Re: [PLUG] Booting, UEFI, BIOS

On Sun, Jul 9, 2017 at 8:55 PM, Charlie Li <ml+PLUG@vishwin.info> wrote:

On 09/07/17 17:01, George Zipperlen wrote:
> 1) Which boot method should I choose? Both BIOS and UEFI involve a
> learning curve for me.
>
At a high level, it doesn't matter. At a lower level, UEFI does have
certain features MBR booting could never have, much of which has to do
with the GUID Partition Table and clearly defined boot executables.
> 2) If I choose UEFI, will it make USB sticks or CD/DVD with the old
> boot method unbootable? I'd like to be able to boot SystemRescueCD
> when all else fails. This may be a stupid question, but I don't
> really understand the modern boot process.
>
They will only be unbootable if you configure your BIOS accordingly, ie
UEFI only mode. UEFI firmwares (in theory and in at least my machine)
implement MBR booting in a thin compatibility mode, thus as long as you
set your BIOS to both, you should be fine. Just pay attention to your
boot order as usual.
> My current plan is to run FreeBSD as the (only) booted OS, using the
> ZFS file system. I see no need for other disk partitions in these
> days of 100Gigabyte to Terabyte HDDs and cheap USB sticks for file
> transfer. I may be wrong on this?
>
Well, with ZFS, you're not using just a filesystem, you're using an
entire volume manager…
> I can then run other OSs, including various flavors of Linux in virtual
> machines (bhyve). I think a hypervisor is better for my purposes then
> a container. I want to learn Linux, and play with things like Plan9 /
> Inferno, and also access legacy systems like DomainOS in MAME/MESS
> emulator.
>
> I'm choosing FreeBSD because I believe that the kernel is lighter weight (?)
> but mostly because it is more like the systems on which I learned Unix in
> user space, admin space, and kernel.
>
You know I support this endeavour, and you're right.

Remember FreeBSD comes with its own bootloader so no need for GRUB or
anything. I have my FreeBSD VirtualBox VM set up to boot using UEFI.

--
Charlie Li
Can't think of a witty .sigline today…

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