On Wed, Apr 6, 2022 at 1:18 AM Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com> wrote:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DeprecateLegacyBIOS
== Summary ==
Make UEFI a hardware requirement for new Fedora installations on
platforms that support it (x86_64). Legacy BIOS support is not
removed, but new non-UEFI installation is not supported on those
platforms. This is a first step toward eventually removing legacy
BIOS support entirely.
== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:rharwood| Robbie Harwood]], [[User:jkonecny| Jiří
Konečný]], [[User:bcl| Brian C. Lane]]
* Email: rharwood(a)redhat.com
== Detailed Description ==
UEFI is defined by a versioned standard that can be tested and
certified against. By contrast, every legacy BIOS is unique. Legacy
BIOS is widely considered deprecated (Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Apple)
and on its way out. As it ages, maintainability has decreased, and
the status quo of maintaining both stacks in perpetuity is not viable
for those currently doing that work.
It is inevitable that legacy BIOS will be removed in a future release.
To ease this transition as best we can, there will be a period (of at
least one Fedora release) where it will be possible to boot using the
legacy BIOS codepaths, but new installations will not be possible.
While it would be easier for us to cut support off today, our hope is
that this compromise position will make for a smoother transition.
Additional support with issues during the transition would be
appreciated.
Just a personal frustration here, I recently worked on a project to
rewrite the mesa driver for a range of intel GPUs from gen4->gen7, we
ship it in Fedora 35 as the default driver on those GPUs.
It was of great benefit to me and the community that I could use
Fedora for developing this sort of feature, and have a place to roll
it out for validation. This change would invalidate a wide range of
the machines I wrote this on from being used.
I have a fully operational 965G desktop machine that runs f35, a
mostly operational 965GM HP laptop with busted fan, and a GM45 in a
Thinkpad W500 machine that are all pre-UEFI but still can run fedora.
I've got one Ironlake HP laptop that has UEFI but only if I hand pick
the boot file since its UEFI implementation has a bunch of BIOS
warnings around it saying not to enable it for normal use. The T440s I
have doesn't seem to be installed in UEFI mode and that likely means I
need to nuke it and start again.
This would mean for future projects I'd probably have to consider
moving off Fedora would definitely count as a major pita for me, I
also cleanly installed all these machines with F35 as I didn't want
the behaviour of updating from f31 to f33 to f35 etc.
Dave.