ROTFL! I already understand EFI booting well enough to do this, and in fact I am doing this -- after all, I maintain rEFInd! Whether the Mint developers want to adopt rEFInd or stick with GRUB is entirely up to them.mintybits wrote:I would encourage you to put your efforts into understanding the details of booting linux and how to write the code necessary to do it. This way you might be able to develop an EFI booter for Ubuntu/Mint that can be incorporated into the official installer. By gaining a more detailed understanding you would also recognize the means to avoid the grub-bios partition.srs5694 wrote:It's kept me busy -- both incorporating Secure Boot code into rEFInd and answering a lot of posts on Web forums. And yes, Linux is built as a follow-on product for a massive commercial juggernaut (meaning the PC industry as a whole, not just Microsoft). As such, Linux is at a disadvantage in some ways, and the transition from BIOS to EFI is highlighting that fact.
If you want to learn more a new thread would be appropriate.
The BIOS Boot Partition (what you're calling the "grub-bios partition") is entirely unrelated to EFI-mode booting; as the name implies, it's required for BIOS-mode booting. Personally, I see no point in investing time into improving BIOS-mode booting, since that's a dead-end technology. Furthermore, you're the one who's being critical of the BIOS Boot Partition. I have no problem with it, so I'm not motivated to find a way to eliminate it. Since you're the one who finds the BIOS Boot Partition to be so offensive, you should be the one to find a way to boot without it! (Alternatives do already exist, but they've got their own problems -- look into GRUB Legacy, LILO, and SYSLINUX for details.)
Your programming language snobbery is noted. You might want to be aware of a few facts:PS: Your statement that Refind is written in C horrifies me. I suggest you learn about modern languages. C is really old-fashioned and a hacker's delight. New code should not be based on C, IMO, but on properly structured languages.
- EFI is written in C.
- C is, by a very wide margin, the best-supported language for programming EFI applications, including boot managers and boot loaders. No other language is really a practical alternative.
- Every other Linux boot loader and boot manager for EFI that I'm aware of uses C. These include rEFIt, gummiboot, ELILO, Fedora's patched GRUB Legacy, GRUB 2, efilinux, shim, the PreBootloader, and the kernel's stub loader. Chances are most of them use C because of the previous point, although I haven't communicated with their authors about this topic.
- rEFInd is a fork of rEFIt, which was written in C. Thus, I didn't really choose C; Christoph Pfisterer, rEFIt's author, chose it.
- C is currently at or near the top in most lists of programming language popularity. (See here, for instance.) Thus, your bias against C is your personal bias. Get over it.