[SOLVED] Netbooks-Deliberately crippled by Microsoft's 32-bit UEFI firmware
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Netbooks-Deliberately crippled by Microsoft's 32-bit UEFI firmware
Trying to install Linux on a Windows netbook with 32-bit UEFI firmware?
There are some netbooks/tablets/cheap laptops with an x64 capable processor, that are crippled by 32-bit UEFI firmware and originally ran 32-bit Windows only.
The reason for that is because Microsoft received less money for licensing Windows on netbooks than for laptops and desktop PCs, so most of these netbooks ran software like Windows 7 Starter with reduced functionality.
If customers with these 64-bit machines wanted full Windows functionality, then they would need to buy a fresh license from Microsoft.
Extract:
An Irish subsidiary of Microsoft made a profit of $315bn (£222bn) last year but paid no corporation tax as it is “resident” for tax purposes in Bermuda.
The profit generated by Microsoft Round Island One is equal to nearly three-quarters of Ireland’s gross domestic product – even though the company has no employees.
The subsidiary, which collects license fees for the use of copyrighted Microsoft software around the world, recorded an annual profit of $314.7bn in the year to the end of June 2020, according to accounts filed at the Irish Companies Registration Office.
Could you get around this by installing a 32-bit GRUB? I found this, which is not quite parallel because they are using an mbr boot, but it should be possible to adapt it to a uefi system. In fact it could even be easier, because you could copy a suitable GRUB executable over to the esp by hand rather than having to install it automatically out of a 32-bit OS.
The idea is that once you have a 32-bit GRUB in place, you can install a 64-bit OS and update grub from that to get the final menu.
It isn't really microsoft. It's the whacky 32 bit 64 bit deal that atom processors had. Plenty of web articles on how to get past it but seems rather odd they did it.
This isn't totally Microsoft's doing as jefro mentions.
This was an effort by the manufacturers to save costs. By installing a 32 bit OS, even with a 64 bit processor, they could get away with using less memory.
You can install a 64 bit OS, but have to do a bit of extra work. A 32 bit GRUB is possible. You can find one online (if you trust the source), or build it yourself. GRUB has a 32 bit UEFI implementation which means you do NOT have to resort to Legacy/CSM/BIOS booting.
I have an old Atom machine that runs 64 bit Linux just fine.
When that’s done, before you reboot to the stick, download this file ( https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asu...t/bootia32.efi ) and copy it into the EFI\BOOT directory on the USB stick. The short explanation for this step: the Atom-based tablets have a 32-bit UEFI in the BIOS. This has something to do with why they ship with Windows 8.1 32-bit version.
He goes on later into detail on building the 32 bit GRUB on the running machine.
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