The only distro I can find that successfully configures a functioning bootable GRUB on this (bastard) machine is Nobara, which looks very cool but is way too heavy! Some things are glitchy; attempting tab completion seems to freeze Konsole for ~5 seconds and does not complete the command as expected. We’re working with an Intel Atom Z3735F@1.33GHz and 2GB RAM here.
How can a noob figure out what it’s doing differently so I can apply that to Linux Mint Debian Edition or Crunchbang Plus Plus?
The weird thing is that once the system is installed, it does not seem to have what I think are the required packages for GRUB to be set up correctly with this type of UEFI.
nextbook@nextbook:~$ sudo grub2-install /dev/mmcblk
grub2-install: error: /usr/lib/grub/i386-efi/modinfo.sh doesn't exist. Please specify --target or --directory.
X86 uefi and amd64 CPU is a really hard combo to find support for. Your best bet is to use an x86 distro, it will also probably be lighter. The other option is to modify the iso, but I haven’t ever done that.
Replace KDE with LXQT/LXDE or a lightweight wm