[u-u] Specs as requested

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: arocker at Vex.Net

| This
| http://h20386.www2.hp.com/CanadaStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=K4F54UA&opt=ABL&sel=TBL
| is the machine for which I was attempting to find a home at the meeting
| last night.

Cute.

| It's an Intel processor, so there is likely to be a Linux distro somewhere
| that could be inflicted on it.

Maybe.

These require UEFI booting and only support 32-bit mode.  No
mainstream Linux distro supported this combo: anything new enough to
require UEFI has a 64-bit CPU (exception: the initial Apple systems
with Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) processors badly implemented UEFI).

These CPUs are 64-bit but Intel has only released 32-bit support for
power management, and that lives in the UEFI firmware.

It ought to be do-able to make a 32-bit UEFI Linux distro.  I think
that I know how.  I intended to take a whack at it but have not done
so.  There are attempts but I haven't checked recently how far they
have gotten.

A second strike against these devices is that 16G is just not enough
"disk".  The "Windows 8.1 with Bing" (yeah, that is really the name of
the OS) is compressed and remains compressed.  Unfortunately, each
Microsoft update takes up additional (uncompressed) room and should
soon finish off all free space.

A third strike (the fault of Linux) is that the mainstream distros
don't work reasonably on tablets.  Touch only gets you so far with a
Linux desktop (don't even think about grub!).  There are other Linux
distros that do touch (Android, Jolla, WebOS, ...) but I don't care
enough about them to wrestle them onto this hardware.

This cohort of Win8.1 with Bing devices is amazingly cheap for the
raw capabilities.

Old but wise posting: <http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/26734.html>
Googling "32-bit uefi linux" finds other interesting postings, not all
negative.