To UEFI or not to UEFI? [Solved]

[baldyeti]

This may help https://mxlinux.org/wiki/system/uefi/

I don't care much for UEFI but this looks like a nice resource. I noticed the page references missing PNG images (their src being localhost). Perhaps this happened during the recent site conversion ? Can someone notify Jerry3904 ?

[Eadwine Rose]

You can send him a PM.

[baldyeti]

Er ... how does this work ? After i hit "submit" the message goes to my "outbox", not the "sent" box ?!?

[Eadwine Rose]

That is because only when it is read it goes to the sent box.

[baldyeti]

Alright, tx.

[Sparky]

Well, I booted from UEFI to the live environment and installed MX. The process was a bit different with quite a few questions requiring numeric answers, however It shows up as in legacy mode on boot up.

[figueroa]

My own anecdote: I set up my current main desktop computer roughly a year ago. I expect I'll use this box for another ten years or so. At the time of the setting up, I chose legacy mode and MSDOS/MBR partitioning. It meets my needs and I pretty much understand it. I've been at this for a while. I'm only running Linux.

It wasn't many months before I was sorry I did that, though I don't intend to change because I don't think it is worth the chase in my use case. However, UEFI and GPT appear to be the future and I sort of understand it well enough (now) to use it properly without issues and I see the advantages. I feel "left behind" on my personal box though the new computers that we are setting up at the school where I do system administration are all strictly UEFI, GPT, and Linux.

Don't be "left behind." :-)

[fehlix]

Well, I booted from UEFI to the live environment and installed MX. The process was a bit different with quite a few questions requiring numeric answers, however It shows up as in legacy mode on boot up.

Yes, Live BIOS-boot menu (ISO/SYSlinux) and UEFI-boot menu (GRUB) look different. Whereas the GRUB-menu booted from installed system look nearly identical in both UEFI and BIOS modes.
... well, with one little exception,
you might find when booted in UEFI a "Memory test" menu entry, which might not work, because
of a bug within GRUB. If you have such memory test entry, it would not run, because the memory test entry would probably run only in BIOS-mode. ... reminds me to verify this and potentially to file a bug report in our bugzilla (or just fix it ) :lipsrsealed:
But anyway when you booted into the system, you will not see any difference with the running MX linux, easily.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

This partition will be mounted to /boot/efi in the installed system.

In theory, that mount point is not needed for a running or booting into the system. And currently this mount point will not be created by the installer.

Ah, I see, apolopgies for the mistake, I presumed you were following Debian's lead.

Perhaps it would be better not to have the ESP mounted at all, the FAT filesystem is rather frangible.

In my Arch Linux box I use systemd-boot with /boot mounted to the ESP and systemd will unmount it automatically after 120 seconds of inactivity and only mount it when needed.

[fehlix]

Ah, I see, apolopgies for the mistake, I presumed you were following Debian's lead.

Perhaps it would be better not to have the ESP mounted at all, the FAT filesystem is rather frangible.

In my Arch Linux box I use systemd-boot with /boot mounted to the ESP and systemd will unmount it automatically after 120 seconds of inactivity and only mount it when needed.

Not at all, nothing to apologies. The point about the efi-mount point you triggered is very good.
Because their are good arguments to have the efi-mount point but also some other good one to better not have the mount point. I do lean a bit in direction to have the efi-mount point, but properly write restricted. The one reason when sometimes it is needed is when a user needs/wants to recreate re install the grub-efi, which currently would fail when running grub-install without the efi-mount point. So a user would just get an error message, and probably post another not needed question into the forum :lipsrsealed:
And somebody else would explain that he need first to mount the efi partition etc pp.
So from this point better to have the mount point and doing it as most others are doing also.