Proposing new dual booting release criteria

[Chris Murphy]

On Sep 29, 2014, at 3:32 AM, Adam Williamson <adamwill at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> 
> 1. "The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an
> existing clean Windows installation and install a bootloader which can
> boot into both Windows and Fedora."
> 
> This one is simply dropping the UEFI get-out clause from the current
> Final criterion. I am a big solid +1 to this. If no-one has any
> objections let's get this one implemented this week.

Agreed.

> 
> 2. "The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an
> existing OS X installation, install and configure a bootloader that will
> boot Fedora; if the boot menu presents OS X entries, they should boot OS
> X."
> 
> (so far as I could see on a quick skim back through the thread, this was
> the most recent version of the OS X proposal). I am +1 to this too, it
> seems reasonable. We could perhaps insert that the Fedora install
> process should not render the OS X install unbootable from the EFI boot
> manager?

If you want to, I won't oppose it. But it's really corner case to make it unbootable from the built-in boot manager, to the degree the installation is probably damaged which then triggers the corruption criterion. So we could just cross this land mine if we ever get to it, and call it corruption and pull that card out to block on.


> 3. The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an
> existing GNU/Linux installation, install and configure a bootloader that
> will boot both systems, within the limitations of the upstream
> bootloader."
> Within the limitations? [show] Purpose of this clause is to not require
> us to fix upstream bootloader bugs or design limitations.
> 
> This is the complex one we're still struggling with. I think the above
> is possibly a little broad and could do with either limiting to
> stock-ish installs of 'commonly-used' or 'popular' distributions, or
> some more vaguely-worded wiggle room clause. I don't want to have to
> come up with some kind of criterion judo to justify us not slipping
> Final release three weeks to fix, I don't know, dual-boot with an xfs
> install of Fermi or something (no disrespect intended, Fermi users…)

I understand the logic. I just think that if we step on Fermi's tail and it's self-evidently our fault, we should block on that. I mean, the only way this gets better is if distros agree to standardize on something: either on a handful of layouts (probably fat chance at that) or on a self-describing system that allows arbitrary yet sane layouts. But right now distros are comfortable stepping on each others tails (sometimes their own).

Chris Murphy