grub-pc versus grub-efi-amd64

[Volker Wysk]

Am Mittwoch, den 02.09.2020, 15:57 +0200 schrieb Liam Proven:
> On Wed, 2 Sep 2020 at 14:59, Volker Wysk <post at volker-wysk.de> wrote:
> 
> > It occured to me, too, that UEFI under Linux is a mess. Now, this
> > explains it...
> 
> IMHO, it really is.
> 
> When I state this, I often get shouted at, usually by people who are
> not really responding to what I am saying.
> 
> Yes, the BIOS was obsolete; yes, x86-64 needed a better replacement;
> yes, EFI was a standard for Itanium and Intel Macs and enhancing EFI
> was one option, although there were others:
> • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBIOS
> • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreboot
> • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libreboot
> • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_U-Boot
> • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware
> 
> But I have a machine (Lenovo minitower) which only enumerates the
> loads in the EFI partition if you press F12 to list bootable devices;
> otherwise, it only loads Windows. I have another machine (Dell
> Precision) which cannot and will not boot Linux from its hard disk
> unless Windows is present and has a boot loader in the EFI partition.
> I have worked on others with other weirdnesses (Dell Precision
> laptops, for example).
> 
> As usual, Thinkpads are about the least problematic, and have a BIOS
> emulation mode that just works, and behaves exactly like a BIOS
> machine, even with 4-5 different OSes installed. I have 1 Thinkpad
> multi-booting IBM PC DOS 7.1, Haiku, A2/Bluebottle and Devuan.
> Another
> currently has Win10, Ubuntu, Deepin and ZorinOS.
> 
> Enterprise Linux vendors see no problem, as they are happy to pay MS
> or whoever to sign their bootloader binaries, so that UEFI in Secure
> Boot mode will happily load them.
> 
> Linux distros not backed by a rich parent company, or no company at
> all, have more difficulty. I also have a machine with MX Linux and
> Windows Thin Client, for instance. I suspect that wouldn't work
> easily
> with UEFI.

One thing everyone should comprehend, is that it's a *struggle* against
Microsoft (and others), even if they come along with pretended niceness
now... I don't want an anti-Microsoft ideology, but everyone should
face the facts and conclude carefully.

Happy hacking,
Volker
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