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EFI doesn't actually mandate FAT for the system partition. The system partition can be any filesystem that the firmware supports. Of course, pretty much all EF
by jordemort 4y ago
EFI doesn't actually mandate FAT for the system partition. The system partition can be any filesystem that the firmware supports.
Of course, pretty much all EFI implementations only support FAT, so it's a bit of a moot point; the only one I'm aware of that supports anything else is the one on Intel Macs, which also understands HFS+.
You can find a huge selection of EFI filesystem drivers at https://efi.akeo.ie/ https://efi.akeo.ie/ but they're derived from GRUB and hence GPL, so don't expect the likes of American Megatrends to be bundling these any time soon.
- StillBored 4y agoWell splitting hairs, it mandates that everyone support FAT, individual system+OS vendors can add their own filesystems, but then its vendor lock. So, just do FAT and be done with it. Adding other filesystems is just a waste of time because the ESP only needs to store a half dozen files or so. 13.3.1.1: "The EFI firmware must support the FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12 variants of the EFI file system"
- babypuncher 4y agoI think FAT is a fair baseline. It can be implemented in a few dozen lines of code. Support for it is ubiquitous. It is not encumbered by any active patents. All the alternatives I have seen proposed are both considerably more complex and not ubiquitously supported.