Do have Windows Tablets a BIOS ? Linux possible?

Xeratul · 08-06-2015, 04:52 AM

Hello,

I was just wondering. It seems that Windows 8 does not have a bios on Windows Tablets, with Atom, e.g. Surface.

http://www.7tutorials.com/how-boot-u...blet-or-device

Is it correct?

Regards

goumba · 08-06-2015, 08:13 PM

Not true for all tablets.

My generic Windows 8 tablet with an Atom 3745 has access to UEFI. It runs Linux, albeit very poorly, slow and taxes the processor cores to the point it overheats.

jefro · 08-06-2015, 08:47 PM

I have a small HP stream and it has easy access to "bios" to include an onscreen keyboard to access it. I see no reason why linux can't run on it pretty well. It is a portable unit so expect some trade off of speed for battery life.

Timothy Miller · 08-06-2015, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

I have a small HP stream and it has easy access to "bios" to include an onscreen keyboard to access it. I see no reason why linux can't run on it pretty well. It is a portable unit so expect some trade off of speed for battery life.

I have the full laptop version of the same. The one caveat to the stream is that the wireless card (Broadcom 43142) performance isn't STELLAR in linux (it's acceptable IMO though), and the drivers aren't open source, so can be a pain to install in some distro's (none of the open source Broadcom drivers work with it).

All that said, while it's not the tablet version, hardware is nearly identical, and I am running Mageia (soon to be Debian again) on my Stream quite nicely.