On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 2:31 PM Chris Adams <linux@cmadams.net> wrote:
Once upon a time, Chris Murphy <lists@colorremedies.com> said:
> What about the increasing growth in linux-firmware and in particular the NVIDIA firmware requirements? My reading suggests it's significant and the future growth also significant.

Could we use a dumb framebuffer in initrd and get rid of all the GPU
firmware from the image?

The main concern about using efifb during the initrd is handling situations like:
 
 - Laptop has the lid closed
 - External monitor is connected to a HDMI port that is only connected to the discrete GPU or otherwise not lit up by EFI
 - We need to prompt for the passphrase to unlock the root partition

It *mostly* would work fine - and maybe we're OK with that (especially if we can reduce interaction with the initrd).

- Owen