On Tue, Apr 5, 2022 at 8:54 AM Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com> wrote:
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.
What is the distinction between "support is not removed" and "removing
support entirely"? i.e. what are the additional steps for entirely
removing support? And what's the approximate time frame for it?
"Support is not removed" seems incongruent with "new installations are
not supported." What continues to be supported? Will grub-pc still be
built and updated? Will grub2-install still work on BIOS systems?
syslinux goes away entirely
If the installation media used BIOS GRUB, syslinux could still go
away. What consideration has occurred to switch from syslinux to BIOS
GRUB for installation media? Is BIOS GRUB being deprecated? Or is it
being discontinued in Fedora?
If security vulnerabilities in BIOS GRUB are discovered, and
grub2-install doesn't apply the most recently available fixes, I
consider this an unsupported configuration. We can't say "support is
not removed" while removing the ability to apply security fixes to the
embedded bootloader.
* Some machines are BIOS-only. This change does not prevent their
use
yet, but they are effectively deprecated. grub2 (our default
bootloader) is already capable of both BIOS and UEFI booting.
This is inconsistent with the previous language "new non-UEFI
installation is not supported". Clearly the change prevents their use
if new clean installations on them aren't possible.
However, this modifies the baseline Fedora requirements and some
hardware will no longer be supported for new installations.
This is removal of support. No mere deprecation.
Installs will continue to work on UEFI, and will not work on Legacy
BIOS.
Again, removal of support. The change does prevent their use for new
clean installations.
--
Chris Murphy