Please add IA32 UEFI support

[happyzhang]

I have a z3735 board. Unfortunately, the only system that can be installed at present is Debian Server. Is it feasible for the armbian to support IA32 UEFI

[trapexit]

I second this. I can't even get it to boot. Typically I can boot the installer of Debian or Ubuntu, install, then manually boot the partition with grub and install grub-efi-ia32-bin grub2-common. But I can't get Armbian image to boot at all.

 

These older 64bit (with 32bit UEFI) Atom SoCs were popular in Win8 era tablets and netbooks. Armbian could turn these into decent little SBC replacements. They are not very useful anymore and I know numerous people with one sitting in a closet. A distro that "just worked" could help keep them out of the dump.

Edited May 27, 2023 by trapexit

[Igor]

Armbian team have no plan/resources/budget to do this, but if someone sacrifices his time and polish this feature as expected, we will pay with respect and review the work. Every code that is sent our way is liability and that is not something we are accepting open handed. If adding this feature won't represent much burden for maintainers, we will merge it. Making PR from your side is just one part and is small if you are not going to keep it in good shape for another several months / years.

 

On 5/26/2023 at 11:22 PM, trapexit said:

I know numerous people with one sitting in a closet. A distro that "just worked" could help keep them out of the dump.

The same goes for half of elderly single board computers that we are keeping alive. Its only in users interest, a little in ours. We only have costs with maintaining, while HW vendors wants from you to buy new stuff ...  We already have severe problems with cost management as you expect we do everything for free, and where we receive absolutely no help from vendors or anyone. This is for us nothing but a waste of time. I hope you do understand this - maintaining is hard work and doesn't pay off in any way. And its a lot more code to maintain then people who will do it. You have to step up.