# Repurposing a Surface HUB 1

- URL: https://www.technolitero.com/blog/repurposing-a-surface-hub-1
- Markdown: https://www.technolitero.com/raw/repurposing-a-surface-hub-1
- Date: 2026-08-19
- Author: Buddy
- Topic: Hardware

I enjoy figuring out how to make locked down hardware useful after its use case is no longer a thing. A few months ago I was gifted a Surface Hub 1.....

<p>I enjoy figuring out how to make locked down hardware useful after its use case is no longer a thing.  A few months ago I was gifted a Surface Hub 1.  It's a 55-inch touch screen with pen input made specifically for Microsoft Teams.  I went through Microsoft's recommendation, which was to use Replacement PC Mode.  It worked and I could've stopped there.  I had a large touchscreen the input worked, it ran Windows, but I also had a computer that was eating power that was doing nothing.  That didn't set well with me, so what's a tech guy supposed to do?  I opted for working around the issue, removing the standard OS and choosing Linux since it was free and to be honest once I saw it boot from the USB drive and installed it once.... even though it wouldn't boot I figured it was just the screwy way they locked it down. </p>

I ran into a few issues along the way. The BIOS is locked down and all I would've had to do was unlock the BIOS and turn off secure boot and install Linux.  Unfortunately, you can only do that with help from Microsoft Support and while they were gracious once the equipment was End of Support last year, they deleted the tool that would allow you to unlock the device.  So that was a bust, next I thought well maybe I can move GRUB to a USB and boot from it and then have it run from the hard drive.  Ugly I know, I didn't feel good about it and fortunately that didn't work either even though at the time I was disappointed I had to persist.  This came down to a restricted secure boot issue, with an extra handful of custom UEFI weirdness and a problem that I was determined to fix, I mean how hard could it be right?  Queue the tutorials, somebody must've done it before... and nope.  I was on my own.... or was I.  I had a piece of hardware that new was over 10K, locked down like the BIOS was in prison.  So, I did what most IT Pro's do today, asked my favorite AI and it lied to me and caused more problems than it was worth.  So, I asked another AI, OpenAI to be specific and was up and running in a couple of hours.  I followed the instructions and when things didn't work, I refined my prompt, tested and worked through the issue like I have done for a very long time.  My pain is now your guide, I only have the one Surface Hub but these directions should get you closer if not work out of the gate.  The beauty of it is that you can get a Surface Hub 1 for next to nothing and have a portable touchscreen running Ubuntu Linux in a couple of hours.

[Surface_Hub_1_Ubuntu_24.04_Standalone_Build](https://www.technolitero.com/storage/Resources/a5ccedf7-Surface_Hub_1_Ubuntu_24.04_Standalone_Build.docx)