Fedora Considers Reducing The Scope That BIOS Systems Can Hold Up A Release
([Hardware] 25 July 08:49 AM EDT
Non-UEFI BIOS)
- Reference: 0001563884
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Non-UEFI-BIOS-Scope
- Source link:
Given that non-UEFI BIOS systems are quite old at this point and Intel/AMD systems for the past number of years have all supported UEFI, another change proposal being considered this week by Fedora Linux is limiting the release-blocking status of various (non-UEFI) BIOS systems.
Fedora would still support non-UEFI BIOS systems but the scope that any issues discovered would hold up a Fedora Linux release would be more limited. Due to BIOS and UEFI testing effectively doubling the amount of testing/QA work by Fedora teams, Fedora is looking at simplifying their BIOS system verification.
BIOS mode support would still be considered release-blocking but if this proposal goes through it would be only release-blocking for default partitioning layouts on NVMe and SSD storage, the fallback video driver support wouldn't block releases, and booting CoreOS images in BIOS-only mode would no longer be considered blocking.
Proposal: Reduce BIOS-based systems release blocking status from covering all scenarios (on parity with UEFI) to just limited scenarios. The following would stay release-blocking in BIOS mode:
- Installations of release-blocking desktops, Server and Everything images which use the default automatic partitioning layout to a single empty SATA or NVMe drive.
- Cloud image boot in Amazon EC2 (no change).
- System upgrades (no change).
- OS and application functionality (no change).
- Anaconda rescue mode (no change).
- Both bare metal systems and virtual machines are covered in the cases above.
The following use cases would no longer be release-blocking in BIOS mode (but would be kept blocking in UEFI mode):
- Any partitioning layouts not specified above.
- Any storage device types not specified above.
- The fallback video driver (available as the “basic graphics mode” from the install media).
- Booting CoreOS images (in BIOS-only mode).
The proposal is still being considered and for those interested can learn more via the [1]Fedora discussion list .
[1] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/proposal-limit-release-blocking-status-of-bios-systems-to-just-certain-scenarios/160757
Fedora would still support non-UEFI BIOS systems but the scope that any issues discovered would hold up a Fedora Linux release would be more limited. Due to BIOS and UEFI testing effectively doubling the amount of testing/QA work by Fedora teams, Fedora is looking at simplifying their BIOS system verification.
BIOS mode support would still be considered release-blocking but if this proposal goes through it would be only release-blocking for default partitioning layouts on NVMe and SSD storage, the fallback video driver support wouldn't block releases, and booting CoreOS images in BIOS-only mode would no longer be considered blocking.
Proposal: Reduce BIOS-based systems release blocking status from covering all scenarios (on parity with UEFI) to just limited scenarios. The following would stay release-blocking in BIOS mode:
- Installations of release-blocking desktops, Server and Everything images which use the default automatic partitioning layout to a single empty SATA or NVMe drive.
- Cloud image boot in Amazon EC2 (no change).
- System upgrades (no change).
- OS and application functionality (no change).
- Anaconda rescue mode (no change).
- Both bare metal systems and virtual machines are covered in the cases above.
The following use cases would no longer be release-blocking in BIOS mode (but would be kept blocking in UEFI mode):
- Any partitioning layouts not specified above.
- Any storage device types not specified above.
- The fallback video driver (available as the “basic graphics mode” from the install media).
- Booting CoreOS images (in BIOS-only mode).
The proposal is still being considered and for those interested can learn more via the [1]Fedora discussion list .
[1] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/proposal-limit-release-blocking-status-of-bios-systems-to-just-certain-scenarios/160757
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