Limine 7.0 Bootloader Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Limine 7.0 Bootloader Released

Following the recent release of GRUB 2.12, another prominent open-source bootloader project is also out with a new release: Limine 7.0...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Limine-7.0-Bootloader

[waxhead]

Switching to semantic versioning is a sign of structure, rationale and sanity. And if the sales pitch is that it's more robust than GRUB then I'm sold! Gonna keep an eye on this one!!

[ehansin]

I first heard of Limine here as referenced in a posting on something else (cannot remember what, and Limine was just a side-note but looked it up -- I remember now, it was the Arch archinstall "helper script" now including Limine as a bootloader option.)

This is the first article have seen with Limine as the main subject. If anyone has any input on Limine, happy to listen. When I looked it up, it did mention being the reference implementation of the Limine boot protocol, so that got me wondering as well:

"Limine (pronounced as shown here) is a modern, advanced, portable, multiprotocol bootloader, also used as the reference implementation for the Limine boot protocol."

https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine

[post-factum]

If anyone has any input on Limine, happy to listen.

I use it where it is not possible to use systemd-boot, meaning mostly on VPSes that still do not offer UEFI. It just feels less bloated than grub, the configuration is simple and straightforward, and it just works.

The only downside I see is that the devs offer support via Discord, which is a big meh, but OTOH I hope I will not need it at all.

[ehansin]

I use it where it is not possible to use systemd-boot, meaning mostly on VPSes that still do not offer UEFI. It just feels less bloated than grub, the configuration is simple and straightforward, and it just works.

The only downside I see is that the devs offer support via Discord, which is a big meh, but OTOH I hope I will not need it at all.

Thanks for the heads up. My usage cases right now would all be UEFI. I use Grub at the moment just because what I am running does not support systemd-boot "out of the box", but systemd-boot is probably what I would use once more supported with what I am running (may do a Linux-only install of Arch on a laptop I have, so an appropriate time to try it.) Good to be aware of what else is out there!

[skeevy420]

This seems nice as a general purpose OS loader. For me, the only downside is that pressing F11 on boot accesses a boot menu that's also a general purpose OS loader so it's not actually something that I need since there are other more in-depth boot loaders or setups that would fulfill me needs better. Like grub-btrfs, refind-btrfs, zfsbootmenu, and other such setups designed to take advantage of what file systems can do with next to no work. My how my laziness has increased with age.

That's not to say that Liminie can't do any of that, just that it'd take someone who really knew what they were doing to configure Liminie to do what others do out of the box. I gave their docs a quick look over and it seems like it can be a very capable loader. It'll be cool to see where this is in another year or two.

[blackiwid]

I would like to have something like Ventoy a bootloader that basically is independent from a specific distribution, that I don't need to go into whatever my major distro is to there hope that it automatically detects all with the scanning command that generates better config.

The "boot" in a separate partion independent and distros either get detected automatically or they can add some config part or something.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

I would like to have something like Ventoy a bootloader that basically is independent from a specific distribution, that I don't need to go into whatever my major distro is to there hope that it automatically detects all with the scanning command that generates better config.

The "boot" in a separate partion independent and distros either get detected automatically or they can add some config part or something.

This won't really help your cause, but what you describe is somewhat how ZFSBootMenu works. There's no worrying about a bootloader update time scan. Each time you boot, it looks for kernel / initrd pairs. If ZFS was actually an in-tree filesystem I'd use ZFSBootMenu everywhere.

[evert_mouw]

I would like to have something like Ventoy a bootloader that basically is independent from a specific distribution, that I don't need to go into whatever my major distro is to there hope that it automatically detects all with the scanning command that generates better config.

The "boot" in a separate partion independent and distros either get detected automatically or they can add some config part or something.

https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

[blackiwid]

I don't believe in EFI shit wherever I can I deactivate it, so thanks evert_mouw but that does not help me at least in the short term.