On Sat, Jul 04, 2020 at 09:51:30PM -0700, John M. Harris Jr wrote:
Many people on this very thread are still using BIOS boot systems,
and one
person provided a source for a NEW system they're using which is BIOS boot,
while another provided factory-default BIOS configurations on hardware
supporting UEFI. That's hardly similar the case you're referencing.
When have I ever said those systems don't exist? All I've ever said is
that those systems represent a miniscule (and ever-shrinking) portion of
the market.
I'd wager that more 32-bit-only x86 systems are still sold than
BIOS-boot-only ones, and Fedora already dropped support for the former.
(btw, You keep mixing up "bios-boot-only" and "bios-boot-capable" --
please pick one and stick with it; it'll make your arguments more
coherent)
It can actually do both, I can dig up the solution that was provided
to me,
using GRUB2, from the thread where they tried to kill off optical media.
Does the Fedora installer actually do this, or is it a brittle
manually-applied hack that could get trashed by anything that wants to
manipulate the MBR? (eg gparted)
(What I did to get around this the last time was to use a small
IDE-attached CF card for /boot. That system used mdraid so it also
made for a vastly simpler partitioning layout)
Intel has NOT ended support for it. Anyone claiming as much is
delusional at
best.
I'm sorry, I'm going to trust Intel's word over yours.
(Now if Intel has backtracked or changed their plans to "require UEFI
class 3 on all client and datacenter platforms by 2020", they've not
seemed to have publicly stated that anywhere)
> Every one of those shipped Apple and Windows-based systems boots
using
> UEFI.
That's not the case, as cited earlier in this thread.
Please actually *read* what I am writing. That 94% market share
represents *new systems* *shipped* with Apple or Microsoft operating
systems.
Macs have been UEFI-only since 2007, and since 2012 Microsoft has
required UEFI for systems shipping with Windows 8 (or newer) Thus, every
one of the 253 million Windows and Mac systems shipped in 2019 were
booting with UEFI. Furthermore, starting in November 2016 Microsoft
disallowed new system sales with Windows 7 (ie the last of the
non-EFI-required-for-preinstalls version) -- so every system shipped
with Windows or MacOS in the past *four years* has required use of UEFI.
(That's more than a *billion* systems!)
...Seriously, these are hard facts, and not something up for debate.
Based on what? Are you assuming Linux is only on servers?
No, as I wrote, I assumed Linux is on all servers and 2% of non-server
PCs, for a combined total of aobut 6% of 2019 shipped units. The real
numbers are less than this, as not all servers are shipped with/for
Linux, and that 2% desktop linux represents the estimated install base
rather than shipping market share.
As cited elsewhere in this thread, most servers, in fact, do have
better BIOS support than UEFI support, with some weird quirks.
You act like there have never been "wierd quirks" with BIOS-based
systems, especially in the takes-five-minutes-to-get-to-grub server
realm.
Vendor firmware bugs are a fact of life. Some get fixed; most others
have to be worked around one way or another.
As well as any small to medium OEM. Most OEMs don't actually care
about
Windows Certification.
Anyone selling systems with Windows preinstalled will care, which means
their suppliers and OEMs will care, because they don't want to get
locked out of the massive market that Windows represents.
(Small Boutique OEMs and embedded/industrial niches notwithstanding, of
course. There's a _very_ long tail of stuff like that. FFS, look at
the diehard Amiga folks..)
Let's be honest, neither my numbers nor yours even matter in
this,
beyond subjective arguments. If we want to make objective claims based
on numbers, we'd need to figure out how many Fedora users have systems
1) supporting UEFI 2) using UEFI.
Of course. We need actual numbers if we're to make informed decisions.
Anectdotally, of the sxiteen physical Fedora/CentOS x86 systems I'm
directly responsible for, all but two support (and also boot from) UEFI.
I hope to finally re-retire the older of the two in a few weeks,
replacing it with a machine only half its age.
(There's also a small pile of VMs too, generally used as build hosts or
for QA-type work. Nearly all are considered disposable and can be easily
recreated)
For the record, I think any notion of auto-migrating systems from BIOS
to UEFI booting is insane. And any talk of retiring BIOS support in
Fedora should probably be put off until the F40 timeframe.
- Solomon
--
Solomon Peachy pizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp)
@pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix)
High Springs, FL speachy (freenode)