On Tue, 2026-09-15 at 23:09 +0200, Henning Reich wrote: > I didn't read the full conversion -> it's possbile I miss some > importent parts of the discussion. > > But if already on UEFI systems, I realy like unified kernel images > (UKI). A single "stand-alone" binary for the system. On multiboot > systems, one binary for each system (full seperation). The > "bootmanager" is the UEFI itself, configurable by the uefi setting > tool of the mainboard or efibootmgr. > > I think most of the current tool-chains use systemd-efistub but in > theory, it should work with a pure kernel too. But the systemd- > efibstub add some nice features and will still work with a "alpine > only" system as its independet of the final loaded system.
It seems to me that the easiest way to switch from one piece of hardware to another, with hardly any more effort than using a screwdriver, is to choose GRUB: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_boot_process#Feature_comparison Solving minor, unexpected problems by experimenting with boot options plays a role in my decision: "However with a non-UKI kernel, one can for example [snip] try various boot options for a single kernel image. For UKI, each change leads to a separate UKI." - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_boot_stub Like I said, I relied on syslinux for a long time, and one day, syslinux got in the way of my screwdriver and me. Since GRUB isn't really bloatware, and you can still configure it manually in a human-readable way, I don't see any advantages in other methods that would really be worth it for me.
