Now,
thanks to endsormeans,
regarding the Acer Iconia w4-821 32gb
over two years later,
and the wifi solution has been around for awhile.
I finally got around to hosing Windows off the Acer
and replaced it with the Mepis version of antiX called MX-16.

I thought it would be simple
when I discovered I could get MX-16 to run the wifi.

but,

as usual,

I was not even in the same ballpark.


Using the outstanding Solydx version of USB Creator
to installing MX-16 to a USB.
MX-16 booted gloriously on the ACER w4-821 (32gb)

I found that I could make persistent MX-16 on a USB,
and doing the kernel tricks to get wifi working was great.

Woot - just click install and away we go.



Not.



MX-16 would not boot for any amount of love or money.
The EFI (ESP partition marked boot+esp) just
stared blankly back with a grub prompt.
The MX-16 version seemed to not want to mount the root partition
or whatever,
and I simply had no time to go find out what went wrong.

Anyway,
I went back to my multi-usb and

booted SolydX and then installed SolydX (64bit)
I then rebooted and ran update-grub inside of SolydX.
That discovered the MX-16 install and added it to the SolydX grub.
And when I rebooted I discovered the SolydX grub
had added the boot commands I had used for MX-16
(nomodeset) and when I booted MX-16
I had working wifi right away because MX-16,
when it installed itself, had copied everything I did on the USB.
Amazing cool that MX16 is.
I will eventually let them know about this particular episode.

So what do I have now ?

The Acer has two working linux versions (SolydX no wifi)
and MX-16, with working wifi.

All 64bit

Bluetooth is next obstacle
but from all the grief the windows gangs had,
I expect it will be a non-starter.
It appears to use the same wifi chip,
which is why there are so many issues trying to use both
wifi and bluetooth at the same time.

Sound is another non-starter
but I suspect the answer exists and can be found.

The bottom line is I now have a tablet I can email from
using a legitimately functional email client
(Ubuntu can just go play in the drainage with all their cr@p)

Yes, XFCE is a bit harsh experience for touch,
but times will change - that is a technical challenge
as opposed to a closed source challenge.
xvkbd works in lightdm greeter as well as inside the XFCE4,

Battery life seems to be still robust after sitting on a shelf
for the past two years waiting for linux evolution.

The one outstanding detail about all this is the Win 8 the tablet
originally had always crashed horribly.
With linux this has not happened, maybe just lucky so far.
I will eventually find out.


Do not go looking for this thing as if you would be able to
simply do all this - Intels enTrails are exasperating beyond hope.

I am not tempted to go through all this with a Cherry Trail,
but I expect there exist people who (hopefully)
may actually have better luck.

Two years is an awful long time to wait
to be able to use something you pay real money for.