The idea is that if a machine defaults to “legacy boot,” meaning a BIOS-style boot, then use that to load U-Boot, which then provides a software emulation of UEFI so that the startup process can be simplified by the removal of BIOS support.
Sounds more like the illusion of simplicity
I think they’re trying to simplify the exposed interfaces simplifying everyone else’s job at the expense of making a more complex implementation.
Sounds like more complexity for the legacy use case in return for less complexity in the expected use case. Probably a fair trade-off.
It’s 2023. By this time I’m fine if BIOS boot was removed completely.
It would hurt some projects.
Just as an example, A small project Qubes OS supports UEFI, but a lot of the UEFI implementations from different manufactures are broken or don’t follow the standards. Qubes OS doesn’t have the developer resources to fix issues with motherboards or laptops only used by a handful of users, so when all else fails the solution is to use legacy mode.
Coreboot also uses legacy boot for some payloads.
Qubes OS
Not really related to what Red Hat is doing with their OS.
Are there any machines in use anymore that don’t support UEFI? When did it become standard? Something like 2012?
At my company, we have around 400,000 servers in production. When we last surveyed them, we found several thousand over 12 years old, with the oldest at 17 years. And that wasn’t counting our lab and admin servers which could run even older because they’re often repurposed from prod decomms.
We had a huge internal effort to virtualize their loads, but in the end, only about 15% were transferred just due to the sheer number of hidden edge cases that kept turning up.
How many of them would ever run an OS released in 2023?
All of them. Corp directive (now) is that hosts must be updated or reimaged every 90 days.
2014 is when a majority of new systems were UEFI, according to Wikipedia, but that’s still a majority.
Intel announced in 2017 that by 2020 they’re no longer gonna include BIOS support in their computers. So it could easily still pop up today, although it’s not that likely to, since that support is for devices that can use either BIOS or UEFI.
Are there any machines in use anymore that don’t support UEFI?
As the article explains, the move is about VMs but IMO it would make more sense to improve UEFI support in VM solutions than this.
If the replacement is Coreboot thats OK, but if this is UEFI no thank you !
I read it as bootlicker at first
That too
Is that like a live action Carmen Sandiego?
What if she only stole… from thieves?
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Better drivers.
The last time I actually tried anything with Redhat I was trying to build a file server with RHEL v6.8 on a circa 2014 Dell. Absolutely zero support for the drive controllers. It felt like installing Linux in the mid-1990’s. I gave up in frustration after two days and gave Ubuntu 16.04 LTS a try. As far as I know, that server’s still chugging away with 98 terabytes of storage at that office.
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Why Ubuntu over e.g. Suse?
Proprietary app repo cannonical is better?
Whatever happened to RedBoot?
Can some independently wealthy developer please get this job and make a beautifully sabotaged bootloader?
So, they want something even worse than GRUB2?
