On 30.4.2022 05:08, Andrei Borzenkov wrote:
On 28.04.2022 10:54, Lennart Poettering wrote:
* systemd-boot is an additional bootloader, rather than replacing
an existing one, thus increasing the attack surface.
Hmm, what? "additional bootloader"? Are they suggesting you use grub
to start sd-boot? I mean, you certainly could do that, but the only
people I know who do that do that to patch around the gatekeeping that
the shim people are doing. Technically the boot chain should either be
[firmware → sd-boot → kernel] or [firmware → shim → sd-boot → kernel]
(if you buy into the shim thing), and nothing else.
I guess "additional bootloader" in this context means that distribution
cannot use sd-boot as the only bootloader for obvious reason - it is EFI
only. So distribution would need to keep currently used bootloader
anyway.
Distributions most certainly can become efi only if they chose to do so,
there nothing technical that stands in that way.
If current bootloader already works on platforms supported by
distribution, what is gained by adding yet another one?
Freedom of *choice*
If the distribution allows users the freedom to choose from a set of
components that the OS "made of" or runs, to fit the user use cases or
has targeted use cases ( which bootloaders such as syslinux, u-boot,
redboot etc. are aimed at ) then drawing the line at bootloaders makes
no sense.*
*
If the distribution does not allow users the freedom to choose, then it
makes no sense to support multiple variants of components that provide
same/similar function in the distribution.*
*
JBG