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Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

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Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#191

Post by feikname »

bigpod wrote: post #71

while fedora defenetly is not my cup of tea, first thing i do when i get a new system(desktop or laptop) is disable legacy bios/CSM whatever it is labeled as. This is to prevent mirriad of issus BIOS brings including its horrible MBR. GPT is million times better and for someone who dual boots on many machines (and has a drive with 14 different operating systems as a test) to all you legacy BIOS and MBR fans MBR doesn…

> GPT is million times better

Agreed.

> It wasnt windows's fault its just that its update utility had to overwrite a part of MBR

It was a reasonable assumption that whatever drive Windows' was installed on already had a working bootloader installed, otherwise it wouldn't have been able to boot itself to do Windows Update. Windows did NOT have to override it.

This was not MBR fault. AFAIK Linux did NOT do the same thing as overriding, which is why it has separate `grub2-install` and `update-grub` commands. Once installed to a drive, `update-grub` will only change the simple config file it reads at boot. Perhaps both of them did override themselves when a bugfix or new feature was available, but I don't think Windows's bootloader changed much after any OS release.

Now, GPT/UEFI is a million times better in that aspect because it can allow easily multiple different bootloaders that don't have to know of each other's existence. But I blame Windows in MBR case very much.

Also, some though not all motherboards allow you booting from BOTH old-school MBR and newer GPT so you may not need to disable CSM and still eat your GPT cake. This may be useful if you e.g. have an old MBR drive with Linux and another GPT one with Windows.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#192

Post by userbinator »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #154
userbinator wrote: post #120

Leave things as they are. Code continues to rot. What is this ever-present BS about "rot"!? Why do people think continual changes are even needed? Code should become more stable over time, an ideal that I wish much more software would follow. The way BIOS boot works has basically remained unchanged ever since the first IBM PC, and it's incredibly simple. Linus Torvald's opinion of EFI is worth reading: https://yarchi…

The intersection point between simple and useful is this: - Firmware understands some sort of minimal filesystem and how to talk to a device containing it. - Firmware has a configuration store that holds a few variables and a device tree. - Firmware has the ability to load binary images into RAM from the minimal filesystem above. - On boot, configuration is checked, the kernel and initrd are binary-loaded into RAM, a…

I don't think firmware should care at all about filesystems, because that's already halfway towards being an OS. It should just load the first sector from the selected boot device and jump to it.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#193

Post by wing-_-nuts »

sph wrote: post #189
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland! Ye gods. I tried. I really did. I understand that from a developer standpoint, it's the future. I understand from a security standpoint, it's more secure. From a user standpoint? It completely breaks so much functionality (copy / paste, screen share, blue light filters, etc). Video players crash and sometimes take down the whole OS with it. It puts so much responsibility that used to be the job of the x serv…

Wayland has changed since you last tried. I haven't got copy paste or blue light issues with it since Fedora 35 went with Wayland-by-default. Screen share is iffy on Electron, but that behemoth is slow to pick up new technologies. I don't know about video players crashing either. When talking about a fast moving new piece of technology, it's good to give it a try once in a while and not let your 4 year old experience…

I gave up last week. Vlc and celluloid were crashing under gnome. They worked under swaywm but couldn't find a way to install a redshift wayland clone that worked. There are a whole lot of things that still simply 'don't work' especially if you venture outside of gnome and kde.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#194

Post by Foxboron »

tremon wrote: post #132
Foxboron wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And if Microsoft stops signing your bootloaders it is an automatic death sentence for your distribution, as you can no longer boot the LiveCD without "scary prompts" and/or fiddling with the BIOS setup. Not really? Several popular Linux distributions simply do not support Secure Boot. Arch Linux is one of them.

That's because current generation of hardware does not mandate secure boot on x86. I expect that will change once Windows 11 has had a few years to turn the majority of the computers secure-boot capable due to its hardware demands.

That would be against the current UEFI spec. I get that people are cynical and expect this to happen but I don't think it will.

There are however going to be a lot more issues self-enrolling keys going forward.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#195

Post by Narishma »

probably_wrong wrote: post #156
mustache_kimono wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who says things like this, should be the ones that have to support the legacy code. They should be sentenced to a 15+ year old computer and to explain to their colleagues how we just can't do anything new, because we need to use GCC 4.7 to build the world because , now used by 20 non-paying users, won't work with anything newer. Fedora is only one, relatively fast moving distro, which gives you their software…

> They should be sentenced to a 15+ year old computer I bought my computer about 15 years ago, with what at the time was a pretty beefy setup. I still use it for my everyday work because, as it turns out, you don't need much more than 4Gb of RAM to surf the internet. Due to buggy UEFI support, I cannot reinstall Windows 10 on that PC. If Linux stopped supporting Bios, I'd have to throw it away. But more importantly,…

Windows 10 doesn't require UEFI. None of my computers have it and they all boot Windows 10 just fine.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#196

Post by little_panda »

pja wrote: post #58
jaclaz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IIRC Windows 11 will no longer boot from MBR partitions & you have to convert them to GPT.

It will; there are tweaks out there that explicitly allow for installing windows 11 on an mbr partition.

Hint: download the latest version of Rufus, point it to a windows 11 iso and select the "Extended installation" mode. The result will happily install itself onto an MBR partition.

I performed an upgrade (!) of a windows 10 installation to windows 11 in this manner; I'm writing from this SSD right now.

  PS C:\Users\alexa> $(get-disk | ? {$_.IsSystem}).PartitionStyle; [System.Environment]::OSVersion.Version 
  MBR
  
  Major  Minor  Build  Revision
  -----  -----  -----  --------
  10     0      22000  0

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#197

Post by javchz »

Barrin92 wrote: post #129
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #24

Oh god. So after Windows drops support basically for any PC that is 4 years old, a Linux distribution entertains the idea to follow closely and drop support for any PC that is 10 years old? Is this corporate influence? I cannot believe BIOS boot support is even close to the amount of code required for UEFI boot. Before you say "UEFI is much older than 10 years old", please remember that UEFI only started being a defa…

>a Linux distribution I think it matters quite a lot that the distro in question is Fedora which is by design forward looking and kind of a testbed. They have been shipping Wayland as a default since 2016 when it still had countless of hardware and software problems. Part of the diversity of the linux ecosystem is that distros can be opinionated.

Yes. I mean if it was centos / alma or debian, I would be scared we enter into an era of discarting perfectly capable hardware, but Fedora has always been packed "with the lastest but stable enough".

I'm not a UEFI huge fan (I've use boot-repair a lot of times since its creation), but I can see why maintaining a legacy bootloader could be distracting.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#198

Post by asveikau »

zhfliz wrote: post #186
asveikau wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only snag is swap, which I don't believe can be on a subvolume. Linux can make swap a regular file, even. It doesn't need to be a partition. Google result shows: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/swap#Swap_file

until kernel 5.0 swap files were not supported on btrfs. there's also some limitations, see https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/btrfs-man5.html#swapf...

I don't think these limitations are that major, and not everybody uses btrfs either.

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#199

Post by taifleh »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #193
sph wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland has changed since you last tried. I haven't got copy paste or blue light issues with it since Fedora 35 went with Wayland-by-default. Screen share is iffy on Electron, but that behemoth is slow to pick up new technologies. I don't know about video players crashing either. When talking about a fast moving new piece of technology, it's good to give it a try once in a while and not let your 4 year old experience…

I gave up last week. Vlc and celluloid were crashing under gnome. They worked under swaywm but couldn't find a way to install a redshift wayland clone that worked. There are a whole lot of things that still simply 'don't work' especially if you venture outside of gnome and kde.

VLC doesn’t support wayland. It’s an X application.

take a look at https://arewewaylandyet.com/ to find some alternative app for your X-only software

Also make sure to alias vlc to your new alternative, i keep forgetting i don’t have vlc installed anymore...

Re: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

#200

Post by bscphil »

bitwize wrote: post #153
jeroenhd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secure boot allows you to load your own keys. That's the way some Linux distros actually recommend you to set it up: sign your own bootloader, kernel, kernel modules, everything, and tell your motherboard to trust that. It's arguably even more secure than Microsoft's approach because anyone can boot a Windows install disk, but getting a boot drive with your signature on it requires breaking into your system. This cou…

> There's nothing inherently Microsoft related about secure boot, Microsoft is the root of trust for ~100% of OEM secure boot implementations. Theoretically, you can implement Secure Boot with an alternative root of trust... but you'd have to get the OEMs on board... to the tune of many millions of dollars. Per OEM. The only alternative is to get users to install their own keys, which is fiddly and technical. Therefo…

> The only alternative is to get users to install their own keys, which is fiddly and technical.

It's a bit worse than that actually; it's actively scary and dangerous, as with much EFI stuff. Quoting the Arch Wiki:

> Warning: Replacing the platform keys with your own can end up bricking hardware on some machines, including laptops, making it impossible to get into the UEFI/BIOS settings to rectify the situation. This is due to the fact that some device (e.g GPU) firmware (OpROMs), that get executed during boot, are signed using Microsoft's key.

The key process creation itself is extremely manual and finicky, and probably prone to error.

The process of enrolling your platform key involves deleting all enrolled certificates. Let's hope your hardware provider implemented this properly so you didn't just brick your system.

> Once Secure Boot is in "User Mode" keys can only be updated by signing the update (using sign-efi-sig-list) with a higher level key. Platform key can be signed by itself.

So any loss of your platform key (e.g. by cosmic ray flipped bit, or hard drive failure, or simply user error) results in effectively bricking your hardware, right? (Unless and until you can rewrite the firmware with a hardware device.)

I'm sure some folks have worked out a good process for managing all this, but it feels so flaky to me and I don't have a good handle on what is required to do this right. Back in the day, installing Linux for me used to involve 2-3 cycles of screwing up something with GRUB, having to boot into the LiveCD, and fixing things. Right now it feels like one screw up could be fatal to hundreds of dollars of hardware. That's before you get to the issue of having to mess with the EFI variables, which has resulting in bricking hardware in the past: https://www.theregister.com/2016/02/02/delete_efivars_linux/

Again, some of the above could be based on my misunderstandings, but that's kind of the point as well - the scary thing about secure boot / UEFI for Linux users is that it's a new area of required knowledge that you seemingly need to be 100% right about or risk burning hardware.

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