GRUB 2.12 Bootloader Brings SDL2 Support, Boot Loader Interface

[inference]

Gotta luv these modern day programmers that like to plug up a process that should be as drop-dead simple as possible with bells & whistles that make it more complicated than it needs to be.

As I say "modern day programmers" because I doubt that the GRUB team is so advanced that they have a separate clueless sales-marketing team.

I am an Admin. I need my boot loader software to load the OS of the computer, not display fancy pretty BS pictures.

In the future I guess we can expect to get slowly escalating video card requirements from the GRUB team and error messages like:

"Cannot Boot - Unsupported Video Mode (or, Video Card)"

At this point, GRUB is an OS; you are booting an OS to boot another OS...

Just boot your kernel, directly, or chroot/use a VM from another OS...

[cj.wijtmans]

At this point, GRUB is an OS; you are booting an OS to boot another OS...

Just boot your kernel, directly, or chroot/use a VM from another OS...

UEFI is a complete OS with shell as well. For good measure your kernel should load a second kernel that loads your OS to load a virtualized container or vm to sandbox your os that loads another container to sandbox your app.

the thing is we need something like grub to load a software encrypted OS. Cant rely on tpm (alone) to be secure.

[hyperchaotic]

Still no LUKS2 support for boot?
GRUB's developers definitely don't care about privacy or security!
Otherwiwse how this is not a priority and that bug is still not fixed?

I guess the people donating their time and effort do what they feel is interesting or important and that's ok. I'm sure they'd be happy to talk about it and welcome contributors of new features.

[justinkb]

Any idea what the current patch difference state is with Fedora/Red Hat?

(for those wondering why I am asking, AFAIK, grub2 was pretty quiet upstream for a while... and Red Hat/Fedora continued development downstream. Most distros moved to the downstream Fedora soft-fork. Fedora has carried up to 347 patches in version 2.06. When upstream development picked back up, it was a few hundred patches behind and all those changes needed to be pushed back upstream. This has been happening, but it was considered irresponsible to wholesale accept all changes and a process was initiated to upstream the patches, last I heard there was still a difference of over 100 patches).

They have a lot of UEFI secure boot related changes. And I mean a lot. The architecture of that implementation is pretty complicated actually. I don't foresee redhat rebasing onto 2.12 on short notice

[timofonic]

I really hope Grub releases 2.13 after it solved this mess. Red Hat and their nasty downstream forks, how typical their shitty attitude is. Why didn't they sent those patches as MR/PR to upstream? That sucks, they are behaving like a proprietary software corp.

Grub project is weird too, anyway...

[Vistaus]

Gotta luv these modern day programmers that like to plug up a process that should be as drop-dead simple as possible with bells & whistles that make it more complicated than it needs to be.

As I say "modern day programmers" because I doubt that the GRUB team is so advanced that they have a separate clueless sales-marketing team.

I am an Admin. I need my boot loader software to load the OS of the computer, not display fancy pretty BS pictures.

In the future I guess we can expect to get slowly escalating video card requirements from the GRUB team and error messages like:

"Cannot Boot - Unsupported Video Mode (or, Video Card)"

People: “The pretty boot menu's from macOS and reFIND are the best thing since sliced bread!!!”
Also people: “Stop prettyfing GRUB with the bells and whistles that can make GRUB look pretty!!!”

[timofonic]

People: “The pretty boot menu's from macOS and reFIND are the best thing since sliced bread!!!”
Also people: “Stop prettyfing GRUB with the bells and whistles that can make GRUB look pretty!!!”

Or Clover...

I hope Grub development gets faster pace, gets more support for certain stuff, it is able to replace uboot and such in many more non-x86 platforms and adds that eye candy stuff.

[ssokolow]

People: “The pretty boot menu's from macOS and reFIND are the best thing since sliced bread!!!”
Also people: “Stop prettyfing GRUB with the bells and whistles that can make GRUB look pretty!!!”

I think the complaint is more "No! That's the wrong place for that! It was part of OpenFirmware and then UEFI on macs. If your UEFI is going to support graphics because bling, then it goes in the UEFI. Don't load an OS (Linux) from an OS (GRUB) from an OS (UEFI) just to get a graphical boot menu."

[ElectricPrism]

I hate GRUB, compared to systemd-boot (gummiboot) configuration is a PITA. Having to rebuild my configuration after each kernel upgrade or risk a un-bootable system. It's a bad experience.

However considering recently a security hole found in all UEFI -- in the future I will probably use coreboot and grub or equivalent wherever possible to eliminate that issue.

I'm not sure what SDL2 support means? Does that mean the screen will finally not be ugly after 20 years? What about touch support and other things like manually adding kernel options at boot -- will that finally not dump me to some ackward vi editor where I'm expected to having ninja tech skills to just add a boot option? Made for people and not only programmers?

It's been a while since I've used grub, but there are many practical ways they could improve it to win me back -- up until now I have viewed it as archaic clinging to a other decade. I think there's room in the space for a grub or equivalent without the warts. Yeah it's great it can boot 16-bit operation systems and run on a toaster or whatever like how linux has floppy disk driver in current decade -- but what would really win me over is if it didn't look like a spaghetti mess of shit with a file organizational structure that doesn't require a PhD in computer science to navigate -- you know -- a normal thing made for normal humans without all the gate-keeping to filter out the non-1337-club.

Expecting ad-hominen attacks about how I just need to read a 400 page encyclopedia to appreciate the devine beauty of grub and how it's okay that only 4 people on the planet understand it, or WorksForMeTM or something else.

Software is supposed to be made for humans, not humans for software. They can win me over (hell knows after 10-15 years of complaining GIMP finally did, but it's really just up to them. GIMP shaking the GIMP is Love, GIMP is Life white knights off was a massive win for their PR over the last decade -- finally people can analyze and criticize in a pragmatic way and v 3.0 is just around the corner to kick butt.)

[ElectricPrism]

[...] Red Hat and their nasty downstream forks, how typical their shitty attitude is. Why didn't they sent those patches as MR/PR to upstream? That sucks, they are behaving like a proprietary software corp.

Is anyone going to tell him? /s

In all seriousness though, I make a motion that from now on we replace the name RedHat with IBM/RedHat

It is what it is.