32-bit UEFI Support Proposed For Ubuntu Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: 32-bit UEFI Support Proposed For Ubuntu Linux

An Ubuntu developer has proposed 32-bit UEFI support within new Ubuntu Linux install images to support the new "Bay Trail" laptops and other hardware that requires 32-bit UEFI support...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU1NjE

[nightmarex]

Isn't gummiboot capable of this already though?

[garegin]

i thought the new negeration of laptops would be 64 bit uefi only. I'm happy since we would get uefi support on old Macs.

[Sonadow]

http://www.extremetech.com/computing...-bit-next-year

So it looks as though only the Atoms that have been launched and shipped out in 2013 have the problematic 32bit UEFI + no CSM + emt64 disabled at the hardware level combination.

And from the looks of it, devices using these chips aren't shipping in large-enough numbers to justify extra work on 32bit UEFI support. Not to mention most so-called savvy Linux users would have held off on those machines in favor of a more proper UEFI implementation.

Makes much more sense to prepare future install images for better 64bit UEFI and Bay Trail support when the full 64bit-capable Bay Trail hardware gets shipped next year than to put resources into images with 32bit UEFI support that will work be of use to a tiny handful of users.

[Jedibeeftrix]

64bit bay-trail and bay-trail+ devices are coming, vendors are desperate to be able to market 64bit windows in the teeth of a coming storm of 64bit arm devices, so why waste time supporting a few poorly implemented devices today?

[SteveFi]

I bought a Dell 11" tablet with an i5 Haswell for this very reason ...

Well it turns out there's no support for the Dell 1537/1358 WiFi card from Atheros/Broadcom and the drivers for the HD4200 still don't work in Ubuntu 14.04 without using "nomodeset".

So it seems there's still a lot to improve on to gain decent support since the Bay-trail Atom is based on the same GPU (to my knowledge).

I'd still have expected Intel to ship 64-bit enabled Atoms these days, since its been de-facto for years now.

[ricequackers]

What I don't get is why Intel are moronic enough to make Bay Trail live in 32-bit land when the CPU is clearly a 64-bit native. What did they achieve by doing that? All this while ARM are jumping to 64-bit too...

[Jedibeeftrix]

What I don't get is why Intel are moronic enough to make Bay Trail live in 32-bit land when the CPU is clearly a 64-bit native. What did they achieve by doing that? All this while ARM are jumping to 64-bit too...

i think the problem lies with MS as much as Intel, as the super-low-power states for receiving updates while asleep do not work in 64bit Win8, as we expect them to in our smartphones, so intel had little incentive to prioritise 64bit eufi support for bay trail devices.

[Jedibeeftrix]

i think the problem lies with MS as much as Intel, as the super-low-power states for receiving updates while asleep do not work in 64bit Win8, as we expect them to in our smartphones, so intel had little incentive to prioritise 64bit eufi support for bay trail devices.

edit: "Connected Standby"

[Kano]

Impressive idea, all Kanotix 32 bit iso images have got 32 bit uefi support since ages but i don't think that somebody used that feature ever. To install you have to manually select a fat32 partition in the installer as /boot/efi, otherwise you don't get a bootloader installed - same for 64 bit uefi booted systems as our installer is a bit basic.