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No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

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Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#301

Post by notorandit »

alerighi wrote: post #45

It'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…

Maybe it is time to re-think the entire hardware boot process and ditch the BIOS altogether.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#302

Post by account42 »

LoganDark wrote: post #214
pzmarzly wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFISTUB requires recompiling the kernel every time initramfs, microcode or commandline change, no? That would get annoying pretty quickly on desktop PCs, which are not that fast with recompiling, and would need to do all of this quite often, e.g. on nvidia driver updates.

The command line can be part of the UEFI boot entry depending on your particular firmware. I think I can recompile the Linux kernel in around 15 minutes, but I have a 12400F. And 15 minutes is still 60 times longer than most people are willing to wait.

It wouldn't be impossible to change the default kernel commandline in the image without recompiling the whole kernel if anyone cared about making that fast.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#303

Post by account42 »

_ache_ wrote: post #43
201984 wrote: post #38

What's the point of using this over plain EFISTUB? I use it with Arch, and whenever I want to boot to Windows, I just use the BIOS menu. I don't see what benefit a Linux-based bootloader provides.

I do the same. The only advantage I can think of is editing kernel boot option on boot.

If your EFI isn't shit you should be able to use the EFI shell to launch the kernel with whatever commandline you want.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#304

Post by account42 »

E39M5S62 wrote: post #188

It's nice to see more people embracing the capabilities of UEFI and Linux. ZFSBootMenu has been shipping an EFI application (really, a UKI masquerading as one) for almost four years now - https://docs.zfsbootmenu.org/en/v2.3.x/ . The neat part is that the first stage kernel boots in roughly 1.5 to 2 seconds. It's not really appreciably slower than other boot methods while at the same time exposing a substantial amoun…

> The neat part is that the first stage kernel boots in roughly 1.5 to 2 seconds. It's not really appreciably slower than other boot methods while at the same time exposing a substantial amount of pre-boot functionality.

That sounds 1.5 to 2 seconds slower than just having efistub in your main kernel image, which honestly is a LOT. Of course not possible with problematic drivers like ZFS but then you don't have to use those.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#305

Post by korhojoa »

prmoustache wrote: post #289
messe wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people really dual boot a lot in 2024? Yes, there are still use cases for it. The state of GPU virtualisation, for example, is a spectrum from doesn't exist/sucks to only affordable for enterprise customers. So unless you have a second graphics card to do pass through with, if you want to use your GPU under both OSes then you almost always have to dual boot (yes, there are other options like running Linux headle…

Most mainboards comes with an integrated gpu though? If you use that one for the host OS, it is easy to pass the discrete through no?

Consumer motherboards haven't had gpus for a while now (IPMI usually comes with one, so servers do), they're built in to the CPU (if they are, not all cpus have them). These can't usually be easily allocated to a vm.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#306

Post by willer40 »

jchw wrote: post #68
ec109685 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the boot loader is using Linux, it doesn’t prevent an alternative OS from being booted into, so there is nothing fundamentally stopping all of grub’s features from working in this new scheme.

It is a bit more complex, though. Quoting "nmbl: we don’t need a bootloader" from last month[1]: > - Possibility to chainload from Linux while using Secure / Trusted boot : Dual-booting, although not supported on RHEL, is important for Fedora. While there are attempts to kexec any PE binary, our plan is to set BootNext and then reset, which will preserve the chain of trust that originates in firmware, while not inter…

[dead]

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#307

Post by redox99 »

korhojoa wrote: post #305
prmoustache wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most mainboards comes with an integrated gpu though? If you use that one for the host OS, it is easy to pass the discrete through no?

Consumer motherboards haven't had gpus for a while now (IPMI usually comes with one, so servers do), they're built in to the CPU (if they are, not all cpus have them). These can't usually be easily allocated to a vm.

He's saying the opposite: Host has integrated graphics, VM has dedicated GPU.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#308

Post by checkyoursudo »

linsomniac wrote: post #92
ta8645 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux kernel does not require an initramfs. You can build a kernel with everything compiled in; with no modules needed at all. Initramfs is used for generic kernels where you don't know beforehand which features will be required. This allows you to avoid wasting RAM on features you don't use. But it is optional.

Is anyone really wanting to get back into the business of building their own kernels? I started using Linux heavily in '92, and I've built a lot of kernels, and am quite happy to not be building them anymore.

I understand not wanting to. I have been compiling my own kernels since about 2008, I think. I have occasionally thought about switching to something else, but really it has only gotten better (faster) over time.

When I was young and spry, I used to compile them with every new minor revision. Now, it is just maybe a couple times per year. I think that cooling it on how often I do it has helped it not become annoying.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#309

Post by tengwar2 »

prmoustache wrote: post #280
alerighi wrote: post #45

It'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 virtua…

Yes, people dual boot. Particularly people who are contemplating a move from Windows. I'd hate to see Linux take the "my way or the highway" attitude of Windows.

Re: No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

#310

Post by account42 »

msla wrote: post #215

I can't wait until the big distros decide multi-booting is a feature "nobody uses" that "never worked" and therefore isn't going to be supported because "everyone can use VMs" and containers and whatever other solutions that do not, in point of fact, solve the problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-booting

It does make sense for most distros to not care about that TBH. Advanced users can always put a boot menu in front of whatever their distros provide if the EFI-provided menu isn't sufficient.
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