On Wed, Apr 6, 2022 at 1:18 AM Ben Cotton <bcot...@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: rharw...@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.
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