Creating bootable USB for Atom based CPU and EXT4/BTRFS filesystem

[ramiroelliot]

Looking to create a ubuntu USB bootable.


YUMI and Rufus dont give the ability to setup the USB as EXT4/BTRFS which the Atom core needs. I can use YUMI / rufus to create an already built 14.04.Ext4.img, however thats already built.


What i would like to do is run a newer flavour of ubuntu as bootable, but normal Ubuntu.com images are i386 or AMD. Can anyone advise how to cook a atom based image to enable me to create a usable USB, using a normal i386 image doesnt result in booting, but the ext or btrfs works.

[oldfred]

The binaries for AMD64 will also work on processors that implement the Intel 64 architecture (formerly EM64T), i.e. the architecture that Microsoft calls x64, and AMD called x86-64 before calling it AMD64. They will not work on Intel Itanium Processors (formerly IA-64).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64 &
https://askubuntu.com/questions/6411...bout-amd-intel

How old is your Atom. Some are very old and BIOS or only work with 32 bit which is now obsolete in Ubuntu.

[grahammechanical]

I would like to provide a quotation from the Debian wiki on the subject of UEFI.

Support for mixed-mode systems: 64-bit system with 32-bit UEFI Some systems have been released containing 64-bit Intel Atom CPUs (such as the Bay Trail), but unfortunately use 32-bit UEFI firmware with no BIOS compatibility mode. Using the 32-bit UEFI x86 support, an i386 installation should be possible on these machines but it won't make the most of the 64-bit hardware.

Debian Jessie (8.0, released on April 2015) was the first Linux distribution to include full support for mixed-mode UEFI installation on these machines. As of 2023 and Debian 12 the amd64 installation media (available in netinst form) includes the UEFI boot loaders necessary for both i386 and amd64 boot. By selecting "64-bit install" from the initial boot menu, debian-installer will install a 64-bit (amd64) version of Debian. The system will automatically detect that the underlying UEFI firmware is 32-bit and will install the appropriate version of grub-efi to work with it.

The Debian 12 life cycle encompasses five years: the initial three years of full Debian support, until June 10th, 2026, and two years of Long Term Support (LTS), until June 30th, 2028.

https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI

https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/

I have tried to find something from Ubuntu documentation about this. Even very old documentation. But I could find nothing useful.

Regards

[Holger_Gehrke]

There is a long thread on getting an Asus X205TA working with Ubuntu. If your system is a 64bit Atom with 32bit firmware, then some of it might be useful to you. I remember this thread because I helped someone install Linux on such a machine but after reading through this decide to go with 32bit Debian since 32bit code is slightly more compact and this machine has 2 GB RAM that can't be upgraded.

Holger

[him610]

Yes, there are i386 (32bit) releases of Debian based operating systems installable, or bootable from usb sticks. Ubuntu dropped its i386 release a few years ago.

You may want to check out these websites:

debian (i386 or amd64) Bookworm can be downloaded here, https://www.debian.org/distrib/

bunsenlabs.org offers both i386 and amd64 releases https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

Raspberry OS for PC (based on 32bit Debian) https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/

I have installed all three on my Acer atom powered netbook (bios date 2008). It is not much different than installing on a more modern system.