On Sunday, July 5, 2020 12:18:46 PM MST Solomon Peachy wrote: > On Sat, Jul 04, 2020 at 09:51:30PM -0700, John M. Harris Jr wrote: > > Many people on this very thread are still using BIOS boot systems, and one > > person provided a source for a NEW system they're using which is BIOS > > boot, > > while another provided factory-default BIOS configurations on hardware > > supporting UEFI. That's hardly similar the case you're referencing. > > When have I ever said those systems don't exist? All I've ever said is > that those systems represent a miniscule (and ever-shrinking) portion of > the market. > > I'd wager that more 32-bit-only x86 systems are still sold than > BIOS-boot-only ones, and Fedora already dropped support for the former. > > (btw, You keep mixing up "bios-boot-only" and "bios-boot-capable" -- > please pick one and stick with it; it'll make your arguments more > coherent) I don't keep mixing them up, but they're similar cases. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, if the vendor disabled UEFI on UEFI-capable systems, the end user is likely to leave it that way. > > It can actually do both, I can dig up the solution that was provided to > > me, > > using GRUB2, from the thread where they tried to kill off optical media. > > Does the Fedora installer actually do this, or is it a brittle > manually-applied hack that could get trashed by anything that wants to > manipulate the MBR? (eg gparted) No, the Fedora installer doesn't create a USB boot entry.. Why would it? It was used to chainload the Fedora installer on systems that don't support USB boot. Also, it's not a hack. This is just one of the many things GRUB2 supports. It's a very powerful bootloader. > (What I did to get around this the last time was to use a small > IDE-attached CF card for /boot. That system used mdraid so it also > made for a vastly simpler partitioning layout) > > > Intel has NOT ended support for it. Anyone claiming as much is delusional > > at best. > > I'm sorry, I'm going to trust Intel's word over yours. Where has Intel actually published anything saying BIOS boot will no longer be available? I can only find articles from 2017, where it was proposed in a presentation. > > > Every one of those shipped Apple and Windows-based systems boots using > > > UEFI. > > > > That's not the case, as cited earlier in this thread. > > Please actually *read* what I am writing. That 94% market share > represents *new systems* *shipped* with Apple or Microsoft operating > systems. > > Macs have been UEFI-only since 2007, and since 2012 Microsoft has > required UEFI for systems shipping with Windows 8 (or newer) Thus, every > one of the 253 million Windows and Mac systems shipped in 2019 were > booting with UEFI. Furthermore, starting in November 2016 Microsoft > disallowed new system sales with Windows 7 (ie the last of the > non-EFI-required-for-preinstalls version) -- so every system shipped > with Windows or MacOS in the past *four years* has required use of UEFI. > (That's more than a *billion* systems!) That's simply false, that "every system shipped with Windows or MacOS in the past *four years* has required use of UEFI." Whether you want to accept it or not, vendors are still selling systems with Windows installed with BIOS boot. It may be true for MacOS, but that's its own little walled garden. I can't say when they started using UEFI, and it doesn't really matter. When a proprietary software vendor started using something doesn't have any bearing on what we should support in the Fedora project. > ...Seriously, these are hard facts, and not something up for debate. See above. > > Based on what? Are you assuming Linux is only on servers? > > No, as I wrote, I assumed Linux is on all servers and 2% of non-server > PCs, for a combined total of aobut 6% of 2019 shipped units. The real > numbers are less than this, as not all servers are shipped with/for > Linux, and that 2% desktop linux represents the estimated install base > rather than shipping market share. > > > As cited elsewhere in this thread, most servers, in fact, do have > > better BIOS support than UEFI support, with some weird quirks. > > You act like there have never been "wierd quirks" with BIOS-based > systems, especially in the takes-five-minutes-to-get-to-grub server > realm. That's not a bug or quirk, some servers just take a long time to do checks with their BMC and other internals. It doesn't take 5 minutes, however. > Vendor firmware bugs are a fact of life. Some get fixed; most others > have to be worked around one way or another. I've not run into a case where using GRUB didn't work around vendor firmware bugs related to booting a given system. > > As well as any small to medium OEM. Most OEMs don't actually care about > > Windows Certification. > > Anyone selling systems with Windows preinstalled will care, which means > their suppliers and OEMs will care, because they don't want to get > locked out of the massive market that Windows represents. No, that's not true, at all. OEMs don't get "locked out of the massive market that Windows represents" by selling systems pre-installed with Windows without a "Windows Certification" on that hardware. > (Small Boutique OEMs and embedded/industrial niches notwithstanding, of > course. There's a _very_ long tail of stuff like that. FFS, look at > the diehard Amiga folks..) > > > Let's be honest, neither my numbers nor yours even matter in this, > > beyond subjective arguments. If we want to make objective claims based > > on numbers, we'd need to figure out how many Fedora users have systems > > 1) supporting UEFI 2) using UEFI. > > Of course. We need actual numbers if we're to make informed decisions. > > Anectdotally, of the sxiteen physical Fedora/CentOS x86 systems I'm > directly responsible for, all but two support (and also boot from) UEFI. > I hope to finally re-retire the older of the two in a few weeks, > replacing it with a machine only half its age. Is the hardware failing? If not, what's the reason for replacing perfectly good hardware? > (There's also a small pile of VMs too, generally used as build hosts or > for QA-type work. Nearly all are considered disposable and can be easily > recreated) > > For the record, I think any notion of auto-migrating systems from BIOS > to UEFI booting is insane. And any talk of retiring BIOS support in > Fedora should probably be put off until the F40 timeframe. F40?! That's only 4 years away! You mean more like F72, right? That's two decades down the road, if not further. -- John M. Harris, Jr. _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
