64 bit iso with 32 bit uefi ?

[Dimitri John Ledkov]

On 3 October 2017 at 17:18, Khurshid Alam <khurshid.alam at linuxmail.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Jeremy,
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 6:24 PM, Jeremy Bicha <jbicha at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> I don't know much about this topic. Can you point to more information about
> this issue? Specifically, can you find a source for your 10 million claim?
>
>
> I think it varies with country. On some country like here in India most of
> them come with 32 bit uefi due to oem agreement I guess.
>
> Hp claims they ship over 13 million units per 3/4-quarter only in US and
> more than 80% are windows. That's how I deducted the number.
>
> As for 32 bit uefi, Many dell inspiron i3 ($300-$500) still have 32 bit.
> http://amzn.to/2kjv6Gf
>

Which are certified with UEFI 64bit on Ubuntu, and some of these are
even available with Ubuntu preinstalled from Dell direct.

https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201508-19149/

> Asus X and R series : http://bit.ly/2fHspJG (Only windows 10, dos are fine)
>
> All the Asus cheap eebook series , like asus x205ta, https:/
> /www.asus.com/in/Laptops/ASUS_EeeBook_X205TA/
>
> Those which are pre-installed with ms-dos are fine. Also I found some are
> listed in Ubuntu Desktop certified hardware but the are with 32 bit uefi.
> (Technically it's ok, because on the website, Ubuntu 16.04 is listed as
> supported and 16.04 has 32 bit. )
>
>
> And are these devices even suitable for Ubuntu anyway?
>

Please check https://certification.ubuntu.com/ many of these have been
certified by Canonical and manufacturer to be explicitly compatible
with Ubuntu since like 14.04 LTS using the 64bit / amd64 OS images.

>
> I have used hack from
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/392719/32-bit-uefi-boot-support and from
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/749306/
>
> After installing everything works out of the box including sd-card reader
> which never worked prior to 17.10.
>
> Suggestion:
>
> We only requ ire bootia32.efi on EFI/BOOT/ and i386-efi in boot/grub. May
> these can be shipped with the iso?
> That's what debian multiarch iso does
> (http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/multi-arch/). This means both
> grub-efi-ia32 and grub-efi-amd64 needs to be pre-installed for the live iso.
> Thoughts?
>

Since none of the machines ship 32bit UEFI anymore, adding support for
32bit UEFI has diminishing returns. Patches to livecd-rootfs /
ubuntu-cdimage / d-i / ubiquity would be required to support this in
Ubuntu, and so far it has not been a priority to add support for.

-- 
Regards,

Dimitri.