I haven't used GRUB since my first EFI system. The EFI itself is already a bootloader after all, why would you need another one, especially one as bloated as the new GRUB.
To pass kernel parameters? How would you do that without a bootloader?
No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
271–280 of 460 posts
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#272It's something you can do since a lot of years. I used to do so 10 years ago, when I've got the first motherboard with UEFI. But is it useful? It saves a minimal time in the boot sequence, but at what cost? The bootloader (being it grub, or something more simple as systemd-boot) is useful to me for a couple of reasons: - it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, yo…
rEFInd is the magic tool here. Personally I still use GRUB for all of the reasons you stated above. But rEFInd + kernel gets you pretty close.
rEFInd is great! I wish they just updated the default theme to something nicer.
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#273Is the motherboard's NVRAM supposed to be written to so often? I'm not sure about that.
It originally used to be actual RAM with a battery backup. These days it's generally NOR flash (because it's small enough for savings from using NAND to not apply, and the complexity of NAND instead raising the cost). NOR has quite high write cycle tolerance/limits.
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#274It's something you can do since a lot of years. I used to do so 10 years ago, when I've got the first motherboard with UEFI. But is it useful? It saves a minimal time in the boot sequence, but at what cost? The bootloader (being it grub, or something more simple as systemd-boot) is useful to me for a couple of reasons: - it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, yo…
> it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, you need to perform some key combination in a short window
Hardly a problem in my experience - just hold down the key while booting.
And dual booting is rarely needed anyway and generally just a pita. Just always boot into your preferred OS and virtualize the other one when you really need it.
> also modern bootloader save the last boot option such that if Windows reboots for an update Linux does not start
You can change the EFI boot entries including priority from the OS, e.g. via efibootmgr under Linux. Should be easy to setup each OS to make itself the default on boot if that's really what you want.
> it allows to edit the cmdline of the kernel to recover a system that does not boot, e.g. start in single user mode. That can really save your day if you don't have on hand an USB stick and another PC to flash it
All motherboards I have used had an EFI shell that you can use to run EFI programs such as the Linux kernel with efistub with whatever command-line options you want.
> it allows you to choose between multiple kernels and initrd images easily, again for recovery purposes
EFI can have many boot entries too.
> it has a voice for entering the UEFI setup menu
What does "a voice" here mean? Or you meant "a choice"? Either way, same as with the boot menu you can just hold down the key while booting IME.
> it allows you to boot any other EFI application, such as memtest, or efi shell. Most UEFI firmwares doesn't have a menu to do so.
In my experience the EFI shell has always been accessible without a bootloader.
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, look at Windows 10 if you want to see how this can be done poorly. Its boot menu works by booting Windows 10 first and then restarting the computer if you choose another OS. This includes going all the way through POST again. Took something like two minutes end-to-end to get to Windows 7.
I'm not sure I experienced the same with the Windows boot loader so maybe that behavior was something case specific instead of intended?
That's the default behavior
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, Grub has a read-only ZFS implementation to allow booting: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.git/tree/include/grub...
Ditch grub and use Linux to boot Linux on ZFS - https://docs.zfsbootmenu.org/en/v2.3.x/ .
Didn't knew that one, thanks for that.
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I'm understanding correctly, it might help to point out that in spite of the title they are proposing a bootloader, which can still let you modify the cmdline, boot to other OSs, etc. It's just that the bootloader is itself using the Linux kernel so it can do things like read all Linux filesystems for "free" without having to rewrite filesystem drivers.
you seem to be saying that they are using two separate kernels, one for the bootloader and one for the final boot target the title text says 'Loaded by the EFI stub on UEFI, and packed into a unified kernel image (UKI), the kernel, initramfs, and kernel command line, contain everything they need to reach the final boot target' which sounds like they're not talking about using two separate kernels, one for the bootloa…
To be clear: the win here is that there's no longer duplicated (or worse - less capable and outdated) code to do the same things in both the bootloader and the kernel, however the two versions of that code might be deployed.
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#278It's something you can do since a lot of years. I used to do so 10 years ago, when I've got the first motherboard with UEFI. But is it useful? It saves a minimal time in the boot sequence, but at what cost? The bootloader (being it grub, or something more simple as systemd-boot) is useful to me for a couple of reasons: - it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, yo…
> it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, you need to perform some key combination in a short window Hardly a problem in my experience - just hold down the key while booting. And dual booting is rarely needed anyway and generally just a pita. Just always boot into your preferred OS and virtualize the other one when you really need it. > also modern bootloader sav…
> And dual booting is rarely needed anyway and generally just a pita. Just always boot into your preferred OS and virtualize the other one when you really need it.
I've been dual-booting linux since the kernel 2.2.x era and being able to do it was a major driver to migrate away from windows. It is super important for onboarding of new users that can't yet get rid of windows fully - mostly because of gaming (yes proton is nice, but anything competive that uses anti-cheat won't work yet is the majority share of gaming). And that is the reason I still boot into Windows on my dual-boot machine: Gaming. For me that windows is just a glorified bootloader into GoG or Steam, yet desperately needed and virtualization won't solve anything here.
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#279It's something you can do since a lot of years. I used to do so 10 years ago, when I've got the first motherboard with UEFI. But is it useful? It saves a minimal time in the boot sequence, but at what cost? The bootloader (being it grub, or something more simple as systemd-boot) is useful to me for a couple of reasons: - it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, yo…
> it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, you need to perform some key combination in a short window Hardly a problem in my experience - just hold down the key while booting. And dual booting is rarely needed anyway and generally just a pita. Just always boot into your preferred OS and virtualize the other one when you really need it. > also modern bootloader sav…
I have experience with two different laptops:
1. Dell enterprise laptops generally have a robust EFI system which allows for all kinds of `.efi` files to boot on `vfat` partitions. Dell laptops also have a good firmware setup for stuff like mokutils to work so that people can use measured boot with their own version of linux. They also work extremely well with self-encrypting nvme drives.
2. HP consumer laptops which are the worst of lot and essentially prevent you from doing anything apart from stock configurations, almost like on purpose.
3. All other laptops which have various levels of incompetence but seems pretty harmless.
For all laptops apart from Dell, Grub is the bootloader that EFI could never be.
Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
#280It's something you can do since a lot of years. I used to do so 10 years ago, when I've got the first motherboard with UEFI. But is it useful? It saves a minimal time in the boot sequence, but at what cost? The bootloader (being it grub, or something more simple as systemd-boot) is useful to me for a couple of reasons: - it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, yo…
> - it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, you need to perform some key combination in a short window, also modern bootloader save the last boot option such that if Windows reboots for an update Linux does not start
Do people really dual boot a lot in 2024? It was a good use case when virtualization was slow but decades after the CPU started shipping with virtualization extensions there is virtually zero overhead in using VM nowadays and it is much more convenient than rebooting and losing all your open applications just to start one on another OS.
> - it allows you to boot any other EFI application, such as memtest, or efi shell. Most UEFI firmwares doesn't have a menu to do so.
How many times in a decade are you running memtest?
Getting to UEFI firmware or booting another OS/drive is just a matter of holding one key on my thinkpad. I would just simply not buy and bad hardware that doesn't allow me to do that. Vote with you wallet damit.
I would also argue that you can perfectly have grub sitting alongside a direct boot to kernel in an UEFI setup. There are many other bootloaders than grub and users are still free to use them instead of what the distro is shipping. UEFI basically allows you to have as many bootloader as you have space on that small fat partition.