# Installing FreeBSD on a mid 2007 macbook 32-bit EFI only?



## Kurko2468 (May 29, 2020)

Has anyone had any luck installing FreeBSD (32 bit or 64 bit) on a 32-bit EFI system?
Supposedly on https://wiki.freebsd.org/UEFI it says that 32 bit EFI is not yet supported, but Id like to ask if someone has some insight about how to get it working. I already have on this laptop a fully working 64bit Arch Linux and I want to have additionally FreeBSD on dual boot, with 32-bit EFI grub already installed and working on a EFI partition.
Also, since I already have a working example on Linux, I could help developing 32 bit EFI support in FreeBSD.


----------



## danskoya (May 31, 2020)

Struggled with this on my 2006 MacPro1,1 but found a workaround that works for my needs.  https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/macpro1-1-freebsd-12-1-release-on-virtualbox-4-0-36.75569/


----------



## cabriofahrer (Jan 28, 2022)

Kurko2468 said:


> Also, since I already have a working example on Linux, I could help developing 32 bit EFI support in FreeBSD.


Any news on this? The necessity of having a 32 bit EFI for FreeBSD goes much further than wanting to install it on old Macs:

This affects everybody that has some piece of hardware with the Intel Atom Bay Trail Chip, like me. I have a Notebook with that with Windows 10 32 bit preinstalled, but after some Windows update the sound chip is not recognized anymore, nor is a microSD card that I have.
I would really like to install something else on that Notebook, but with that 32 bit EFI I have not found a viable solution yet. An attempt to modify some xubuntu image with some fancy file to convert the iso and obtain an image with 32 bit EFI was not successful.
I tried a Fedora 35 live stick and it boots fine, the wifi is easily connected, but I think the sound chip does not work, apart from the fact that you can not try anything, like play a youtube video or an mp3, probably to codec issues. Also I don't like Gnome3 and I don't think it's a good idea if you only have 2 GB of RAM.
Also tried a 32 bit Sparky Linux which also boots into live mode, visually it seems that the sound chip works, but there I there I have no wifi and I don't like LXDE either.
So unless I do not find a Linux distribution where I can check in live mode if everything works, I will not perform an install to lose my Windows 10.
But what I would really like is to have FreeBSD be able to install on a 32 bit EFI. There several threads in this forum by other people with the same problem, but it looks like FreeBSD is still unable to install on an 32 bit EFI.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jan 29, 2022)

From <https://wiki.freebsd.org/UEFI#Tasks>:


> Support booting 64-bit FreeBSD on a 64-bit CPU from a 32-bit EFI environmentNot Started



To help me visualise this: can rEFInd (in a 32-bit EFI environment) boot the installer for 64-bit FreeBSD? 

The rEFInd Boot Manager: Getting rEFInd



cabriofahrer said:


> … threads in this forum by other people with the same problem, …



Can you link to some? Thanks.


----------



## cabriofahrer (Feb 5, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> Can you link to some? Thanks.


Another one is here: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...-32bit-efi-not-bios-legacy.70665/#post-553398

If you put "32 bit efi" in the search bar of this forum, you will find more threads that deal more or less with the same thing. Personally I am not interested in old MacBooks, but I think this feature of having FreeBSD being able to install on hardware with a 32 bit efi is interesting for a lot of older Laptops that came with a so called Intel Bay Trail Atom Processor. I think many of them were issued with Windows 8 at the time, which has that capability.


----------

