For the implementation in Fedora Linux 37, the transition of UEFI support to mandatory requirements for installation on the x86_64 platform is planned. The ability to boot previously installed environments on systems with traditional BIOS will remain for some time, but support for new installations not in UEFI mode will be discontinued. In Fedora 39 or later, the BIOS support is expected to be completely removed. The proposal for this change in Fedora 37 was published by Ben Cotton, who holds the position of Fedora Program Manager at Red Hat. The change has not yet been reviewed by the FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee), which is responsible for the technical aspects of the Fedora distribution development.
Hardware based on Intel platforms has been shipping with UEFI since 2005. In 2020, Intel ceased support for BIOS in client systems and data center platforms. This discontinuation may render it impossible to install Fedora on some laptops and PCs released before 2013. Previous discussions also mentioned the inability to install on virtualization systems that only support BIOS, but since then, AWS environments have introduced UEFI support. UEFI support has also been added in libvirt and VirtualBox, but is not yet applied by default (planned for version 7.0 in VirtualBox).
The discontinuation of BIOS support in Fedora Linux will reduce the number of components used during booting and installation, remove VESA support, simplify installation, and lower maintenance costs for bootloaders and installation assemblies, as UEFI provides standardized interfaces, while BIOS requires separate testing for each variant.
Additionally, a note can be made about the modernization of the Anaconda installer, which is being transitioned from the GTK library to a new interface built on web technologies that allows remote management via a web browser. Instead of the convoluted installation management process through a screen summarizing the actions performed (Installation Summary), a step-by-step installation wizard is being developed. The wizard is designed using PatternFly components and allows for focusing on a single task at a time, splitting the installation and resolution of complex tasks into small, simple steps executed sequentially.
Kilde: opennet.ru
