On Mi, 20.06.18 19:28, Chris Murphy (lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote: > >> Except, it's not simple for installers to migrate to a new bigger ESP > >> in the dual boot case. And having different layouts for UEFI and BIOS > >> and whether there's dual boot or single boot, isn't simpler. > > > > Again, if you don't want to resize the ESP, then go for option #2 > > above. But if the ESP is usable, then go for option #1. > > In 100% of the cases where the ESP already exists, it is too small to > share. No one. Not Apple, not Microsoft, not Windows OEMs, not Fedora, > not any distro, creates an ESP bigger than 550MB. Typical is 99MB for > the Microsoft installer (I have a laptop partitioned by Microsoft's > install, not an OEM installer, and it's 99MB), and 128MB for Apple, > and 200MB for Linux distros. None of these are big enough to share. On my Lenovo I got an ESP of 256M, and I use it happily and without issues for systemd-boot. Maybe that's anecdotal, but all this entirely besides the point. Fedora is not a system that is exclusively dual-booted. it's entirely fine to follow slightly different setups if fedora is installed onto a system that already has Windows installed, or if a fresh full-disk image is generated for it, that can be installed by "dd" or such. All I am saying is that if you built a clean image, i.e. do not do the augment-an-existing-windows-installation dance then there's really no point in doing two partitions... (And quite frankly, I still don't buy the "ESP resizing is totally impossible" thing. It's not. When you install Fedora onto an existing Windows installation disk, you have to resize/move the Windows NTFS partitions anyway to make space for Fedora. And if you do, you might as well move the ESP too. I mean resizing/moving the ESP is a lot simpler and less dangerous than resizing/moving NTFS. But this discussion is entirely pointless anyway, as $BOOT may be separate from the ESP according the spec.) > And the ESP partition is wedged in, again in 100% of cases. It can't > be resized in place. > > Therefore, Option #2 will be extremely common. What percent of Fedora > users dual boot? I have no empirical data. I'd guess 1/2. Fedora generates cloud images and suchlike. All those images really don't need to bother with compat with Windows. > You have to decide which is more important. Broad adoption, which will > require equal doses of compromise and simplicity. Or narrow > adoption. Yupp, compromise is already built into the spec. If it wasn't for compromise then $BOOT would not exist as a concept, and we'd just always use the ESP. > And as Fedora is right now looking to implement BLS, what did they > actually do? Adopt the BLS file format and drop in concept, and > abandon the other 90% of the spec by punting. Yeah, what Fedora is doing has nothing to do with the boot loader spec, that's true. It should really drop referencing the spec. But seriously, $BOOT may be separate from the ESP. It's fine if Fedora implements it separately, and totally conforming to the spec. I am not sure what you even are insisting on here. You appear to say that merging the two should be *against* the spec. But why do you even care about that? You can totally choose to implement the "keep $BOOT separate from the ESP" part, and ignore the "merge $BOOT with ESP" part. It's *entirely* fine if Fedora does it that way. > I'll tell you what. Maybe consider a general purpose layout and a > simplified layout. The typical layout represents a compromise no > matter the firmware, and no matter what OS is already present - your > option 2. This would be used for workstations, and any case where dual > or multiboot is expected. And for things like Fedora VM images, IoT, > possibly server, possibly ARM - where the sharing aspect of $BOOT is > not expected or a consideration, go with the simplified layout - your > option 1. But this is what the spec pretty much already says! It says: merge it if possible, split if if needed. How you define "possible" and "needed" is up to you. All the spec tries to make sure though is that once the decision is made for a specific image the other parties that might want to process the entries know how to find the thing. Lennart -- Lennart Poettering, Red Hat _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/message/TPWDFQ5GJLVHGG44PHI4Z7TPGHJCXSYJ/
