> Can we please differentiate GPT from EFI. GPT may be part of the EFI > specification, but it's a standalone piece - implementing GPT is not going > to restrict anyone's freedom to do what they want with a machine. Some > possibilities EFI offers are more contentious..
You are turning it upside down. Noone claimed that. > GPT is a foregone conclusion unless you are blind to the future. The only > alternative is OS specific disk hackery, and that does no-one any favours. > Single disk 2TB+ partitions will not even attract comment inside the next 5 > years. In OpenBSD on a non-GPT machine, I can have fifteen 2^48 block partitions per disk, now. GPT adds nothing that is neccesary. > Several operating systems out there can happily read GPT disks using a non > EFI BIOS (provided it's not necessary to boot from it), and even in the > case where it's a GPT disk with a GPT only OS (i.e OS X Intel) on a non EFI > BIOS, there are workarounds to get it to boot. You are the only person talking about GPT being neccessary, and now you are saying that is for other operating systems. > Of course, it isn't /quite/ that simple. GPT is still fairly new, and > whilst it's not too difficult to get a number of operating systems to boot > from GPT, sharing a disk has a number of gotchas. Google is your friend for > details here. Sharing? I specifically said that the normal user won't care. That's because the normal user does not install multiple operating systems on a single disk. > I can also say, having done it (and the fact it's not easily googleable) > that although 'hybrid GPTs' (a GPT disk where the protective fake MBR is > hacked to become a real MBR) are frowned upon (there is potential for > breakage) it does work and it's even possible to hack in an extended > partition (OpenBSD's Fdisk is much better than the alternatives for doing > this piece of hackery). It's entirely possible to get a disk sharing > OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, Vista Windows 7 and OS X without any of them > overwriting data from the others. Just be careful. GPT is required for large disk OS sharing? Perhaps. And, who cares? > (for clarity, OS X was the only OS using a real GPT partition : everything > else was on MBR, despite the fact that Windows 7/Vista SP2 x64 (not 32bit), > Linux and NetBSD will boot from GPT partitions with appropriate hackery. > Note that IIRC vanilla NetBSD 5.x will need a customised kernel to run from > a hybrid MBR on GPT, otherwise it gets confused by the presence of a GPT > header. The boot loader was the hackintosh chameleon with Windows 7's > partition manager as a slave (very flexible once you get to know it. Use > easyBCD)) Before you, this conversation was not about multi-booting machines. It specifically excluded that case.
