My ex-wife bought my daughter a cheap laptop (really a netbook) for Xmas, and I'm having trouble getting Linux installed on it...

The machine is an Epik ELL1001 model... Atom quad-core, 2GB RAM, 32GB SSD, WiFi/Bluetooth, and 2 USB ports.

I've managed to figure out how to get into the BIOS, but I'm beginning to think that this thing has a locked bootloader. No matter what I try, the most I've managed to do is get the BIOS to recognize the external USB DVD/RW I'm using to try to install from. When I try to get it to boot from that device, it'll hang for a while and then boot into the regular Windows 10

I've tried various distro versions of the 'buntus,... Xubuntu, Kubuntu,... 64-bit, 32-bit,... various releases,... But nothing.

The goal here is a total replace of Win10 with Linux...

The BIOS is a fairly recent American Megatrends BIOS. There is no option to disable UEFI Secure Boot, and no option for a legacy boot. I'm wondering if anyone has had positive results installing Linux on one of these newer, cheap Win10 devices...

I had the same experience with an Acer netbook that had an atom processor.

I tried to install Linux Mint and the processor couldn't handle it. Mint would load but the desktop would hang no matter what I tried.
It looks like most of the netbooks with atom processors are good for surfing the net and that's about it:-

Same with the Acer netbook. Just tell the BIOS to boot to the USB or the CD of Linux that you have and try that.

The only bootloader I found on that netbook was the Windows bootloader.

-::-I really think that anything Ubuntu based is going to be too heavy for that processor.-::-
Ubuntu needs 700 MHz (Intel Celeron or better) and Lubuntu you'll need a Pentium or a Celeron.

Maybe try AnitX (Minimum: 128 MB of RAM and 1 GB of hard drive space).
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Good luck.

I run AntiX on my single core Atom N270 Touchscreen Netbooks with 1 gig of ram.

But my netbooks are older than yours. I got a feeling bios is somehow screwing up the Ubuntu Boot from your external cd drive. You will find out I guess with a AntiX download and install try out.

But 1st. Did you md5sum check your ubuntu download? A corrupted iso download won't boot sometimes and all that is wrong is that you got a bad download. Just guessing from the Mexican border down here in Tx.

The link I supplied above should get you through learning what I am saying and how to proceed to go about doing a md5sum check of a iso.

Edit: I've heard these newer 32bit bios on 64 bit systems are a pain the ass to get a linux pendrive to boot on.
It is kinda a hardware lockout by the vendor to keep usb boot from working.

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I'd be willing to bet that's exactly what the cause is, that custom 32-bit UEFI that was never meant to exist and almost nothing properly supports it.

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For What It's Worth, I'm running the LXLE distro on an Asus eee 901. I used Logical Volume Manager to bond the two SSDs into a single drive.

How in the world would this system even run win 10 on it. How could it run win10 if it can handle linux?

I would like to suggest going on ebay and purchasing an IBM thinkpad t500 or 510, 520 they are best support with linux. I have a IBM t500 which I purchased a square trade
Warranty for two years on ebay. I needed a new battery and i purchased a new hdd since the system was older. But i use it everyday. Cost would be a little more. The 520 would be an i5 duo core. Mine t500 is a duo core 2.xx running linux mint 18 mate. But 510 ir the 520 would.

It's not a matter of "handling" Linux... It's probably this tricky BIOS that is the biggest issue. It probably runs Windows like a slug.. It'll probably run Linux marginally faster.. but it's not going to break any records by any stretch.

Here's the thing, I wasn't using a pendrive. I was using a USB DVD/RW,... One that I've used to boot & install Linux on virtually all of my machines that don't have a DVD drive, themselves.

So you were using a DVD external drive?

Hi. I don't know nothing about SSD disk, but:
Do you try to install Linux from DVD to pendrive (first) and then boot from the pendrive?
If this boot method work, must be a SSD/sata problem. I have a PC with IDE and SATA interface. It works fine, but when burn a DVD, one SATA interface block the system during some seconds and write up to 16x with 'drive buffer underruns', and the other dvd no freeze PC, but write up to 12x only. And IDE works fine.

Have a nice day.

I have tried the new Linux Feren OS which is built on Ubuntu and I have tried it on my HP Pavilion a6110n Desktop and it performed well with a 2.2 gigahertz processor and 4 gigs of ram and I will try the live DVD but USB because I have no DVD/CD drive and Feren OS is presently only in 64 bit and I think that many are not aware how much better Feren OS performs than Zorin OS and Linux Mint and would hope that you give this Distro a try from booting from a USB. I think that I will give Linux Feren OS a try on my new Epik 14" ultra slim laptop with a quad core 1.6 processor. It handles Windows 10 64 bit so why not Ferenos?

Is it still hanging?

Still having trouble installing Linux?

simple Solution, Boot into the Bios via the ESC key before windows Boots, OK? Select the Boot order and change boot order to UEFI to be listed first, OK Now suddenly when you do this there may pop up another option to boot UEFI and that may be the one you list first as be the case with My Epik (ELL1401) OK? use Rufus to make your USB Live Linux, OK as it will take most newer linux version that have UEFI support and install it for you, OK? In some cases Rufus may need online access to acquire other additional features to install on the flash drive, OK. I am going to keep this as short and sweet as I know how, OK? After you are able to boot into your flash drive, whether to just try a Live Linux or install it, you will need to reboot your computer and before any OS tries to load you need to get back into the Bios via pressing the ESC key and change your bios boot sequence back to the way it originally was OK? Or you will get stuck with a black screen with bright yellow letters pondering what the hell to do next brain fart mode. I have installed Linux Feren OS on a flash Drive and I will wait to first find a way to back up my Windows 10 OS as an image onto a flash drive but Hiren's Boot CD installed on a Flash Drive is said to not be able to work in UEFI mode as it is in a different format according the the Epik Learning laptop Technician. So I hope that this will work for you friend and I am a true believer that asking the right questions will attain the right answers without any philosophical mumbo jumbo1

Problems running LOTS of different Linux distro's on Cherry-Trail Atom devices are very well known. To work around many of the problems you have to use a very recent kernel version, the newer the better. Ie, Kernel 4.12-rc2 at this time.
Go to Linuxium's blog to read about how to spin up your own custom installation distro ISO. Or wait for Ubuntu 17.10 to come out in October.

tried multiple usb sticks landed on an unnamed botanyconference.org one and used linux live usb creator on windows to copy the iso, here's a screenshot:

https://imgur.com/a/7ndTs