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Creating & Booting the Live USB

Gentoo can be installed from a non-gentoo usb. For this reason, I choose to use the Arch Linux live iso. Since it has the 5.13 kernel baked in.

You can download it here.

Then just burn the iso with dd:

dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

Disabling Secure Boot#

  1. Turn off your Surface Device.
  2. Press and release the power button WHILE you hold the volume up button (F6 for Surface Laptops).
  3. You should see something like this.

Surface UEFI Screen

  1. In here, click on the Security tab. And you'll see the Secure Boot option. If yours is anything other than, Secure Boot is Disabled, then you should click "Change Configuration". And click "None".

Surface UEFI

  1. Then, go to the Boot configuration tab. You should see something like this:

  1. Ensure that, "Enable Boot from USB devices" is on. And drag the USB Storage boot option, to the top.
  2. After you've done that, plug the USB that you have flashed into the surface. Then, navigate to the Exit tab and click Restart now.

Booting#

If you have an External USB hub, you can boot normally and skip to the next page.

Otherwise, select Copy to Ram so you can pull out your USB and plug your laptop fan in.