[clug] Linux on atom processor

[Rodney Peters]

On Saturday 02 Apr 2016 09:02:04 Adrian Blake wrote:
> I recently acquired an new netbook running win 10 . I though it should be
> an easy matter to install linux. How wrong I was. Some details and then
> suggestions please.
> The machine is Irbis TW45 It uses an Atom Z3735G processor, and this I
> believe is the problem. It also uses UEFI or BIOS boot.
> 
> I can get to a point in an Ubuntu distro where I have a choice to run live
> or install. A few lines and then blank. The USB device is being read but
> still nothing.
> 
> Any experience or suggestions.
> 
> Adrian
>
The reFind site does not say so in as many words, but Secure Boot is of no 
assistance and much impediment with Linux.  If you are able to get to the 
hardware settings screen and disable it that would be my first suggestion.  It 
might not be possible, because Microsoft are putting an additional licencing 
constraint that Secure Boot cannot be disabled on many phablet devices.

Which raises the second issue - this is a tablet,  not a netbook and could 
require an emulated keyboard and mouse, which might not be in the Live Ubuntu 
?  So plug in USB devices as Bob has done.

I've no first hand experience of this class of machine - although a first hand 
report from a dual-boot tragic that he can't get dual-boot with Win 10, period 
(he is using a notebook).

It's a while since I used reFind, but I regarded it as a later stage refinement after getting 
boot working basically.

My suggestion would be to get the latest openSUSE Tumbleweed

http://mirr[1]http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/iso/openSUSE-Tumbleweed-NET-i586-Current.iso[2] [1]

and install any minimal desktop system via that - which should default to dual-boot.  In 
my experience, openSUSE sorts dual-booting with Win.

 I've had my laptop dual-booting openSUSE 13.1, 13.2 and now Leap 42.1 with
Win 8 for a couple of years
 
Your choice then to overwrite openSUSE or add an additional partition for
Ubuntu - with strict directions to Ubuntu "do not install any bootloader".
You would have to manually edit the grub.conf file.

 Rod

--------
[1] http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/opensuse/distribution/leap/42.1/iso/openSUSE-Leap-42.1-NET-x86_64.iso
[2] http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/iso/openSUSE-Tumbleweed-NET-i586-Current.iso