Windows 8 – Install Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit) on Bay Trail Atom Tablet

32-bit64-bituefiwindows 8

"How can I install 64-bit Ubuntu on my 32-bit UEFI Bay Trail atom tablet?"

To those of you who marked this question as off-topic, because it is related to a no longer supported version of Ubuntu… This was posted in May, before Ubuntu 14.10 had reached it's End of Life. reference below:

Ubuntu announced its 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) release almost 9 months
ago, on October 23, 2014. As a non-LTS release, 14.10 has a 9-month
month support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing
its end and Ubuntu 14.10 will reach end of life on Thursday, July 23rd

This post can be found here

Best Answer

Note: As of right now, Ubuntu 15.04 will BOOT on a bay trail tablet, but it will not install correctly.

My guide is based mostly on this one, but with minor adjustments, and easier to follow instructions. This guide is tested and working on the Winbook Tw100 Windows 8 tablet (by Microcenter).

You may require:

  1. USB OTG (on the go) cable, for connecting the USB drive/keyboard/mouse
  2. A 4GB or more USB flash drive
  3. Any downloads mentioned below
  4. You will need to disable Secure Boot and change the boot order in your tablet's BIOS settings

Problem 1: Booting a 64-bit OS with a 32-bit UEFI BIOS on a 64-bit CPU (it's like a jigsaw puzzle)

  1. Download the latest Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit) ISO file
  2. Download Universal USB Installer
  3. Use Universal USB Installer to create a bootable Ubuntu 14.10 USB drive
  4. Download this bootia32.efi file from GitHub
  5. Place the bootia32.efi file you just downloaded into the EFI/BOOT/ folder of the bootable Ubuntu 14.10 USB drive you just created
  6. Download these two .deb files, and place at the ROOT of the USB drive
    NOTE: due to broken links, files have been moved to Google Drive for permanent storage.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxPvhHHEJKxNTzZqX0VBdFNfZ2M/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxPvhHHEJKxNY25ZdW5KcEhLeG8/view?usp=sharing

  1. Connect the USB drive to your tablet and power it on

You should be presented with a screen like this, choose "Try Ubuntu without installing" enter image description here

Problem 2: Installing, and making the installation stick!

  1. After Ubuntu has finished booting, manually partition your tablet's internal storage

    1.5. If you want to Dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows 8, you'll have to do all your partitioning using Windows disk management

  2. After you have finished manually partitioning your tablet's internal storage, install Ubuntu like normal
  3. When the installation has finished, leave the USB drive connected to your tablet, and restart
  4. When you are presented with the GRUB screen again, hit the "C" key, and enter these lines of code...

you might need to change the "(hd0,gpt5)" and "/dev/mmcblk0p3" sections of code to suit your specific needs

linux (hd0,gpt5)/boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-23-generic root=/dev/mmcblk0p3

initrd (hd0,gpt5)/boot/initrd-3.16.0-23-generic

Now enter the "boot" command. If you were successful, you should not have received any error messages, and booted into your freshly installed Ubuntu 14.10 installation. If you receive any error messages, try the last two steps again.

  1. Open a terminal, and enter "sudo apt-get remove grub-efi-amd64"

  2. after that has finished, open the USB drive, and install these two .deb packages in the order that they are listed

    1. grub-efi-ia32-bin_2.02~beta2-15_amd64.deb
    2. grub-efi-ia32_2.02~beta2-15_amd64.deb

  3. Open a terminal, and type "sudo update-grub"

  4. Restart

And you're done!!! If you followed these steps very carefully, and to the letter, then you have a (not-so) fully functioning 64-bit Ubuntu 14.10 (and possibly Windows 8 dual-boot) bay trail tablet.

What doesn't work (this is a list for the Tw100, your tablet may be different)

  1. Sound
  2. Touchscreen
  3. Battery (ACPI)
  4. Accelerometer (tilting, screen rotation)

Check out this guide I did on how to boot Ubuntu 15.04 on bay trail tablets.

Related Question