That does not surprise me!!! The tablet has been unsupported now, for awhile!!!
Anything is possible, but not without consequence, like losing files!! A W8 or W10 ISO can be found very easily and installed to a usb and you can then use diskpart to wipe that SSD and with diskpart, the “override” option will have to be used,
Some BIOS’ have a special key to bring up a boot menu (where you select which drive to boot). If you can figure that out you should be golden. Turn off secure boot first, though, as that may be factory configured to only accept Windows keys.
Lots of confusing suggestions …
So to be clear
Download the linux mint iso from the linux mint web site
Create a bootable usb on another system to a usb
Put the usb into your surface pro machine
Restart the serface pro
Press and hold down the volume control button as suggested in step 7 replying above
Select to boot to usb
Once it starts up in mint
Cooy your files to an external disk using mint as the system
Once happy install mint either in exclusive mode or as a dual boot, this would allow access to your old windows files, but you will loose the space taken by windows its self as a dual boot.
Once finished your system will run mint as default
Thank you for that .
Before I got your message I had decided because of the considerable time I had spent trying to solve the problem ( not helped by the fact that sometimes using the Volume button as suggested works but probably 8 times out cyling local of 10 it doesn’t 
So I decided just to go for a complete factory reboot ,the system and everything on it was cleared and I’ m back in to the Surface without a login problem.
Next step is to try and get MINT 22 on there as the sole O/s Distro ie using wipe Windows off option .
However as you will see from my separate post today re the problem I now have with trying to do that on an HP ProBook6475b I am not too confident .
I had because I was making no headway with the Surface Pro switched to putting Mint22 on the HP as well as it’s not used as a portable but desktop.
Thank you for your help
Acc to me, self confidence is half of the preparation for installing linux. I myself changed distros 6-7 times on a dual boot computer when my father told not to do so ( cmon, i wanted to try different things ). Though when I installed the 2nd or 3rd distro, I was a bit scared and less confident too. But after installing for 5 times, my fear was gone. That too when there were important office documents in that computer.
Thankfully, I got a SSD for my birthday and now I caj do whatever I want on it.
It is similar to your case ig, you also don’t have imp files on it now. So i’ll say just build up the courage and install Mint. :))
Pretty sure I posted this in another thread here on ItsFOSS, but I will give you my instructions used numerous times on my Surface Pro 7.
I have the one with only 4 gb RAM and it came with W10, but after it upgraded to 11, forget it. It would take 10 min upon boot to even be able to use it. So I did the research and here are the different distros I have succesfully installed over the past year and most importantly: you have to install the linux-surface-kernel on Github. That is if you want your touchscreen & pen to work.
First, I installed the ones I had on my desktops, Linux Mint, Kubuntu, etc. and did not like them. For such a small viewing screen, it just did not work as the icons were so tiny that I could not make them out, even with scaling.
Next, I installed Pop OS 22.04. This was one of the best as it uses the Gnome environment, which is reported to be the best for tablets with touchscreen. It ran smoothly, quickly and I was able to figure out how to do things very easily. I installed the linux surface kernel and that gave me touch screen, on screen keyboard, auto rotate as well as using my pen (not a MS pen; aftermarket pen) in taking notes: I used Xournal++ and Saber.
I later even installed Fedora 39 and had no issues, same results as Pop, except: a) I could never get the GUI to do the udpates. No big deal for me, as I use the CLI; and, b)maybe due to the above, but even in terminal I could not upgrade to Fedora 40. Since I was going to have to do a fresh install anyway, I just went back to Pop 22.04, especially since 24.04 is out, but I am not installing it till Cosmic is fixed.
So here are my instructions:
This is great once you have any Linux installed:
In order to get into BIOS with new UEFI in W11, you can type in Linux:
sudo systemctl reboot --firmware-setup
Now, once you have your flash drive with Linux on it, boot as below. I have never had an issue with the volume- UNLESS, I did not first power all the way down. Then it often would do nothing, unless I held it a loooong time. So completely power down first.
To boot from usb:
Power off
Insert USB flash drive
Hold Volume Down rocker while holding power (don’t be afraid to keep holding until you see the Windows icon center of screen & because I disabled secure boot, there is a red bar with an unlocked icon across the top).
From there, the only issue is installing on such a small screen, but hopefully your eyesight is better than mine.
Here are the links for the surface kernel:
Setup instructions
Linux-Surface-kernel
Read thru the wiki completely so that you do not start running things in terminal that you do not need (i.e., do you have secure-boot enabled, are you encrypting the disk, etc.) There were things the author said to skip if it did not apply to you.
Then proceed with the instructions for your Linux distro. I used Debian/Ubuntu for Pop OS.
I read articles before ever starting that I used the instructions and I ended up with a non working touchscreen/pen. So my final results that worked are what I have documented here.
If you run into issues, feel free to come back and ask for help. I now have this Surface installation down to a science and can do it without looking at my notes.
Good luck!
Sheila Flangan
The best post for the topic I guess.
In linux, according to my opinion, experience is most important.
And that’s what you got here @Sheila_Flanagan
Thank you!
@davg do check it out!!