UEFI: use syslinux

[boyska]

At the moment we have a ugly binary grub file in order to support UEFI.
This is really ugly, and also difficult to maintain.

We should move to use syslinux both for bios and uefi boot.

[AreYouLoco]

Why not ugly solution for GRUB? Ugly doesn't mean bad, no?

Grub has more personalization possibilities and it's newer so why to use
older syslinux?
For me it doesn't matter. I can help make some tests. To check what is
faster/better/stronger.
Technology.

Cheers

W dniu 09.06.2015 o 15:25, BoySka pisze:

At the moment we have a ugly binary grub file in order to support UEFI.
This is really ugly, and also difficult to maintain.

We should move to use syslinux both for bios and uefi boot.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#148.

[boyska]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:51:57PM -0700, AreYouLoco? wrote:

Why not ugly solution for GRUB? Ugly doesn't mean bad, no?

well, this kind of ugly solution is hard to maintain, and also has some
security problem (does not benefit of debian updates). Using a single
solution will be beneficial from a maintainance point of view, which is
already good thing.
also, the user experience could be "unified".

Grub has more personalization possibilities and it's newer so why to use
older syslinux?

I don't think that syslinux is older, or less maintained, than GRUB.

For me it doesn't matter. I can help make some tests. To check what is
faster/better/stronger.

thanks in advance for your help! It will surely be needed.

[intrigeri]

FYI it's basically impossible, in the current state of things, to have syslinux work both for 32-bit and 64-bit UEFI on the same device if installed in the EFI fallback boot loader directory (the *.c32 modules are called the same for 32-bit and 64-bit, see the discussion I started about it on the syslinux ML if curious).

So, FYI the Tails WIP branch that adds 32-bit UEFI support uses GRUB2 (while for legacy BIOS and 64-bit UEFI, we use syslinux). This is likely to be merged in the next few months, but on the longer term, I'm starting to consider switching to GRUB2 for everything.