Red Hat Is Hiring To Improve The Bootloader

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Red Hat Is Hiring To Improve The Bootloader

GRUB2 and Linux bootloaders in general don't get too much attention these days as for the most part they "just work" well and most Linux distributions prefer to keep their GRUB menu hidden if at all possible. But at the same time it's an often overlooked area and not an area where there is an eager and glamorous open-source community behind it. However, it looks like Red Hat at least may have some new ideas brewing and they are hiring now to improve the Linux bootloader experience...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Red-Hat-Hiring-Bootloader

[tildearrow]

Make it easier to change kernel parameters (and perhaps add options for the most commonly used ones)?
Otherwise, I say the bootloader is already good...

[Anvil]

funny how Redhat only want Grub2 Developers, an no systemd-boot Devs, does this mean systemd-boot is DEAD? why not revive LILO?

[ayumu]

Maybe they'll try and make secure boot less painful?

[emansom]

funny how Redhat only want Grub2 Developers, an no systemd-boot Devs, does this mean systemd-boot is DEAD? why not revive LILO?

Doubt the hiring managers know the difference.

[cynic]

funny how Redhat only want Grub2 Developers, an no systemd-boot Devs, does this mean systemd-boot is DEAD? why not revive LILO?

where does it says that it is only grub2 developers?

...add new features to the components involved in the boot path, often requiring work in multiple upstream communities, including Linux kernel, grub2 and shim...

[OneTimeShot]

To be honest, I’d prefer the Bootloader to be minimal, with an optional small Linux distro that can be booted to configure it.

There’s not much point having a complex GUI in the boot loader itself…

[stiiixy]

To be honest, I’d prefer the Bootloader to be minimal, with an optional small Linux distro that can be booted to configure it.

There’s not much point having a complex GUI in the boot loader itself…

There were BIOS in the 90's that a had GUI.

And then they went away.

[uid313]

There were BIOS in the 90's that a had GUI.

And then they went away.

Nowadays UEFI have GUI. Just look at Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc, they all have GUI for their UEFI.

[soulsource]

Nowadays UEFI have GUI. Just look at Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc, they all have GUI for their UEFI.

If all UEFI implementations were user friendly, we could even get away without any bootloader at all... UEFI can boot the Linux kernel directly, as long as it's on a FAT partition and has the efistub feature enabled. This is working well enough for single-boot configurations.

The problems start if one wants to set up dual boot. UEFI does have settings to configure if the boot menu should be shown on startup, but (at least some) implementations ignore this flag. So, even if from the OS side everything is set up correctly, there is no way to guarantee that users of different hardware vendors get consistent behaviour...