeyes install kiwi kiwi-systemdeps distribution-gpg-keys
# Run the image build
[]$ sudo ./kiwi-build --kiwi-file=Fedora.kiwi --image-type=<image_type> --image-profile=<image_profile> --output-dir ./outdir
# An example for Workstation Live CD ISO, takes around 16 minutes
[]$ sudo ./kiwi-build --kiwi-file=Fedora.kiwi --image-type=iso --image-profile=Workstation-Live --output-dir ./outdir

What is left out (for now)

• Live CD has to run in RAM, so rd.live.ram=1 is set for cmdline. Otherwise, at least on my ancient flash drive, it fails to load multiple necessary services, including polkit. So, ~5 minutes of loading on USB 2 drive, while screen is not backlit, is to be expected.
• No rescue vmlinuz.
• No secure boot possible for this ISO for now, as the platform used is efi and not uefi.
• No GRUB auto hidden menu. Trying to have the menu hidden results in system restarting after trying to boot it.
• wireupcameras.service (which enables tablet's cameras to be used) fails on installed system (not in Live CD though), as no /dev/media* gets initialized.
• No hardware video encoding/decoding for now, as the iris video codec (qcvss8380_pa.mbn) is Windows-only (as far as I researched), but you can copy one from /path/to/mounted/windows/drive/Windows/System32/DriverStore/FileRepository/qcdx8380.inf_arm64_*/qcvss8380_pa.mbn to /lib/firmware/qcom/x1p42100/Microsoft/Surface12/, if you keep Windows ARM64 partition.
• Suspend on Snapdragon X is still very unstable. No deep sleep is available, so mem_sleep_default=s2idle was set. Even that leads to compromises as suspending via GNOME results in hard freeze, so the default power button behavior was changed to interactive and should not be changed back to suspend.

Image variants

Please look at VARIANTS for details on the available configurations that can be built.

CI information

This project is yet to adapt CI, but it is coming.

For now the images are being built and tested manually on my personal Surface Pro 12" Gen 1 (16 GB RAM, 512 GB storage).

Licensing

This is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, under version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.