I have run into a lot of conflicting information for this laptop, and I want to warn you all about a couple of things before you jump to conclusions.
1) Lenovo has several Laptops sold under "100s" - some with Celeron others with Atom processors. I am referring to the Atom notebooks here.
2) There is a lot of information suggesting that a 32bit EUFI bootloader is required for these, but I have found nothing in the bios suggesting this.
3) These laptops have very limited bios. You cannot edit the boot order! You cannot disable EUFI!
The complete list of editable options in the bios include:
- Secure boot (on or off)
- Reset to setup mode
- Restore Factory Keys
- Hotkey mode. (on or off)
I am serious, that is it.
If you enable the boot menu you only get Windows Boot Manager no matter you have on the USB drive. Other options exist but are greyed for unknown reasons.
Does anyone know how to get Linux onto an Atom with such a restrictive bootloader? I have seen threads that suggest it's possible, but no one has described the absolutely limited boot environment I have encountered.
Will booting from USB magically become available if I arrange an image with a 32bit EUFI bootloader?
How do I troubleshoot this?
I was able to install Lubuntu 17.10 onto a Lenovo Ideapad 100S, I think mine might be a little later generation (14-1BY) because the bios does allow modification of boot order, and other things I'm used to in a bios.
Regular install of just the standard 17.10 64-bit iso for Lubuntu did not work; booting into the LiveCD was fine, install seemed fine, but then it wouldn't boot on its own. Through searching threads like these, it seems the Ideapad really does need a 32-bit booter.
I was able to get there (pointed to by other posts like this) using isorespin.sh. I respun the lubuntu 17.10 64-bit iso with options
--atom -u -s 2GB(-uupdates to latest kernel, and-smakes a persistent partition, because I thought, if this fails, at least I'll have a more usable bootable USB). Check also respun ISOs (suitable for Intel Atom and Intel Apollo Lake devices).Before, with preinstalled Windows 10 and Quickbooks and Chrome and THAT'S IT, the measly 32gb drive was full and screaming about windows updates it couldn't apply because it had no room. It's irresponsible of Lenovo to make a pc with a drive that small and sell it with windows 10 on it. I pity all the less-computer-literate, low-income households that bought one of these because of the price, and found it largely unusable.
Now with Lubuntu installed I've got 22GB drive space available! More than I'll ever need because this box will only ever need to be used for browsing (including document and spreadsheet writing in Google Docs).
The problem with installation is 32 bit UEFI (yeah, despite the 64 bit CPU), so the simplest solution is to find a 32 bit distro, shipped with EFI loader. You still could install 64 bit distro, but it's a bit tricky. Here's a list of helpful links you'd be interested in: someone installing Ubuntu on the same notebook, experimental Fedora for Bay Trail (non official), Archlinux topic on alike installation.
Just in case if a distro doesn't boot: make sure that it got 32 bit
….efifile, probably somewhere down the/boot/or the/efi/directory.There's a bigger problem: you've got a System-On-Chip called Bay Trail, and Intel is struggling yet to supply good support (which is funny, given the number of engineers, and that Bay Trail is in production). Most of the issues are fixed as of kernel 4.7, except that there's no sound.
You can track the process of solving the bug with sound here. I'd recommend to hold with installation, while it gets solved (or, just in case you're a programmer, you could try to join the fun of getting the sound up and running).
I've been struggling to get linux on mine with varying levels of success. I'm currently running 16.10 from a portable hdd and everything works! Wifi, sound, bluetooth, and the battery indicator as well. I used the 16.10 iso from linuxium. This man is a genius, and his work is mainly aimed at getting linux to run on the Intel Compute Stick, which also uses the same hardware as the Lenovo 100s-11IBY. It had no issue with booting or anything, did not even have to manually add the bootia32 file. I would say this is about the only way to get everything to work without being an absolute linux master.
He provides images for Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu as well as MATE.
Just got ubuntu running on the lenovo ideapad 100s-11IBY, running from an external usb flash drive.
Here's what had to be done:
sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware_1.xxx_all.deb(Had to do this to get wifi working)The following is working at the moment:
Not working:
Hope it helps.
You can try to use Ian Morrison’s ISO disk images which has been customized/respun using
isorespin.shscript (check GitHub mirror repo). These created ISOs are suitable for Intel Atom and Intel Apollo Lake devices.-i ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso –atom)-i ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso –apollo)Then flash the OS image onto USB using
dd.See also: Install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on the 2GB Intel Compute Stick.
I got it to install for me:
Erase all existing partitions and create one FAT32 partition, prior to installation, using GParted (found on Ubuntu live disk).
Use the following BIOS settings: UFEI enable, USB boot enable, Secure boot enable, Intel trusted platform disable, Optimize OS Defaults disable.
Set boot order: move USB to first!!
It was a pain to get it figured out, but I finally got it to work, and so far, everything (hardware) is working beautifully!
Hope this helps someone out there; they don't make it easy to install these days, but when it does, it makes an excellent (and cheap!!!) Ubuntu laptop.