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System76's Pop!_OS Switching From GRUB To Systemd-Boot

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  • System76's Pop!_OS Switching From GRUB To Systemd-Boot

    Phoronix: System76's Pop!_OS Switching From GRUB To Systemd-Boot

    System76's Pop!_OS started off mostly as a re-branded spin of Ubuntu for the company's pre-loaded Linux laptops/desktops, but lately they have been venturing to more interesting changes at varying levels of the stack...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Good decision. Grub is terrible and overly complex. Systemd-boot is a breeze and does everything you need it to do in an easy-to-understand manner

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    • #3
      Hope Debian will do it too, they switched to systemd, why not to systemd-boot?

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      • #4
        Originally posted by kaprikawn View Post
        Good decision. Grub is terrible and overly complex. Systemd-boot is a breeze and does everything you need it to do in an easy-to-understand manner
        It doesn't do everything you need. For example you can't boot from encrypted partition with systemd-boot. /boot has to be unencrypted. On the other hand, grub can easily unlock LUKS volume, find linux kernel image on LVM partition and successfully boot.

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        • #5
          last pop_OS was a piece of garbage, we will see if this new one will be better, something I doubt

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          • #6
            That's a very constructive criticism.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by stikonas View Post

              It doesn't do everything you need. For example you can't boot from encrypted partition with systemd-boot. /boot has to be unencrypted. On the other hand, grub can easily unlock LUKS volume, find linux kernel image on LVM partition and successfully boot.
              System76 Engineer and Kernelstub developer here.

              In our testing, the new kernelstub+systemd-boot setup we have configured was perfectly capable of getting the system up and running when it was installed using Ubiquity's standard encrypted disk LUKS setup. We are getting rid of plymouth along with this change, and when the system needed to boot up an FDE OS, it prompted for the decryption password during the boot process. Keep in mind that the kernel and initrd are stored on the (unencrypted) ESP outside of the LUKS, and that the ESP is going to need to be unencrypted on any UEFI installation anyway.

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              • #8
                I have been using pop_OS on a laptop as my "just works" distro when I am to lazy to tweak settings or anything.
                Its currently just a more polished version of Ubuntu currently in my opinion but if this change has an improvement in boot time then its great I think.

                Would be interesting to see some benchmarks on boot loaders.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by isantop View Post

                  System76 Engineer and Kernelstub developer here.

                  In our testing, the new kernelstub+systemd-boot setup we have configured was perfectly capable of getting the system up and running when it was installed using Ubiquity's standard encrypted disk LUKS setup. We are getting rid of plymouth along with this change, and when the system needed to boot up an FDE OS, it prompted for the decryption password during the boot process. Keep in mind that the kernel and initrd are stored on the (unencrypted) ESP outside of the LUKS, and that the ESP is going to need to be unencrypted on any UEFI installation anyway.
                  I believe he/she is referring to having the kernel and initrd stored on an encrypted partition. With GRUB, for example, I can have the kernel, initrd, grub.cfg, and GRUB modules on an encrypted boot partition and GRUB will prompt for the LUKS passphrase before it loads the menu. Combined with UEFI secure boot and a custom-signed grub.efi executable, you can have a fully verified or encrypted boot chain.

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                  • #10
                    This is fine for system76's preinstallations on hardware they know has UEFI, but according to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...boot#BIOS_boot and https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Sof.../systemd-boot/ it looks like you need UEFI firmware on the hardware to use it. That would require a different bootloader to install it on anything I own, all of which are pre-UEFI boards. Boot menu syntax appears similar to GRUB 2 in many ways.

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