*BSD on cheap Atom-based 32-bit UEFI SoC Mini PCs (2023)

M

mavavilj

What's the state of getting FreeBSD (or another BSD) to Atom-based 32-bit UEFI SoC PCs such as the Wintel W8?

Or perhaps this could be something to work on since I think that many people are looking at such as home servers. The Android 4.4 that some of them have also seems pretty much redundant by now so maybe more people are interested in a dual-boot setup on these machines.

Or perhaps there's some middle-ground to add BSD to the pre-installed Windows 10 (32-bit)?

Yes, there are some threads on specific computers on this board.

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I am not very knowledgeable of how SoC designs differ from other home computers (so-called "commodity hardware") so I wonder if these computers will behave differently with regards to "conventional OS installation on HDD". For example, whether they have some sort of hard-coded boot sequencing or something that would mess things up if one alters the shipped partition schemes, boot sectors, or something.
 
However, some strategy is possibly already needed in order to figure out how to remove pre-installed OSes so that what's left is useful for FreeBSD.

E.g. the following is supposed to have only Windows 10 32-bit (on x64 processor) and Android 4.4.

wintel_w8_partitions.PNG


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Possible pointers for UEFI-based computers:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGPvt3pQfaw
 
mavavilj said:
Okay, but surely these computers can be totally usable with legacy OSes as well.
Click to expand...
It may work fine with some old FreeBSD version but those versions are end-of-life and thus not supported any more.

www.freebsd.org

FreeBSD Security Information

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.
www.freebsd.org www.freebsd.org
 
i have 2 atom x5 devices but they both can boot a 64bit os. one tablet and one intel compute stick. the stick has bios support for both 32 bit and 64 bit efi. openbsd has 32bit efi support. freebsd used to have some code for it but was broken and was removed
 
covacat said:
i have 2 atom x5 devices but they both can boot a 64bit os. one tablet and one intel compute stick. the stick has bios support for both 32 bit and 64 bit efi. openbsd has 32bit efi support. freebsd used to have some code for it but was broken and was removed
Click to expand...

Oh yes, I found some references for OpenBSD w.r.t. 32-bit EFI. Just thought it was unideal because I wanted to use FreeBSD specifically.

If nothing else pops up, then maybe OpenBSD would be a safer bet then, although I am still confused about the differences between these projects.

In any way, if it would occur that BSDs would become more popular, then I thought that maybe there could be an official consensus on which BSDs are for SoCs.

SirDice said:
It may work fine with some old FreeBSD version but those versions are end-of-life and thus not supported any more.

www.freebsd.org

FreeBSD Security Information

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.
www.freebsd.org www.freebsd.org
Click to expand...

I think people would appreciate recommendations on specific .ISOs.

Based on https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/i386/ I assume that the latest 12.x will work.

TBH, I also don't understand how NetBSD and OpenBSD manage to support such hardware, while the FreeBSD project seems to imply it's too costly (https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/committers-guide/#archs).
 
mavavilj said:
TBH, I also don't understand how NetBSD and OpenBSD manage to support such hardware, while the FreeBSD project seems to imply it's too costly
Click to expand...
They all have limited resources so make their own choices based on the resources and skills they have available.

Mostly volunteers so depends on what people are interested in and want to work on.

i386 won’t disappear any time soon but the world has moved onto 64-bit. It’s not “niche” yet but is becoming less relevant.

I’d rather FreeBSD focus on newer hardware than something very much on the way out.
 
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