So I got a cheap little tablet (Hipstreet W7) from Target while that was a thing, as it was on sale for $100 so why not. It came with Windows 8.1, and I recently upgraded it to Windows 10. While I don't mind Windows 10, I wanted to try a Live CD/USB of some different Linux variants. So I set up a Ubuntu USB stick with LiLi USB creator, plugged it into the USB OTG cable, and rebooted the tablet to the USB device.
Except that it booted back into Windows. I tried Android x86, thinking nothing of it. That failed to boot as well, kicking me back into Windows. I even went into the UEFI firmware settings and did a boot from there (It has the option to boot from any attached devices, making it a bootloader of its own). It wouldn't boot it and would kick me back to the UEFI firmware. I did some digging around, and found the cause of all of my problems. It was the fact that the tablet's UEFI firmware was 32-bit, while almost all UEFI images are 64-bit, and because of this, it did not have legacy BIOS support which was the gist of the problem, plus the fact that 32-bit UEFIs are so rare that nobody develops for them which doesn't help either. There was a link to a build of Debian Linux that had a 32-bit UEFI boot file (You can find it here), and when flashed to a USB and plugged into the tablet, it actually booted! Only problem was that it wasn't touchscreen compatible, I had to plug in a mouse to operate it, and it didn't have a live version, it wanted me to install right away which I didn't want to do yet.
Here's my question: Are there any OSes that I can try live on my tablet that support 32-bit EFIs? I haven't been able to find any that do, as most, if not all of them only support 64-bit EFI images. Ubuntu does have support for it if you build the image using Ubunbu, but I don't really have the setup for that right now.
Except that it booted back into Windows. I tried Android x86, thinking nothing of it. That failed to boot as well, kicking me back into Windows. I even went into the UEFI firmware settings and did a boot from there (It has the option to boot from any attached devices, making it a bootloader of its own). It wouldn't boot it and would kick me back to the UEFI firmware. I did some digging around, and found the cause of all of my problems. It was the fact that the tablet's UEFI firmware was 32-bit, while almost all UEFI images are 64-bit, and because of this, it did not have legacy BIOS support which was the gist of the problem, plus the fact that 32-bit UEFIs are so rare that nobody develops for them which doesn't help either. There was a link to a build of Debian Linux that had a 32-bit UEFI boot file (You can find it here), and when flashed to a USB and plugged into the tablet, it actually booted! Only problem was that it wasn't touchscreen compatible, I had to plug in a mouse to operate it, and it didn't have a live version, it wanted me to install right away which I didn't want to do yet.
Here's my question: Are there any OSes that I can try live on my tablet that support 32-bit EFIs? I haven't been able to find any that do, as most, if not all of them only support 64-bit EFI images. Ubuntu does have support for it if you build the image using Ubunbu, but I don't really have the setup for that right now.
Last edited by loco365,
