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

[Lennart Poettering]

On Fr, 06.05.22 10:12, Wols Lists (antlists at youngman.org.uk) wrote:

> On 27/04/2022 14:53, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> > I think we systematically disagree on one point here: I am pretty sure
> > picking a boot loader is genuinely someting a distro should be doing,
> > and not the admin really. I mean, yes, I personally of course switched
> > away from Fedora's default choice of grub to use sd-boot, and of
> > course I'd prefer if it wasn't such a mess to do so. But also: we
> > should not advertise this as something people should actually do and
> > should make easy to do.
>
> EXCEPT. The boot loader loads the distro. An OS has no say in the computer's
> choice of BIOS/EFI because that's what starts the distro. Same for boot
> loader.
>
> There's a whole bunch of comments on LWN at the moment comparing computers
> to "cattle or pet". For "cattle", yep if the distro chooses the boot loader
> who cares.
>
> But for "pet"s (like my computer), (a) I'm going to need more hand-holding
> because I'm not a professional sys-admin, and (b) my system is multi-boot -
> it's bad enough with distros squabbling over who has control of grub.cfg,
> without them also squabbling over whether it's grub, systemd-bootd, rEFInd,
> LILO, whatever whatever.

I am pretty sure the answer to this is not to make choice of boot
loaders configurable, but making them adhere to a common definition
how boot menu entries are defined, so that it doesn't matter which
boot loader you are using, the menu items pop up correctly either way.

i.e. if boot loaders would all implement
https://systemd.io/BOOT_LOADER_SPECIFICATION then there would be a
very clear way how without trampling on each other's feet multi-boot
would work...

Lennart

--
Lennart Poettering, Berlin