Proposed F19 Feature: Syslinux Option

[Peter Jones]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 06:57:09PM +0100, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Jaroslav Reznik <jreznik at redhat.com> wrote:
> > = Features/SyslinuxOption =
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SyslinuxOption
> >
> > Feature owner(s):  Matthew Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
> >
> > This feature will make Syslinux an optional bootloader for Fedora, in
> > kickstart and via a hidden Anaconda option. When used this way, it will
> > replace grub2.
> 
> So, to summarize, this saves <= 6 MB of disk space, and <= 1 second of
> boot time, at the cost of extra maintenance and QA burden in anaconda
> and grubby?
> 
> I'd love to hear what anaconda developers and Fedora QA think about
> this trade-off.

I really like it, tbh, for e.g. smallish virt machine images, where the
size of grub2 really is a bit excessive.

> Is there perhaps a consensus what the long-term future will look like?
>  In particular, is it impossible/plausible/probable that most
> architectures will move to EFI, and if so, will virtualization also
> move to EFI eventually?

It follows that we will have EFI on virt (*possibly* still with a CSM)
eventually, and in that case, syslinux in its current form would not be
an option on such machines.  But in the near term, we'll still just have
BIOS in VMs, and this is beneficial there.

> That would mean syslinux is not a long-term
> option.

At least in its current form.

-- 
        Peter