On 4/10/22 05:50, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
On Wed, Apr 6, 2022 at 6:01 PM Neal Gompa <ngompa13@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Moving past the Big Three(tm), the actual
cloud providers that matter from a Fedora context are the smaller
outfits that principally serve Linux users. These are companies like
DigitalOcean, Linode (Akamai), Hetzner, VexxHost, and others who
graciously do offer Fedora Linux in their platforms. All of their
virtualization platforms are BIOS only right now, and getting them to
switch requires them to uplift their platforms to support UEFI in the
first place.
They may only support Linux users today, but if
they want to grow (and while it is possible to
survive as a niche service, many see growth
as the way to increased revenue/profits (go
big or go home)), they are going to get pushed
(perhaps kicking and screaming) to support
UEFI as at least an alternative moving forward
as some of their customers are going to prefer
using a single provider, and Windows 11
requires UEFI(*)(**), and it would be a shame
if only the big players were eligible for hosting
such services(***).
Many of these comments seem to be about
the date, not the end state (UEFI)(****),
just like 32-bit x86 and armv7. No one wants
their personal ox gored, but there will come
a time when it will be time to let old systems
go.
Yes, but the whole point is that it's way too early. Windows 10 still
supports not only legacy BIOS, but also i686 (which Fedora has dropped
support for in Fedora 31; Fedora 30 was EOL'd in May 2020) and Windows
10 will be supported until at least October 14, 2025. For comparison,
Fedora 36 will be EOL'd in May 2023.
"We" (and when I say "we", I understand that
is mostly not me), are going to have to
continue to document (and fix, where "we"
have the knowledge) the areas that need
improvement for UEFI booting and runtime.
Gary
(*) Technically it is possible to jump through
enough hoops to get Windows 11 to run on
BIOS only systems, but it is not supported,
and may break at any time. Most people
prefer something that the vendor supports.
BIOS-only users can stay on Windows 10. They have very little reason to
upgrade to Windows 11. It's mostly cosmetic changes to the UI and
there's no major software product that requires Windows 11, but doesn't
run on Windows 10. Adoption of new Windows versions has always been
painstakingly slow, even after the old version is EOL'd, people continue
to use it (I know it's a bad idea, but people do it anyway - look at how
much time it took for people to upgrade from Windows XP, after it was
EOL'd). But Windows 10 is still supported, so it can be used, it's not
more dangerous than Windows 11.
So the question is, why should cloud providers care about Windows 11?
Long term, yes, they do care, but none of their Windows users are in a
hurry to upgrade, they are fine staying on Windows 10 until 2025,
there's nothing in Windows 11 that makes it worth upgrading (in my
personal opinion), especially not for server/cloud use. I must check
this (please correct me if I'm wrong), but I think Windows Server 2019
still supports legacy BIOS and has extended support until January 2029.
(**) Yes, some may prefer living in a
Windows-less world, but the reality is that
(especially at business scale) there are
services and applications that require
Windows today, and will likely require
Windows for a number of tomorrows.
Like I said, Windows 10 supports i686 + Legacy BIOS, as well as x86_64 +
Legacy BIOS until at least October 14, 2025.
(***) Yes, using multiple cloud providers
is often advantageous to avoid vendor
lock-in and provider failures, but scale
(at one provider) can result in savings
(both expense, and duplication of work
supporting the different providers' services).
There is statement by a VC regarding
startups which is (essentially) everyone
should start by using AWS, and then
have a plan to move off when their
scale is sufficient (of course, many
startups never survive sufficiently long
to move off, and others simply prefer
to spend their (precious) engineering
resources in other ways).
(****) Yes, some hope coreboot/linuxboot
can replace UEFI (and it can in some use
cases). But unless/until MS embraces it,
UEFI is the answer (even if one is still
discussing the question that was asked).
I believe the PC-compatible coreboot payloads are the way to go - either
coreboot+SeaBIOS or coreboot+TianoCore. I don't know what's the state of
TianoCore and whether it works on real hardware. I have one working
system with coreboot+SeaBIOS (it's a Chromebook) and I'd like to be able
to use it.
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