Remove "EFI" check from https://cdn.download.clearlinux.org/current/clear-linux-check-config.sh

[bktan8]

Since "EFI" is no longer a requirement to run Clear, the "EFI" should be removed from https://cdn.download.clearlinux.org/current/clear-linux-check-config.sh.

[fenrus75]

I think we want to keep this the UEFI check is still useful ; we don't really support support non-UEFI in the general sense

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On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 3:28 PM bktan8 ***@***.***> wrote: Since "EFI" is no longer a requirement to run Clear, the "EFI" should be removed from https://cdn.download.clearlinux.org/current/clear-linux-check-config.sh. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1834>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJ54FO3VHHTGKSFDGUEEXTRHKXPZANCNFSM4LHPSLQA> .

[ahkok]

Make it a warning, state that we don't support legacy, and use at own risk?

[ketonik]

I agree, CLR should only be supporting modern UEFI hardware.

For interest, Mac's have been using EFI since 2006 (14 years) when first switched from PPC to Intel x86, if your hardware is so ancient BIOS legacy, I should think it best use another Linux, one that use that ugly hacky Grub boot loader, there's a million of them out there.

[lebensterben]

I agree, CLR should only be supporting modern UEFI hardware. ...

@ketonik For what I know many people installed non-UEFI Windows on their machine bought as late as in 2010s. And completely disabling UEFI support means they won't get the chance even to the Clear Linux.

[ketonik]

Why are they bothering to waste their time "trying CLR" when they should know Intel is a hardware company and ideally a hardware company's idealistic preference are users who have and buy and keeping modern hardware.

What is it with Linux people's need to be constantly 'trying out distros' anyway, this is a serious question, what's the legitimacy ratio here? It can't be that many distros are rubbish, I see guys using Linux for 10 years still distro hopping, what's the point, unsatisfied or just wasting time with curiosity?

We all know Intel's objective it to provide a distribution for professional use cases, servers, cloud IOT etc. I think that's reasonable focus.

Pandering to all these pointless distro hopping blow-ins for their curious amusement shouldn't be something to take away development time and focus.

If anyone is serious about CLR for production deployment they are going to have the supported hardware on hand to try. If not go buy a NUC or some cheap recent laptop.

Other than that, there's a million Debian branches out there for desktop guys.

[fenrus75]

ketonik does not speak for the Intel Clear Linux team obviously.
We prefer that people use new-ish hardware, the hard line is around 11 years but the soft line is ideally a bit shorter maybe 5 - 6 years. Not because we want people to buy new hardware.. but because we just do not have many of the old things and the effort to get them to work is higher than we'd like, especially there where we lack hardware.

the uefi thing is very pragmatic.. legacy boot is very painful compared to systemd-boot or other uefi bootloaders, and it would take a TON of time for us, with no real ability to test, to make it work well enough that we'd not have to warn about it.

(virtualization use cases that don't support uefi yet are a middle ground, many of the complexities around multi-boot etc etc don't happen there so it's easier)

[ahkok]

There are still virtualization cases where UEFI is not an option (AWS, for instance). For this reason, we have very limited support for non-EFI boot right now. We absolutely don't want people who can boot in EFI mode to drop back to legacy boot, even worse if they want GRUB support (which we don't) and multi-OS (which we've decided years ago we're not going to).

FWIW, our oldest CPU's supported (Nehalem) often come on motherboards that doesn't support UEFI (I have 2 of these systems: one Sandy Bridge, and a 990X system). Of course, that's museum hardware, essentially, by now :).

So the right think forward is to keep the check, but perhaps make it non-fatal. Not that it matters much, at this point the installer doesn't use this script, as far as I know.

[ketonik]

My 2010 Mac Pro is Nehalem and has EFI.
Anyway Haswell and above should be the oldest, we definitely want CPU's with Intel IGP.
My preference now is Xeon's with IGPs, Xeon's without IGP requiring dedicated 3rd party graphics are a total PITA.

[ahkok]

Anyway Haswell and above should be the oldest, we definitely want CPU's with Intel IGP.

We are not planning to change our current minimum system requirements. This includes the choice that we do not require an IGP. We do not even require any GPU at this time (e.g. for headless VMs), even on bare metal a serial console should work.

[ketonik]

Ah I mislead you on this:

Anyway Haswell and above should be the oldest, we definitely want CPU's with Intel IGP.

It was more a comment directed at hardware Xeon CPU’s, that being, all Xeon’s should (my ideal world preference) have IGP’s built in. Because past Xeon's like the Nahelem above, gave us many a headache when a PCIe dedicated GPU was not on hand when we needed to bring the machine online.

Thankfully now Intel has been shipping many new Xeon’s with IGP’s. Now the struggle is to get into the narrow minded manufacturers (once size fits all mentality) that, there are still users in the market that are NOT gamers, who need Xeon laptops and NUC with only Intel IGP in lower power, we do not need dedicated Nvidia graphics we are not gamers and serious CAD guy use a desktop.

Nice 15” laptop with either E-2286M
, E-2276M
, E-2186M
, E-2176M, IGPU only, ECC memory, power switch on the side, make a perfect little closed lidded, battery backed Clear Linux server.