[systemd-devel] Splitting sd-boot from systemd/bootctl for enabling sd-boot in Fedora

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mi, 27.04.22 11:10, Neal Gompa (ngompa13 at gmail.com) wrote:

> > Rebooting from the DE has advantages: nice UI without much work, l10n,
> > accessibility, help, integration with normal auth mechanisms (e.g. polkit
> > auth for non-default boot entries or firmware setup), no need to
> > fiddle with pressing keys at the exactly right time.
>
> It also has a major downside that in the event the OS doesn't boot,
> you don't have a friendly way to do recovery.

What does "recovery" precisely mean for you? I mean, on Linux this
usually means you'll be dumped at a login prompt/shell in one way or
another. How does it matter whether you first showed a graphical icon
in that case?

> Nowadays both Windows and macOS provide graphical boot managers and
> graphical tools/environments for recovery. These are both things I
> want in Fedora as well.

Well, it sounds backwards to focus on the boot loader UI side of
"recovery" so much if you don't even have any reasonably thing you
could do in case of recovery better than a login prompt/shell...

Quite frankly, I think we should actually focus on real improvements
to recovery stuff, i.e. boot counting/automatic fallback on failed
boots. which sd-boot all implements btw, in conjunction with systemd
userspace. That kind of stuff makes whole sets of problems go away
entirely, and is *actually* helpful. Whether we first show a graphical
icon or just a text before we dump you in a shell prompt once all is
lost anyway is kinda a pointless discussion if you ask me.

For me recovery means something very different than graphical icons I
must say.

Lennart

--
Lennart Poettering, Berlin