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It's just a bootloader, with a few tricks up its sleeve. All it does is letting you boot from any storage medium you want (most notably NVMe) instead of being r

It's just a bootloader, with a few tricks up its sleeve. All it does is letting you boot from any storage medium you want (most notably NVMe) instead of being restricted to the hardcoded sequence of the boot ROM.

rjsw 4y ago
It is a bootloader bundled with the ARM64 firmware. That means you don't need to add the firmware to each OS that you might want to use so it is easier to switch between them.
Timon3 4y ago
I understand that part. What I'm talking about specifically is part of a bootloader, see for example this page in the documentation of SWUpdate: https://sbabic.github.io/swupdate/bootloader_interface.html https://sbabic.github.io/swupdate/bootloader_interface.html By adding communication between the OS and the bootloader it's possible to implement redundant updates for whole partitions (specifically A/B-updates with a boot counter). U-Boot supports this (depending on the state of the vendor-provided fork better or worse), and Tow-Boot seems to be based on U-Boot.
- irusensei 4y ago
  The tow-boot software devs goes out of the way to say they are offering a boring PC boot loader experience so I wouldn’t expect any advanced features other than booting from devices.
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    PC boot loaders have been able to fall back to previous configurations on boot failure ("automatic redundant OS upgrades") for a long time[1], so that's not a valid excuse. https://systemd.io/AUTOMATIC_BOOT_ASSESSMENT/ https://systemd.io/AUTOMATIC_BOOT_ASSESSMENT/ https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/fallback.html https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/fall... https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/legacy/Booting-fallback-systems.html https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/legacy/Booting-fall... [1]: Minimum about 23 years, from personal use in creating a product with A/B-root partitions.
- daneel_w 4y ago
  I don't know if it retained swupdate functionality, or if it's drop-in compatible with u-boot's such.
- megous 4y ago
  One problem with opinionated builds of U-Boot is that you'll have more work figuring out what's enabled in its config. Configure and build your own if you want this kind of control.

rjsw 4y ago

It is a bootloader bundled with the ARM64 firmware. That means you don't need to add the firmware to each OS that you might want to use so it is easier to switch between them.

Timon3 4y ago

I understand that part. What I'm talking about specifically is part of a bootloader, see for example this page in the documentation of SWUpdate: https://sbabic.github.io/swupdate/bootloader_interface.html https://sbabic.github.io/swupdate/bootloader_interface.html By adding communication between the OS and the bootloader it's possible to implement redundant updates for whole partitions (specifically A/B-updates with a boot counter). U-Boot supports this (depending on the state of the vendor-provided fork better or worse), and Tow-Boot seems to be based on U-Boot.

irusensei 4y ago
The tow-boot software devs goes out of the way to say they are offering a boring PC boot loader experience so I wouldn’t expect any advanced features other than booting from devices.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  PC boot loaders have been able to fall back to previous configurations on boot failure ("automatic redundant OS upgrades") for a long time[1], so that's not a valid excuse. https://systemd.io/AUTOMATIC_BOOT_ASSESSMENT/ https://systemd.io/AUTOMATIC_BOOT_ASSESSMENT/ https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/fallback.html https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/fall... https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/legacy/Booting-fallback-systems.html https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/legacy/Booting-fall... [1]: Minimum about 23 years, from personal use in creating a product with A/B-root partitions.
daneel_w 4y ago
I don't know if it retained swupdate functionality, or if it's drop-in compatible with u-boot's such.
megous 4y ago
One problem with opinionated builds of U-Boot is that you'll have more work figuring out what's enabled in its config. Configure and build your own if you want this kind of control.