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Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

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Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#11

Post by martijnvds »

raverbashing wrote: post #2

Yeah it seems like a bad idea Especially because of: > Fedora is also installed on cloud servers and virtual machines of various sorts, some of which do not support anything other than booting via BIOS. The proposal noted that the time of the 2020 discussion, Amazon's AWS did not support UEFI, but that has changed. Marc Pervaz Boocha pointed out that many virtual private server (VPS) providers do not support UEFI, gi…

It's easy to use EFI when virtualizing things locally.

libvirt/kvm supports it, Hyper-V supports it, Virtualbox supports it, ESXi supports it.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#12

Post by faho »

blueflow wrote: post #10
faho wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFI is here, non-specialty Linux distros don't really have the option of not adopting it. So the choice is between adopting it and keeping BIOS indefinitely, or adopting it and at some point in the future dropping BIOS.

False dichotomy: Not picking EFI does not mean keeping BIOS indefinitely.

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.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#13

Post by londons_explore »

martijnvds wrote: post #11
raverbashing wrote: post #2

Yeah it seems like a bad idea Especially because of: > Fedora is also installed on cloud servers and virtual machines of various sorts, some of which do not support anything other than booting via BIOS. The proposal noted that the time of the 2020 discussion, Amazon's AWS did not support UEFI, but that has changed. Marc Pervaz Boocha pointed out that many virtual private server (VPS) providers do not support UEFI, gi…

It's easy to use EFI when virtualizing things locally. libvirt/kvm supports it, Hyper-V supports it, Virtualbox supports it, ESXi supports it.

But change a working virtualized system from BIOS to EFI and there is a good chance a bunch of other things will break. Lots of memory mappings and hardware detection stuff changes if you switch from BIOS to EFI, together with the likely need to repartition or add a virtual disk for the EFI boot partition.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#14

Post by jaclaz »

blueflow wrote: post #4

> UEFI is defined by a versioned standard that can be tested and certified against. By contrast, every legacy BIOS is unique. The "standard" for BIOSes was at first the IBM PC ROS's Reference Manual, and later the PS/2 Reference. Naturally, many vendors failed to implement it correctly. But the problem with EFI is the same. Still hoping that someday, EFI netboot support will be something usable. I once considered usi…

Only for the record, I don't know in Linux, but on windows (at least up to 10) it is perfectly possible to use MBR partitioned media to boot in UEFI (i.e. even if generally speaking GPT is "tied" to UEFI, GPT partitioning is not a requisite unless a greater than 4TB mass storage with 512 bytes/sector is used, 4K disks are generally not bootable for a number of operating systems, but they are rare anyway as boot media).

Viceversa, it is possible with some loaders to boot BIOS from GPT (not easy-peasy or straightforward but it can be done).

As well, the FAT is only a requisite if there is not an EFI driver for the filesystem, as an example some motherboards and RUFUS provide a NTFS driver that allows booting from NTFS volumes under UEFI.

Still, while in theory GPT and UEFI have a few advantages, there is not in practice (yet) any meaningful reason to remove support to BIOS, though lately a number of notebooks have UEFI firmware only (no CSM aka BIOS), I cannot see how removing an option/choice from a distro can be a good thing.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#15

Post by cpach »

I’m not sure I like that idea. Some older PCs have a very buggy and crappy UEFI implementation. Using UEFI on those can be a nightmare. And upgrading the firmware might not be possible, or only possible via Windows. (Thinkcentre M72e, I’m looking in your direction.)

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#16

Post by blueflow »

faho wrote: post #12
blueflow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy: Not picking EFI does not mean keeping BIOS indefinitely.

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.

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.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#17

Post by tremon »

faho wrote: post #12
blueflow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy: Not picking EFI does not mean keeping BIOS indefinitely.

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.

OpenFirmware: 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.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#18

Post by ulzeraj »

Nothing against EFI but secure boot as it is is a pain in the ass. Want to install some kernel module to enjoy your Xbox controller? Too bad you need to follow this convoluted guide about generating and installing certificates to sign your driver... or just disable the whole secure boot thingie.

Its like selinux hardware edition.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#19

Post by prmoustache »

blueflow wrote: post #6
emteycz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why Linux users would care about this. It boots the system, nobody cares it uses some old MS tech.

Because "removing legacy" was one of the key arguments of EFI enthusiasts, and its still plenus bovis stercus.

Your point is a bit moot because removing bios support will actually allow the maintainer to stop maintaining the bios parts regardless of the fact some other old things are kept.

While actually not removing bios support won't allow you to get rid of the aformentionned MS techs such as fat support.

Having said that I think this is a wee bit early.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#20

Post by tremon »

emteycz wrote: post #5
blueflow wrote: post #4

> UEFI is defined by a versioned standard that can be tested and certified against. By contrast, every legacy BIOS is unique. The "standard" for BIOSes was at first the IBM PC ROS's Reference Manual, and later the PS/2 Reference. Naturally, many vendors failed to implement it correctly. But the problem with EFI is the same. Still hoping that someday, EFI netboot support will be something usable. I once considered usi…

I don't see why Linux users would care about this. It boots the system, nobody cares it uses some old MS tech.

It doesn't just "boot the system". The full EFI specification includes support for runtime services, i.e. proprietary code that keeps running even after your FLOSS operating system has booted. That's something Linux users should care about: it provides a backdoor for clinging to closed-source drivers on a pretend-open platform. There's already been proof-of-concept EFI viruses, it's only a matter of time until the first antivirus EFI service appears.
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