5 ms·

What replacement do you propose, then? Especially what replacement do you propose that works with the kind of typical hardware that non-specialty linux distros

by faho 4y ago

What replacement do you propose, then? Especially what replacement do you propose that works with the kind of typical hardware that non-specialty linux distros like Fedora want to support? Intel systems make up a large chunk of the hardware Fedora is used on, and as far as I can tell they're all-in on EFI. So Fedora has to use EFI to be able to boot on Intel systems.

blueflow 4y ago
I don't. I'm waiting for something else, until then, we'll stick with BIOS. Supporting EFI means implementing more legacy cruft than we already have with BIOS.
- mjg59 4y ago
  This is literally not an option - systems have shipped without BIOS compatibility for a long time now, so refusing to support UEFI is just not an option.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    - mjg59 4y ago
      I don't think that's going to result in everyone shipping UEFI without BIOS compatibility suddenly changing their mind.
      - blueflow 4y ago
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    Except for some embedded computers with Atom CPUs and some enterprise-oriented laptops, I have not seen any systems without legacy BIOS compatibility. Nevertheless, the option to enable the legacy BIOS booting can be quite hard to find in the BIOS menus, which may deceive many into believing that a system does not support legacy BIOS booting, even when it actually does support it. On work computers belonging to a company, the BIOS configuration may be locked, so it might not be possible for the users to enable legacy BIOS booting.
    - doubled112 4y ago
      I have a couple of AMD ASUS Vivobooks that don’t have CSM/BIOS boot available Never noticed until I wanted to boot memtest. It’s possible that I missed it, but Google results didn’t look promising either.
    - eklitzke 4y ago
      From the article: > Intel stopped shipping the last vestiges of BIOS support in 2020 (as have other vendors, and Apple and Microsoft), so this is clearly the way things are heading - and therefore aligns with Fedora's "First" objective. You may not have seen many computers yet without legacy BIOS compatibility but this is going to be the norm for new computers very soon.
      - adrian_b 4y ago
        The last new PC that I have seen, and which still had legacy BIOS booting support, was a Dell laptop purchased in Q2 2021. However, it was a model launched in the second half of 2020. It is indeed possible that the models introduced since 2021 might omit the legacy BIOS booting support.
- StillBored 4y ago
  Let me take a moment and point out, unless your using hardware from < 2005 or so, or one of the rare devices running a custom firmware you literally are using UEFI when you think your booting in BIOS mode. Others have pointed out that the CSM is no longer being shipped. The CSM is the "Compatibility Support Module" and its a UEFI shim driver that adds the legacy bios INTx operations to a UEFI implementation. So, most people booting in BIOS mode on hardware built in the past 15 years or so are actually running UEFI with an extra shim.
tremon 4y ago
OpenFirmware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware Many systems get by just fine with a minimal ELF or multiboot loader and a firmware-provided devicetree specification. Dynamic hardware enumeration is performed by every OS anyway, the only hardware that must be initialized is the bootloader/kernel storage. For the x86 platform, this could be implemented via coreboot (libreboot always reads to me as lib-reboot) with a multiboot payload.
- faho 4y ago
  Do you propose that Fedora not support EFI and tell its users to replace the firmare or only buy devices with that? That would be a massive step backwards in hardware support. Like I said: They don't really have the option of not supporting EFI. Alternatively they can support EFI and OpenFirmware, but that increases the number of supported paths instead of decreasing them.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    Actually I do not understand which is the problem of Fedora in this case. The distribution needs to do almost nothing to support either EFI or the legacy BIOS or any other booting method. That is the job of a bootloader package, not of the Linux distribution. For example I am using syslinux as the bootloader for all my computers, while grub is another example of a frequently used bootloader (but which seems to be excessively complex in comparison with syslinux). I assume that by supporting only EFI Fedora means that they will remove all bootloaders from their installation image, so that the Linux kernel will be launched by its EFI stub. I do not know about other bootloaders, but an installed syslinux package occupies only a few megabytes, maybe 10 megabytes at most, so deleting it cannot provide much space for anything else. I cannot see how deleting a bootloader package may be claimed to be a significant simplification for the maintenance effort of the Fedora distribution.
    - mattdm 4y ago
      > The distribution needs to do almost nothing to support either EFI or the legacy BIOS or any other booting method. I think you're seriously underestimating the amount of effort the bootloader and hardware enablement teams who work on Fedora put in to making _systems boot Linux at all_.
adrian_b 4y ago
I have encountered various embedded computers which no longer have the legacy BIOS boot option, so using EFI is indeed necessary. However, the vast majority of server or desktop motherboards and of laptops still have the option for legacy BIOS booting, even if the option may be difficult to find in the BIOS menus. I have about a dozen servers, desktops and laptops and I have configured all of them to use legacy BIOS booting, because EFI booting does not have any advantage, only disadvantages. It would have been very easy to replace the ugly legacy BIOS booting method with a simple and clean method for booting, but unfortunately those who made the EFI specification have failed to achieve this goal.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  >because EFI booting does not have any advantage, only disadvantage For an already installed system it doesn't really matters, so the point is moot here. But for the new systems setup I would always prefer a UEFI (with or without SecureBoot) because it allows to expose the HID management of the onboard/expansion board controllers, a proper way to return to the management/boot menu in the case of the failed boot. Sure, it doesn't always work good, but neither BIOS/CMS.

by faho 4y ago

blueflow 4y ago

I don't. I'm waiting for something else, until then, we'll stick with BIOS. Supporting EFI means implementing more legacy cruft than we already have with BIOS.

mjg59 4y ago
This is literally not an option - systems have shipped without BIOS compatibility for a long time now, so refusing to support UEFI is just not an option.
- blueflow 4y ago
  - mjg59 4y ago
    I don't think that's going to result in everyone shipping UEFI without BIOS compatibility suddenly changing their mind.
    - blueflow 4y ago
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Except for some embedded computers with Atom CPUs and some enterprise-oriented laptops, I have not seen any systems without legacy BIOS compatibility. Nevertheless, the option to enable the legacy BIOS booting can be quite hard to find in the BIOS menus, which may deceive many into believing that a system does not support legacy BIOS booting, even when it actually does support it. On work computers belonging to a company, the BIOS configuration may be locked, so it might not be possible for the users to enable legacy BIOS booting.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    I have a couple of AMD ASUS Vivobooks that don’t have CSM/BIOS boot available Never noticed until I wanted to boot memtest. It’s possible that I missed it, but Google results didn’t look promising either.
  - eklitzke 4y ago
    From the article: > Intel stopped shipping the last vestiges of BIOS support in 2020 (as have other vendors, and Apple and Microsoft), so this is clearly the way things are heading - and therefore aligns with Fedora's "First" objective. You may not have seen many computers yet without legacy BIOS compatibility but this is going to be the norm for new computers very soon.
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      The last new PC that I have seen, and which still had legacy BIOS booting support, was a Dell laptop purchased in Q2 2021. However, it was a model launched in the second half of 2020. It is indeed possible that the models introduced since 2021 might omit the legacy BIOS booting support.
StillBored 4y ago
Let me take a moment and point out, unless your using hardware from < 2005 or so, or one of the rare devices running a custom firmware you literally are using UEFI when you think your booting in BIOS mode. Others have pointed out that the CSM is no longer being shipped. The CSM is the "Compatibility Support Module" and its a UEFI shim driver that adds the legacy bios INTx operations to a UEFI implementation. So, most people booting in BIOS mode on hardware built in the past 15 years or so are actually running UEFI with an extra shim.

tremon 4y ago

OpenFirmware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware Many systems get by just fine with a minimal ELF or multiboot loader and a firmware-provided devicetree specification. Dynamic hardware enumeration is performed by every OS anyway, the only hardware that must be initialized is the bootloader/kernel storage. For the x86 platform, this could be implemented via coreboot (libreboot always reads to me as lib-reboot) with a multiboot payload.

faho 4y ago
Do you propose that Fedora not support EFI and tell its users to replace the firmare or only buy devices with that? That would be a massive step backwards in hardware support. Like I said: They don't really have the option of not supporting EFI. Alternatively they can support EFI and OpenFirmware, but that increases the number of supported paths instead of decreasing them.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Actually I do not understand which is the problem of Fedora in this case. The distribution needs to do almost nothing to support either EFI or the legacy BIOS or any other booting method. That is the job of a bootloader package, not of the Linux distribution. For example I am using syslinux as the bootloader for all my computers, while grub is another example of a frequently used bootloader (but which seems to be excessively complex in comparison with syslinux). I assume that by supporting only EFI Fedora means that they will remove all bootloaders from their installation image, so that the Linux kernel will be launched by its EFI stub. I do not know about other bootloaders, but an installed syslinux package occupies only a few megabytes, maybe 10 megabytes at most, so deleting it cannot provide much space for anything else. I cannot see how deleting a bootloader package may be claimed to be a significant simplification for the maintenance effort of the Fedora distribution.
  - mattdm 4y ago
    > The distribution needs to do almost nothing to support either EFI or the legacy BIOS or any other booting method. I think you're seriously underestimating the amount of effort the bootloader and hardware enablement teams who work on Fedora put in to making _systems boot Linux at all_.

adrian_b 4y ago

I have encountered various embedded computers which no longer have the legacy BIOS boot option, so using EFI is indeed necessary. However, the vast majority of server or desktop motherboards and of laptops still have the option for legacy BIOS booting, even if the option may be difficult to find in the BIOS menus. I have about a dozen servers, desktops and laptops and I have configured all of them to use legacy BIOS booting, because EFI booting does not have any advantage, only disadvantages. It would have been very easy to replace the ugly legacy BIOS booting method with a simple and clean method for booting, but unfortunately those who made the EFI specification have failed to achieve this goal.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
>because EFI booting does not have any advantage, only disadvantage For an already installed system it doesn't really matters, so the point is moot here. But for the new systems setup I would always prefer a UEFI (with or without SecureBoot) because it allows to expose the HID management of the onboard/expansion board controllers, a proper way to return to the management/boot menu in the case of the failed boot. Sure, it doesn't always work good, but neither BIOS/CMS.