Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Tips

I have started using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on my Surface Pro 3. Simple story is that I got fed up with the usual Windows issues (Windows update, background processes causing slowdown, etc) and decided to try Linux (I am still using Windows 10 on my desktop PC though).

Switching to Ubuntu 20.04 is not without issues, here I am sharing all issues I encountered.

Installation Issues

The plan was to dual boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Surface Pro 3.

Disabling Bitlocker encryption

Ubuntu doesn’t like that the harddrive is protected with Bitlocker encryption. I had to disable it via Windows 10 command line:

manage-bde -off C:

To check whether Bitlocker is fully disabled, use:

manage-bde status

Install alongside windows

I wanted a hassle free installation, so after watching couple tutorial, I am made aware of ‘Install alongside windows’ option. However, the option didn’t appear when I first tried to install Ubuntu. It turned out I didn’t have enough harddisk space! So after clearing up some space, the option appears.

Usage Issues

Chrome complains access to ‘Default keyring’ is locked

Found workaround simply by switching off “Automatic Login” in Settings » Users » Automatic Login.

Wifi keeps switching off

For some reason wifi keeps switching off for me. Disabling power save seems to do the trick (I am using vscode for text editor):

code /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf

Disable powersave by setting the value to 2 (and reboot):

[connection]
wifi.powersave = 2

Development Issues

Visual Studio Code launches slowly

For some reason installing Visual Studio Code via snap causes it to launch very slowly. I used snap list to figure that out and did sudo snap remove code to uninstall it. Subsequently, I downloaded .deb package from Microsoft’s website and installed it. This seems to fix the issue..