I’ve an HP Stream laptop on which I installed Linux Mint as they do 64bit linux with 32bit EFI boot “out of the box.” So far so good, but I’m more familiar with openSUSE so would like to switch.
Can I install OS on top of Ubuntu (presumably formatting the root disk first) and still keep the EFI & 32bit grub? What preparation would I need to make (apart from a full backup)? What folders in the file system do I need to preserve or restore?
Is there any way to get OS to recognise the 32bit EFI + grub and either preserve them or update them when changes come through, or will I be left with a tricky manual update process?
Any advice (preferably not including “you’re an idiot”) welcome, especially if it saves me an hour restoring from backup to get a working machine 
Thanks in advance
David
Unfortunately, opensuse still does not support 32-bit EFI.
You could maybe reinstall Mint, but with a separate partition for “/boot”. Probably 200M should be sufficient. Then switch to opensuse, but keep the separate “/boot” from Mint (don’t use that for opensuse). That would keep the ubuntu/Mint boot setup in place, with a little care, you should be able to use that for opensuse. But even that might take some effort to get it booting.
Hmm, booting the opensuse installer might not be easy.
In all honesty, it would be easier to stay with Mint.
lol!
Yeah, somehow it is more enjoyable without that.
Thanks. Based on this, I’ll save my effort for something that’s more likely to produce a useful result.
I enjoy messing about with systems, but only when it improves things … unstable booting & updating sounds like a whole new range of complicated problems I can live without.