32-bit UEFI Support Proposed For Ubuntu Linux

An Ubuntu developer has proposed 32-bit UEFI support within new Ubuntu Linux install images to support the new "Bay Trail" laptops and other hardware that requires 32-bit UEFI support.

There's been an increasing number of pure 32-bit UEFI systems this year like the ASUS Transformer Book T100 that have a 64-bit Bay Trail CPU but only 32-bit UEFI support. For most all modern Linux distributions, this makes it a challenge to setup as most distributions are now supporting only 64-bit UEFI (there was a brief time where 32-bit UEFI was supported by some distributions). 32-bit UEFI hasn't been supported by most install images since it can cause issues if booting it on an older BIOS system, etc.

Ubuntu developer Phillip Susi has proposed adding 32-bit UEFI support to the main Ubuntu Linux image. While this has been proposed in the past and then to do a separate spin with only legacy BIOS support, what he added is then to do only a simple net-install image of Ubuntu 32-bit for users of these older systems.

A net install image is smaller for mirroring and is less work to maintain, but we'll see what other Ubuntu developers and Canonical have to say about this proposal to get greater 32-bit UEFI support. The proposal was voiced earlier on the ubuntu-devel mailing list.