On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 1:54 PM, Kyle Marek <psppsn96(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 06/22/2018 03:35 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
What is the benefit to sharing $BOOT between different operating
systems/distros?
Some of this is argued in the two BootLoaderSpecs. Mainly to avoid
stomping on each other's installations and bootloaders, and a bit less
redundancy instead of every distro having its own $BOOT.
But really, how many people multiboot 2 or more Linux distros? My
shits n giggles guess?
Most common is Windows + Linux. Next most common macOS + Linux. Next
most common Linux only. I think in some sense we're in the weeds on
multibooting. It is possible we're overvaluing shared $BOOT.
I'd like to point out that $BOOT doesn't have to be shared to
dual-boot
multiple distros or benefit from other details of BLS.
True. Although the original BootLoaderSpec script file format only
supports paths relative to $BOOT. There's no way to reference other
volumes, even if they are readable by the firmware. You'd have to
depend on the bootloader's native configuration file format instead of
BLS format for such a feature, meaning no way to support it with one
format across bootloaders.
Each installed OS that wants to use some derivative of BLS really
*can*
just each have their own $BOOT and even use different bootloaders to
implement BLS. (bootloaders can be chained in BIOS, and they can exist
independently of each other in EFI)
Sure.
The primary benefit I see to adopting BLS here is the drop-in
configuration and consistent syntax regardless of the implementing
bootloaders. The benefit to sharing $BOOT between operating systems
isn't obvious to me, and only introduces limitations such as this
filesystem one.
I agree. And I like the consistent location and path.
The change is a win, even if it's not a warm and fuzzy embrace of the
whole BootLoaderSpec. It leaves the door open to either distros
constraining their implementations toward BootLoaderSpec, or the
broadening of the BootLoaderSpec to grow the market.
My personal assessment is that the latter is more likely.
--
Chris Murphy