How to install Fedora on eMMC with UEFI

An amazing netbook (also a deal) with eMMC and matte screen

Last week I found an interesting deal and I keep it quickly without any thoughts. I bought a netbook, a 11,6 inch Acer Aspire ES1-111M-C1LE. It’s a not too beautyful not too ugly compact laptop and it costs only about 160 euros. It’s equipped with an old but good Intel Celeron N2840 2.16/2.58 GHz, 2GB DDR3L RAM on one slot(you can expand it up to 8GB!!!), a 32GB fast eMMC, a quite nice matte HD LED 1366 x 768 screen with Intel HD Graphics onboard, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Webcam and last, but not least, it has Windows 8.1 64-bit on disk. The Aspire E 11 comes with a full-sized keyboard, all the right ports, and optimised speakers deliver audio similar to what you’d expect from larger notebooks, for surprisingly clear sound. This notebook doesn’t look cool on the outside, it’s anonymous and really old-style. It is designed to not require a cooling fan, so it runs cool and whisper-quiet for a very comfortable user experience. No fan vents blowing hot air on you, no whining fan noise when you’re working on it.

The Acer E 11 family
The Acer E 11 deals

First of all, give freedom to the netbook

The Acer Aspire ES1-111M-C1LE comes with Microsoft Windows 8.1 on board and also give you the possibility to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. In my case, the small netbook never see a Microsoft operating system. I burned a Fedora 24 Beta ISO on a USB key through Fedora LiveUSB creator and I turn on the netbook for the first time booting from the USB key. I formatted the eMMC cleaning all the partitions and the garbage I founded on it, and finally I made a clean install of Fedora making some standard selections on Anaconda. All went fine and I finally arrived at the ‘please reboot’ screen. So happy for the quite nice experience, I rebooted the device.

Unfortunately, the screen above came to me. The installation process went smooth and finished fine, but the device doesn’t boot the Fedora operating system. I googled a bit and I found that the issue is related to eMMC and UEFI secure boot. So, I decided to make some attemps with the BIOS settings.

Sometimes is only a question of settings

I rebooted the device pressing F2 on boot to enter in the BIOS settings screen and I moved to the Secure Boot option screen.

Secure Boot must be on so I checked it and after I went to the Security tab. I selected Select an UEFI file as trusted for executing and click enter. We are going to add the UEFI settings file (it was generated by the Fedora installation) among the trusted UEFI boots in the device.

Check and select the eMMC.

Then EFI > System. And finally select shim-fedora.efi.

In next screen, type Fedora to name it, select Yes and click enter.

After added it as trusted EFI file, I press F10 to save BIOS settings and exit from the BIOS options screen.

Then I rebooted again the device. And the magic happens!

Fedora systems made boot so quickly and the Login screen came on screen.

The device runs smooth and fast with Fedora 24 Beta on board. All the ports and the peripherals are recognized, no additional drivers required!

Another Fedora system fully working and working fast. Cheers!