Getting older machines to boot once secure boot becomes standard
Getting the boot asks: If Canonical drops GRUB 2, how will older PC's without UEFI be dealt with? Not at all?
DistroWatch answers: A few weeks back Canonical decided, on legal advice from the Software Freedom Law Center, to adopt the efilinux boot loader for use on new computers which support secure boot technology. This move should allow Ubuntu to boot on computers which implement the secure boot feature without requiring Canonical or OEMs to give up their signing keys. This news resulted in a lot of talk about Ubuntu dropping its current boot loader, GRUB 2, and there is some concern the efilinux boot loader will not be able to do everything GRUB 2 did, like work on computers which have pre-EFI BIOSs.
Well, as it turns out, efilinux does not work on older computers. As its name implies, efilinux is designed to work on modern, EFI-enabled machines only. Matt Fleming, efilinux's author and a member of Intel's Open Source Technology Center, had this to say: "efilinux is not compatible with BIOS machines, it is only designed to work with EFI hardware. I certainly don't speak on behalf of Canonical or Ubuntu, but as far as I understood their plans, they will only be deploying efilinux for EFI installs and will continue to use GRUB 2 for BIOS machines." Ubuntu developer Steve Langasek also suggested Canonical intends to keep GRUB 2 around for machines which do not require secure boot support. In a post to the Ubuntu development list Mr Langasek wrote, "We hope that we'll also be able to make the first stage loader detect whether Secure Boot is enabled and otherwise chain to GRUB 2."
I contacted Canonical to confirm their strategy with regards to older computers and, at time of writing, have not received a reply. Also this week I downloaded the latest development snapshot of Ubuntu 12.10 and found it would install and utilize GRUB 2 on machines which do not support EFI features. It seems people running older hardware have nothing to worry about with regards to Ubuntu's boot loader.
Note: Thanks to Distrowatch for this update/news. This ain’t my writing.
Getting the boot asks: If Canonical drops GRUB 2, how will older PC's without UEFI be dealt with? Not at all?
DistroWatch answers: A few weeks back Canonical decided, on legal advice from the Software Freedom Law Center, to adopt the efilinux boot loader for use on new computers which support secure boot technology. This move should allow Ubuntu to boot on computers which implement the secure boot feature without requiring Canonical or OEMs to give up their signing keys. This news resulted in a lot of talk about Ubuntu dropping its current boot loader, GRUB 2, and there is some concern the efilinux boot loader will not be able to do everything GRUB 2 did, like work on computers which have pre-EFI BIOSs.
Well, as it turns out, efilinux does not work on older computers. As its name implies, efilinux is designed to work on modern, EFI-enabled machines only. Matt Fleming, efilinux's author and a member of Intel's Open Source Technology Center, had this to say: "efilinux is not compatible with BIOS machines, it is only designed to work with EFI hardware. I certainly don't speak on behalf of Canonical or Ubuntu, but as far as I understood their plans, they will only be deploying efilinux for EFI installs and will continue to use GRUB 2 for BIOS machines." Ubuntu developer Steve Langasek also suggested Canonical intends to keep GRUB 2 around for machines which do not require secure boot support. In a post to the Ubuntu development list Mr Langasek wrote, "We hope that we'll also be able to make the first stage loader detect whether Secure Boot is enabled and otherwise chain to GRUB 2."
I contacted Canonical to confirm their strategy with regards to older computers and, at time of writing, have not received a reply. Also this week I downloaded the latest development snapshot of Ubuntu 12.10 and found it would install and utilize GRUB 2 on machines which do not support EFI features. It seems people running older hardware have nothing to worry about with regards to Ubuntu's boot loader.
HTML:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2012-June/035445.htmlNote: Thanks to Distrowatch for this update/news. This ain’t my writing.
