Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead

pretalx.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 460 posts

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

#421

Post by kasabali »

mjg59 wrote: post #265
kasabali wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> completely useless if you care about Measured Boot I stopped reading there. All these engineers who help build and defend this draconian crap should be forced to used only an iPad for the rest of their lives.

Measured boot is, in itself, under user control - you can seal whatever secrets you want to any specific state and they'll only be accessible in that situation. This has obvious benefits in terms of being able to (for instance) tie disk encryption keys to a known boot state and so avoid needing to type in a decryption phrase while still preventing anyone from being able to simply modify your boot process to obtain th…

> in itself

Unfortunately nothing is "in itself" in the real world. All these so called security features end up locking down users more and more in their own devices.

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

#422

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

TylerE wrote: post #376
Arch-TK wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boot disk isn't guaranteed to be writable.

Even after you’ve already installed a custom boot laser to it? I mean, I agree with you in principle, but we already have the chicken - can’t existence of the egg be assumed?

Consider a DVD that's EFI bootable; we can have whatever bootloader we want on the disc but it is not physically writable

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

#423

Post by Arch-TK »

TylerE wrote: post #376
Arch-TK wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boot disk isn't guaranteed to be writable.

Even after you’ve already installed a custom boot laser to it? I mean, I agree with you in principle, but we already have the chicken - can’t existence of the egg be assumed?

Aside from the DVD issue mentioned in the other person's comment. I have a design for a SED OPAL based encryption setup where the system boots with a read-only boot partition and it only becomes RW as part of the initramfs running (although optionally you can just keep it RO until you need to write to it, but this requires buy-in from the package manager).

I think network booting with EFI would also suffer from a similar problem.

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

#424

Post by 1oooqooq »

rini17 wrote: post #409
1oooqooq wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it doesn't cover any of the unmentionable features that are so bad on grub. they will either be implemented in the kennel or the stub, because well, people will need dual boot, weird crypto, etc. exactly like happened with systemd. all the complexity was ignored.. then bolted on. do you miss crontab -e?

I do miss the ability to fix thing easily when crontab -e breaks. Oh, but systemd never breaks, okay.

crontab -e broke? you are special :)

my point is that the alternative to "crontab -e" is writting two files with 10~20 lines in difficult to remember paths. it's impossible to do without a webbrowser nearby.

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

#425

Post by michaelmrose »

prmoustache wrote: post #416
michaelmrose wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average PC is already a trade of that costs the average user around $800 and near 2/3 would need a substantial RAM upgrade a new GPU or both to make gaming through VM passthrough a reality. Most people aren't looking to buy new hardware and learn new tech to game. It sounds like a useful toy for those whom already enjoy playing with their computer as much as playing with the game. That said wouldn't limiting the…

> Most people aren't looking to buy new hardware and learn new tech to game. Most people don't play game. Most people that play game that isn't solitary or a web game just buy a playstation, xbox or Switch. Only a relatively small fraction of people playing AAA games use computer for that. The most hardcore one and the most willing to spend money on a game Rig. And I am pretty sure most of them aren't the least inter…

Only a tiny portion of people are interested in Linux in the first place. Of those it seems like around 25% dual boot.

https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_dual_boot_win

It doesn't make sense to ex post facto try to justify what people SHOULD do when we can look at what in fact they actually do.

The idea that the only people that play PC games are ONLY play AAA games on their souped up rigs is also a counterfactual. People play games everything from 8 year old laptops to $5000 custom built rigs with RGB everything. You are oversimplifying the universe consists of many and varied irrational individuals not spherical cows.

Dual booting is simple and suitable for nearly 100% of machines running Linux.

Wine/Proton is suitable for nearly 100% of machines running Linux. Steam has reduces this complexity to a few clicks for the majority of titles.

GPU passthrough is unsuitable for 70-80% of configurations and by dint of complexity undesirable for nearly everyone which is why virtually nobody does this.

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

#426

Post by prmoustache »

michaelmrose wrote: post #425
prmoustache wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people aren't looking to buy new hardware and learn new tech to game. Most people don't play game. Most people that play game that isn't solitary or a web game just buy a playstation, xbox or Switch. Only a relatively small fraction of people playing AAA games use computer for that. The most hardcore one and the most willing to spend money on a game Rig. And I am pretty sure most of them aren't the least inter…

Only a tiny portion of people are interested in Linux in the first place. Of those it seems like around 25% dual boot. https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_dual_boot_win It doesn't make sense to ex post facto try to justify what people SHOULD do when we can look at what in fact they actually do. The idea that the only people that play PC games are ONLY play AAA games on their souped up rigs is also a counterfactual. P…

> Wine/Proton is suitable for nearly 100% of machines running Linux. Steam has reduces this complexity to a few clicks for the majority of titles.

Why would one dual boot if games work so well?

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

#427

Post by prmoustache »

sqeaky wrote: post #418
prmoustache wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people aren't looking to buy new hardware and learn new tech to game. Most people don't play game. Most people that play game that isn't solitary or a web game just buy a playstation, xbox or Switch. Only a relatively small fraction of people playing AAA games use computer for that. The most hardcore one and the most willing to spend money on a game Rig. And I am pretty sure most of them aren't the least inter…

Approximately half of gaming revenue is from PC customers. It wavers up and down depending on exactly what metric you want to use and when the last console refresh was. You are correct on the complexity cost and how most people, even those with nice gaming computers, just don't want to deal with more complexity than needed. Even mandating a store app that works causes a significant hit to conversion rates. EA couldn'…

> Approximately half of gaming revenue is from PC customers

Whales.

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

#428

Post by michaelmrose »

prmoustache wrote: post #426
michaelmrose wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a tiny portion of people are interested in Linux in the first place. Of those it seems like around 25% dual boot. https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_dual_boot_win It doesn't make sense to ex post facto try to justify what people SHOULD do when we can look at what in fact they actually do. The idea that the only people that play PC games are ONLY play AAA games on their souped up rigs is also a counterfactual. P…

> Wine/Proton is suitable for nearly 100% of machines running Linux. Steam has reduces this complexity to a few clicks for the majority of titles. Why would one dual boot if games work so well?

Because people don't want to play "games" they oft want to play a particular game and if it doesn't work it doesn't work. Also consider how many people are new and they have an existing computer with Windows the standard play is to dual boot first and then possibly transition to only Linux if it works well enough for usage.

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

#429

Post by sqeaky »

prmoustache wrote: post #427
sqeaky wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately half of gaming revenue is from PC customers. It wavers up and down depending on exactly what metric you want to use and when the last console refresh was. You are correct on the complexity cost and how most people, even those with nice gaming computers, just don't want to deal with more complexity than needed. Even mandating a store app that works causes a significant hit to conversion rates. EA couldn'…

> Approximately half of gaming revenue is from PC customers Whales.

I suppose everyone is entitled to their opinion, but most people base it on something. You are free to do whatever you're doing, but I hope no one takes you seriously.

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

#430

Post by lofaszvanitt »

bayindirh wrote: post #46
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #39

Also create a boot please that rivals w10's almost instant boot process. I just hate the current slow/non parallel boot process.

Many of our systems boot under 10 seconds after GRUB. You can make GRUB menu to timeout quickly or be completely hidden if you want. A modern system with a connected network can boot quite fast. Windows' instant boot is not boot actually, it's thawing hibernation. One of the biggest features touted by systemd is "embarrassingly parallel" booting capabilities, which Parallel SYS-V already sported. IOW, Linux already c…

Not fast enough.
Post reply on HN