Easy way of installing Leap on 32-bit EFI system

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’ve tried again installing Leap on tablet PC with 32-bit EFI and 64-bit CPU (Intel Bay Trail-T).
Now Leap 15.6 installs with minimal changes.

  1. Create modified installation media:

1.1 Prepare USB flash drive.
For DVD installation ISO you need capacity 8 GB or more (DVD capacity = 4.7 GB = 4.3 GiB > 4 GB).

1.2. Delete all partitions on it.

1.3. Create 1st partition: FAT16 16 MiB. You can label it as “ESP”. You can also set flags “boot”, “esp”, but this is not needed. It is possible to use FAT32 instead of FAT16, but it takes more space.

1.4. Create 2nd partition: FAT32 5 GiB.

1.5. Download Leap 15.6 installation ISO (DVD or NET).

1.6. Download Tumbleweed installation ISO (NET suffice).

1.7. Extract Leap 15.6 installation ISO into some folder.

1.8. Go to that folder.

1.9. Copy all folders and files of Leap 15.6 installation to 2nd partition of USB flash drive.

1.10. Copy folder “EFI” from Leap 15.6 installation ISO to 1st partition (ESP) of USB flash drive.

1.11. Extract file “bootia32.efi” from Tumbleweed installation ISO - located at “EFI/BOOT/”.

1.12. Copy file “bootia32.efi” to folder “EFI/BOOT/” at 1st partition (ESP) of USB flash drive, delete file “bootx64.efi”.

1.13. Copy file “bootia32.efi” to folder “EFI/BOOT/” at 2nd partition of USB flash drive, delete file “bootx64.efi”.

1.14. Unmount USB flash drive from PC.

  1. Attach this USB flash drive to tablet PC. Possibly you will need USB OTG adaptor (microUSB-m to USB-A-f ).

  2. Attach keyboard, mouse and USB Ethernet card to device. Use powered USB hub if needed.

  3. Power on tablet PC.

  4. Connect USB Ethernet card to router via patch cord.

  5. Boot from USB flash drive.

  6. Set up installation of Leap OS as usual. Before writing files to disk installer will select for installation packages grub2, grub2-i386-pc and grub2-i386-efi. Package grub2-i386-efi is not available on installation media and will be downloaded from openSUSE servers.

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Dual boot with Windows is possible. I’m using rEFInd (32-bit) for that.

For system with 1 GiB of RAM you need text (non-graphics) installation and usage (i.e. without desktop environment).

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I’ve created bugs to help users with similar hardware:

Bug 1234724 - Installer page declares “Over 40GB of free hard drive space” are required for installation, but 6 - 9 GB suffice

– ILL rejected.

Bug 1234729 - Leap 15.6: Enhancing installation on systems with 32-bit EFI and 64-bit CPU (mixed-mode support)

– in progress?

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