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Linux 5.7 EFI Changes: "The GRUB Project Is Showing Signs Of Life Again"

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  • Linux 5.7 EFI Changes: "The GRUB Project Is Showing Signs Of Life Again"

    Phoronix: Linux 5.7 EFI Changes: "The GRUB Project Is Showing Signs Of Life Again"

    Ingo Molnar on Monday began sending in his feature pull requests for the Linux 5.7 kernel merge window. Of the pull requests worth noting are the EFI changes...

    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
    Every time grub is being installed or even updated, it forcefully sets itself as default in the efi boot menu, which is cancerous. You can argue that windows did the same thing in the mbr era, and worse, which is true, but it's no excuse for this behavior. Even if it's intentional revenge, it isn't punishing Microsoft but the user. Whatever MS did decades ago surely isn't the users' fault.

    This should be the number 1 thing to be fixed so grub doesn't qualify as malicious software.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by eydee View Post
      Every time grub is being installed or even updated, it forcefully sets itself as default in the efi boot menu, which is cancerous. You can argue that windows did the same thing in the mbr era, and worse, which is true, but it's no excuse for this behavior. Even if it's intentional revenge, it isn't punishing Microsoft but the user. Whatever MS did decades ago surely isn't the users' fault.

      This should be the number 1 thing to be fixed so grub doesn't qualify as malicious software.
      Wouldn't this be the fault of your UEFI firmware..

      IIRC UEFI Firmware will boot by default into the most recent entry for firmware updates.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by phoronix View Post
        "The GRUB Project Is Showing Signs Of Life Again"
        I really don't understand why most, if not all big distributions still use GRUB by default.
        systemd-haters are gonna hate, but I really love the simplicity and elegance of systemd-boot and never looked back since switching to it.

        I was hesistant at first, but for me it was the only way to get a PC with a LUKS2 system partition running. That's probably the biggest advantage of systemd-boot - it doesn't even have to implement LUKS2 support. It's enough if the kernel supports it.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Britoid View Post

          Wouldn't this be the fault of your UEFI firmware..

          IIRC UEFI Firmware will boot by default into the most recent entry for firmware updates.
          No, I'm specifically talking about grub updates changing your already established boot order, without asking, without even showing a warning. EFI spec is surely at fault here too, as it allows this behavior, but that doesn't really excuse software exploiting it though.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by eydee View Post

            No, I'm specifically talking about grub updates changing your already established boot order, without asking, without even showing a warning. EFI spec is surely at fault here too, as it allows this behavior, but that doesn't really excuse software exploiting it though.
            I haven't found this happen on my install.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Zapp! View Post
              I really don't understand why most, if not all big distributions still use GRUB by default.
              systemd-haters are gonna hate, but I really love the simplicity and elegance of systemd-boot and never looked back since switching to it.

              I was hesistant at first, but for me it was the only way to get a PC with a LUKS2 system partition running. That's probably the biggest advantage of systemd-boot - it doesn't even have to implement LUKS2 support. It's enough if the kernel supports it.
              Probably to try and keep the same setup between UEFI and BIOS installs for now. systemd-boot requires you store your kernels in the ESP, which can be small. Though, this should be offset by the XBOOTLDR spec, if anything ever supports it.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by eydee View Post
                Every time grub is being installed or even updated, it forcefully sets itself as default in the efi boot menu, which is cancerous. You can argue that windows did the same thing in the mbr era, and worse, which is true, but it's no excuse for this behavior. Even if it's intentional revenge, it isn't punishing Microsoft but the user. Whatever MS did decades ago surely isn't the users' fault.

                This should be the number 1 thing to be fixed so grub doesn't qualify as malicious software.
                Another use-case would be having grub as fallback, in UEFI options,... and, boot kernel image directly (with some tweaking,...).

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by eydee View Post
                  Every time grub is being installed or even updated, it forcefully sets itself as default in the efi boot menu, which is cancerous.
                  Why so? You aren't going to trust UEFI firmware to stay consistent and keep your boot order, do you?
                  In most cases overriding it is the best course of action as most UEFI are buggy shit and may try to boot the most recent bootloader, the most recently booted OS or windows bootloader at their discretion if there is some change in the EFI partition.

                  That said, GRUB can boot everything so you only need one.

                  Also, if you dislike GRUB you can also use rEFInd, that is fire-and-forget and does not do this. http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

                  Assuming your UEFI isn't trash and does not update its settings on its own, I've had this happen plenty of times with Windows on a few laptops. The little shit UEFI firmware will decide that whatever I manually booted last is the "default" now.
                  Ops you booted windows last, let me decide that it's what you wanted to boot first even if you clearly set the boot priority list in a specific order from the UEFI interface.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by eydee View Post
                    Whatever MS did decades ago surely isn't the users' fault.
                    Decades ago? They are still doing it sometimes on some systems (no idea why it's working on some systems and not in other). I remember Windows switching to default OS in UEFI after updates sometimes on my laptop.

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