I recommend ubuntu because if you go googling for help, you’re going to find that it dominates the results, even for more general linux questions. I’ve based this guide around Ubuntu 17.10, Artful Aardvark, as pulled from the Ubuntu cdimage server in September 2017. Linux choice, and some notes on compatibility.
It’s only seems to be fully supported as of Ubuntu 17+, earlier attempts failed with trackpad and WiFi issues. My reference machine here is the Lenovo 100S-11IBY, which has an Atom Z3735F processor and eMMC hard disk. The reference machine is a Lenovo 100S (100S-11IBY)
I’m also assuming you’re getting rid of a Windows install from a low end machine, as the process is fairly different for macOS replacements. I’m assuming you’re not on Ubuntu already because…beginner’s guide.
If I get a hold of a windows machine in future, I’ll update it with some extra content, but you’ll still be able to use this procedure either way. The prep was done on macOS, but I’ll try and help out for Windows systems. This could be condensed down to “draw a circle, draw the rest of the damn owl” type steps, but that can cause people to bail out before they have the confidence to try it out themselves. Keep that in mind if any of it offends you as a more expert user! Some of the terms here aren’t strictly correct, and there may be faster ways of doing some of these steps, but the aim is to walk people through the process in a way that is most likely to succeed, while teaching them a few things along the way. This is a newbies guide, and kind of verbose. There’s plenty of other guides out there, but I’ve found a lot of them to be too technical for beginners, or hard to reproduce in a reliable way. This is a procedure to help you work around this, and deal with the most common issues you’ll face during the process.
The 32-bit BIOS can’t see these 64-bit files.Most common linux distributions now recommend / release as 64-bit.BayTrail hardware has a 64-bit CPU, but 32-bit UEFI BIOS, compared to the more common arrangement of both the CPU and BIOS being the same.The symptom is, after you’ve created your USB installer, it simply fails to show up in the BIOS - no matter what settings you use. There’s a semi-common edge case that gets around for when installing ubuntu on “BayTrail” hardware, which is found in a lot of low end laptops and tablets.