No I did not get rid of my W540 she's still going strong, but I have been looking at a Lenovo Miix 2 11 because while I love my W540 she's too damn heavy for leisure trips.
Anyways been eyeing a Lenovo Miix 2 11 in excellent condition with everything included (keyboard, box, manual, rescue drive) and fitted with an upgradable SSD slot and about 4 GBs of RAM!
My main question is can Zorin OS be installed on this lil guy. I understand the OS currently installed is Windows 8.1 64 bit, but is the BIOS is 64 bit as well? I read up on some articles and while they didn't specify a version, they did say it was a 32 bit BIOS with a 64 bit OS, so I just wanted clarification before I proceed with any of my usual Linux shenanigans. It's a bit of a stretch and I doubt anyone else has one of these, but I figure it's worth a shot to post about it on here.
Lenovo, while admittedly a shady and terrible company, is actually pretty strong with Linux.
Not because Lenovo likes Linux. But because they do not bother to actively inhibit it.
Will you be better off with GnuLinux on a Lenovo? Absolutely, since GnuLinux lacks the additional MS and Lenovo advertising and spyware.
So, will Zorin OS 18 install? Not without a headache.
It is 32bit EFI firmware, and Zorin OS 18 will expect 64bit Firmware. This is a challenge and can be overcome, but considering that in another thread, you were "I dunno... laziness?" I suspect not champing at the bit to roll up your sleeves and tackle a challenging install.
You might review a bit newer but affordable travel notebooks that are not Bay Trail Quirky, instead.
To install Zorin OS 18 on that machine, you would need to first add a 32bit EFI bootloader to the LiveUSB.
First, download and burn Zorin OS 18 .iso to the USB stick.
Obtain a copy of bootia32.efi (Intel Atom Bay Trail hybrid weirdo):
Then, open the file manager, mount and access that USB and copy bootia32.efi into the directory on the USB for /EFI/BOOT/
Once done, unmount and eject, then attempt to boot that computer with the LiveUSB. If it boots and the installer runs - try installing. If that works, great. The easy method worked. If not, things get complicated and risky, very quickly.
I would, however as I mentioned earlier, there's conflicting information on if the BIOS is 32 bit or not. I'll try and see if I can find the link but there was discussion on another forum on how the OS (Windows 8.1 64x), the CPU (an i3-4012Y) are 64 bit, but the BIOS is 32 bit. Apparently it's different from model to model and that's why I'm here kinda hoping someone else has a system like this.
I think i3-4012Y is Haswell.
That is post Atom and well past Bay Trail.
I would be very hard pressed to believe that an i3 Haswell had 32bit EFI. That would be... very unusual to find.
It is definitely native 64bit. But... It can support 32bit. That is a different thing from being 32bit architecture.
I am quite confident that is 64bit and... most likely a forum post was thinking of it having 32bit support or the poster was thinking of the Atom line which was used prior to that and especially for Tablet Notebooks.
Us living non-A.I. folks on forums... we can make mistakes and be wrong sometimes, too.
I was surprised to hear that someone was concerned about running 32-bit OS on 64-bit architecture, that has never been an issue, but the other way round has.
You might want to take a look at Q4OS which has a very good 3rd Party LookSwitcher.
I got it installed on a machine I built in 2006, Single Athlon 64-bit processor, 2 Gb RAM, and a 512 Mb EVGA 8x AGP card.
You are thinking of 32bit software. And yes, you can run it on Zorin OS 17, 18 or 19, no problem.
But 32bit EFI is a different layer of cake. That is the firmware prior to reaching the Zorin OS operating system.
