So for anyone interested I got tired of trying to look online for the "right" netbook and last night picked up the following HP 2in1 laptop/tablet from
"Best Buy" to attempt and and run Xubuntu on it:
HP Pavilion x360 - 11m-ap0013dx Product Specifications
https://support.hp.com/sg-en/document/c06337117
In comes with Windows 10 S Mode which off the bat restricts you to the Microsoft store sanctioned applications and forces you to use Edge browser. Fortunately it is easy to switch to standard Windows 10 mode to run any
windows 10 compatible software.
I came across the following guide on using Wubi to install Ubuntu distros:
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17486/install-ubuntu-netbook-remix-with-wubi-in staller/
The version mentioned only works up to Windows 7 -- however found a newer
guide that has a version that works with Windows 10:
https://www.lifewire.com/wubi-linux-installation-program-2201175
Now purists will probably not want to use wubi but I figured it was a good first attempt to try it out and not completely hose the system if I screwed something up I could always fallback to Windows 10.
For the most part it was pretty easy but every step seemed to have some blocking issue that took a minute of research to figure out so hopefully this will help anyone attempting to do this in the future.
1) When WUBI asks you which distro you want to download you can let it
download it for you but sometimes you will find it errors out at the end of
the download with a log saying it could not access the file. You can find the ISO that was downloaded in the c:\ubuntu\install and copy and paste it to the same location the wubi installer exe is located and wubi will auto detect and default to that ISO and work fine. So just rerun it and if it asks to
uninstall due to incomplete install just say yes and it will restart the install process not have to download ISO.
2) Disable Secure Boot - In order to be able to access different boot OS options you will need to make sure this is disabled in the BIOS. For this machine it was simple as hitting ESC pre windows boot and choosing F10 for
bios and disabling the Secure Boot / Clearing related keys.
3) Wifi drivers not loaded - First thing I noticed right off the bat Xubuntu was not able to properly load a wifi driver during installation. But fortunately I found the following guide to enable it:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1071299/how-to-install-wi-fi-driver-for-realtek -rtl8821ce-on-ubuntu-18-04
Only issue is -- it requires Internet access to pull the components down to compiled the driver :) As there is no built in LAN port I had no easy way to attempt to access the Internet. I saw someone mentioned they used USB
tethering to phone but as I have an iPhone I did not want to dare go that route. But I did notice that it looked like Bluetooth was functional and I
was able to pair to my iPhone and have it act as a network gateway as a temporary way to get online and it worked great! A little slow but once you
get the driver loaded and reboot wifi works fantastic!
So I have only just started using it but already in love with the setup. I am also using the mini laptop with netrunner terminal to connect to BBS's and it is great to run in Full Screen for a full classic laptop BBS experience (just smaller, lighter and quieter then back in the day and better battery life).
Hopefully someone else found this informative and helpful.
---
LockeDown (Mickey Frklic)
[mysticisland.strangled.net]
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Mystic Island BBS [mysticisland.strangled.net] (1:218/220)