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I’m fairly technical but I have to say grasping the field of partitions , booting, boot loaders grub uefi its alternatives and the various combinations thereof

I’m fairly technical but I have to say grasping the field of partitions , booting, boot loaders grub uefi its alternatives and the various combinations thereof in Linux defeated me. When learning something I try to find the simple path, a reliable minimum that gets to the goal. I never found it. Complexity is the word that comes to mind.

Muromec 2y ago
Thankfully we have none of that on embedded. For every single board I have to figure out anew, so confusion is a purely transitive curse
andrewmcwatters 2y ago
It's not that it defeated you, it's literally undocumented what you're supposed to do.
bradley13 2y ago
Complexity, indeed. I haven't looked into this stuff in literally decades, but: I thought the purpose of a boot loader was to pass control to code belonging to the OS - which would then be responsible for loading it's own drivers, etc.. This solution sounds like starting an entire OS, only to boot the next OS. But then I think UEFI is also stupidly complicated, and ought to be whacked down to its core functions. Dinosaur, am I.
- ziml77 2y ago
  I like that UEFI means I don't have to worry about bootloaders clobbering each other when multiple operating systems are installed on the same drive. They can all register into UEFI, rather than competing for the MBR.
benwaffle 2y ago
Install arch with a couple of different bootloaders and disk layouts, and you'll learn it all. The simplest option is potentially systemd-boot + an unencrypted rootfs.
- ars 2y ago
  The simplest is LILO without an initrd
  - chefandy 2y ago
    I actually did a ctrl-f for LILO and this was the only comment that mentioned it. Time flies.
rcxdude 2y ago
Honestly I'm surprised grub is still going post-UEFI. It's now pretty much entirely unnecessary. Your simplest path is probably UEFI-stub, where there is no extra bootloader, just your BIOS loads the kernel. The main disadvantage is this is subject to the whims of your hardware manufacturer to implement it in a usable manner. If you want a nicer menu then systemd-boot is your next simplest option (despite the name, it is actually more or less seperate from systemd apart from maintenance and systemd having some integration with it).

Muromec 2y ago

Thankfully we have none of that on embedded. For every single board I have to figure out anew, so confusion is a purely transitive curse

andrewmcwatters 2y ago

It's not that it defeated you, it's literally undocumented what you're supposed to do.

bradley13 2y ago

Complexity, indeed. I haven't looked into this stuff in literally decades, but: I thought the purpose of a boot loader was to pass control to code belonging to the OS - which would then be responsible for loading it's own drivers, etc.. This solution sounds like starting an entire OS, only to boot the next OS. But then I think UEFI is also stupidly complicated, and ought to be whacked down to its core functions. Dinosaur, am I.

ziml77 2y ago
I like that UEFI means I don't have to worry about bootloaders clobbering each other when multiple operating systems are installed on the same drive. They can all register into UEFI, rather than competing for the MBR.

benwaffle 2y ago

Install arch with a couple of different bootloaders and disk layouts, and you'll learn it all. The simplest option is potentially systemd-boot + an unencrypted rootfs.

ars 2y ago
The simplest is LILO without an initrd
- chefandy 2y ago
  I actually did a ctrl-f for LILO and this was the only comment that mentioned it. Time flies.

rcxdude 2y ago

Honestly I'm surprised grub is still going post-UEFI. It's now pretty much entirely unnecessary. Your simplest path is probably UEFI-stub, where there is no extra bootloader, just your BIOS loads the kernel. The main disadvantage is this is subject to the whims of your hardware manufacturer to implement it in a usable manner. If you want a nicer menu then systemd-boot is your next simplest option (despite the name, it is actually more or less seperate from systemd apart from maintenance and systemd having some integration with it).