Punting GPU Drivers From The Initramfs Due To Ever Increasing Firmware Bloat

[oiaohm]

But not necessarily the GPU firmware in initramfs.

Some cases it is required. Some of your early UEFI implementations using the graphical provided by the UEFI is a good way to end up with random memory operations coming from that into kernel memory space this applies to other UEFI provided services like file system and hid. The motherboards with this problem people end up running windows in CSM mode to avoid random failures to boot. Horrible systems like this you will have set your boot loader to not draw anything.

Not all UEFI implementations is using the UEFI provided services a good idea. Yes using UEFI provided services on broken UEFI implementation is way to have major problems.

https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/efi-stub.html

Yes Linux can booted without a boot loader with EFI/UEFI and some cases you have to-do this because the UEFI services like HID, Display, file system access are all in fact unstable to be used after the UEFI has passed over to bootloader/kernel these cases you want everything to reset the hardware as soon as possible include the GPU firmware this include before doing any other disc access this is purely working from what the EFI has put into memory.

Also some GPU are in fact not usable outside UEFI mode until after they have been reset and reset requires uploading firmware has to come from initramfs.. Yes the UEFI display service is not usable(because of broken UEFI implementation) but to get GPU into usable state without firmware file to upload to it. Yes you want to be able to display early error messages in case root partition or the like is not loadable..

chithanh this is why this problem is not straight forwards. Newer UEFI implementations punting GPU drivers firmware from the initramfs is most likely good idea because UEFI services work. But there will still be users out there using systems with UEFI implementations that are busted who cannot be using UEFI services and get their system to boot those users do really need method to create initramfs with the firmware they need.

If broken UEFI implementations did not exist this would be straight forwards and simple. Reality unfortunately is broken UEFI implementations do exist and people are still using systems with these broken UEFI implementations.