Hi Michele,
Doing a frugal install first is probably the best solution. You don't need to create a separate partition for it.
Create a folder (say slitaz) in your main partition (c:\) and copy the rootfs.gz and bzImage files of the last Rolling-core ISO in it.
You could also use SliTaz Next; its kernel is the most recent but the ISO dates from 2017-09-30, most of the packages have been udated since.
Then I propose GRUB 2 or rEFInd (or rEFInd + GRUB 2) to boot SliTaz.
GRUB 2: here 2 ways.
- The simplest: start GRUB 2 using the Multiboot (press F12 or F9 or... key when the computer starts or reboots) but I don't know if tablets have also this possibility (I don't know anything about tablets, I don't like them :( )
Or start it with rEFInd you already know.
- Or rEFInd that will propose to choose between Windows and SliTaz (and eventual other OSs) at boot.
rEFInd should allow to run SliTaz without we need to install a boot loader (I never done it because I don't have any EFI computers to test it, I work on friends's computers but I do not allow myself to modify the configuration or install software on a PC that is not mine, excepeted the Secure Boot)
As you already successfully installed rEFInd a few month ago, I guess you know how to access to the ESP partition of your computer; if not, this is what I do in Win 8/10... for a computer:
- Right click on the Home button in the left bottom corner of the screen and select Windows Power Shell (admin).
The Users account control asks to accept modifications; click [YES].
- In the terminal, type
mountvol s: /s to mount the ESP partition.
- Check the ESP partition is mounted:
dir s:\
Note that Windows uses "\" and "/" where Linux respectively uses "/" and "-".
To install GRUB 2:
- Create a \grub repertory in \efi:
mkdir s:\efi\grub
- Copy the bootia32.efi file from the grub2-efi package (see my post above) in the (ESP)\efi\grub directory...
copy <<em>path\to\your</em>>\bootia32.efi s:\efi\grub\grubia32.efi
- ... and the GRUB 2 modules:
copy <<em>path\to\your\rep</em>>\i386-efi s:\efi\grub\
- Create a \boot\grub directory for the configuration file of GRUB 2:
mkdir s:\boot\grub
- Create the configuration file:
notepad s:\boot\grub\grub.cfg
- example -
### CONFIGURATION FILE FOR GRUB 2 ###
#
# Comment the line if you want SliTaz start immediately or
# change the value to define the time (seconds) to wait before booting.
set TIMEOUT=-1
# Menu 0: boot SliTaz Rolling
menuentry "SliTaz Rolling (frugal install - kernel 3.16.55)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,4)
linux /slitaz/bzImage ro root=/dev/null video=-32 kmap=it autologin
initrd /slitaz/rootfs.gz
}
According to your screenshot in the Grub2Win discussion, your main partition (c:\) is (hd0,4).
Note also the insmod ntfs line; GRUB 2 cannot read NTFS partition natively, you must load this module.
- Save and quit.
IMPORTANT! If you didn't do it before, disable the fast startup of Windows (see my comment in section 6. of the linked page below). In the admin terminal of Windows, type powercfg /h off
You can now close the terminal and reboot.
Hope I didn't forget anything. Don't hesitate to ask questions if something is not clear or doesn't work for you.
If you think to do it, please take notes during you install SliTaz. It would be interesting to complete the UEFI guide with HOWTOs for tablets.
It would be even better if we also figure out how to boot Slitaz from a usb.
I've already started this a few weeks ago; I have some comments to modify but nothing in the way to realize the Live. I'll do it when the second part -HOWTO install in frugal mode on a UEFI computer- will be finished (for the end of may I hope)
I think all distros, as well as 32bit than 64bit, can run on EFI computers
OK, I'm probably wrong. I tested slitaz-rc3 you tried to install a few months ago with the same result you had: black screen (so, you probably did things correctly, you haven't had any luck in choosing this ISO, like me with core64 :( ). There are things I need to deepen. But later, rc3 is really to old now.
@lm2,
I didn't use Rufus and kept the system in its initial state (GPT). For the full install, I resized c: and create an ext3 partition for SliTaz (now ext4 since I've overwritten it when installing Debian).
