The only distro I can find that successfully configures a functioning bootable GRUB on this (bastard) machine is Nobara, which looks very cool but is way too heavy! Some things are glitchy; attempting tab completion seems to freeze Konsole for ~5 seconds and does not complete the command as expected. We’re working with an Intel Atom Z3735F@1.33GHz and 2GB RAM here.
How can a noob figure out what it’s doing differently so I can apply that to Linux Mint Debian Edition or Crunchbang Plus Plus?
The weird thing is that once the system is installed, it does not seem to have what I think are the required packages for GRUB to be set up correctly with this type of UEFI.
nextbook@nextbook:~$ sudo grub2-install /dev/mmcblk
grub2-install: error: /usr/lib/grub/i386-efi/modinfo.sh doesn't exist. Please specify --target or --directory.
I also had a netbook with an Atom Z3735F and 2GB RAM, albeit an Ideapad 100s. The 32 bit versions of Debian Stable 11 and 12 worked out of the box for me.
If you are at the terminal, try running
apt install grub-efi-ia32-binbefore installing grub.