@allison
@ezio
Some setups like that use a file system image store in a file on the fatfs or ntfs partition.
I guess it also depends what one means by "boot Linux". Technically you can load a kernel and initfs from the EFI partition without an actual root filesystem to mount. Or even put Linux and coreboot in ROM without any boot drive. But a normal distro will expect a root filesystem with normal Unix permissions.