Fedora Considers Reducing The Scope That BIOS Systems Can Hold Up A Release
Given that non-UEFI BIOS systems are quite old at this point and Intel/AMD systems for the past number of years have all supported UEFI, another change proposal being considered this week by Fedora Linux is limiting the release-blocking status of various (non-UEFI) BIOS systems.
Fedora would still support non-UEFI BIOS systems but the scope that any issues discovered would hold up a Fedora Linux release would be more limited. Due to BIOS and UEFI testing effectively doubling the amount of testing/QA work by Fedora teams, Fedora is looking at simplifying their BIOS system verification.
BIOS mode support would still be considered release-blocking but if this proposal goes through it would be only release-blocking for default partitioning layouts on NVMe and SSD storage, the fallback video driver support wouldn't block releases, and booting CoreOS images in BIOS-only mode would no longer be considered blocking.
The proposal is still being considered and for those interested can learn more via the Fedora discussion list.
Fedora would still support non-UEFI BIOS systems but the scope that any issues discovered would hold up a Fedora Linux release would be more limited. Due to BIOS and UEFI testing effectively doubling the amount of testing/QA work by Fedora teams, Fedora is looking at simplifying their BIOS system verification.
BIOS mode support would still be considered release-blocking but if this proposal goes through it would be only release-blocking for default partitioning layouts on NVMe and SSD storage, the fallback video driver support wouldn't block releases, and booting CoreOS images in BIOS-only mode would no longer be considered blocking.
Proposal: Reduce BIOS-based systems release blocking status from covering all scenarios (on parity with UEFI) to just limited scenarios. The following would stay release-blocking in BIOS mode:
- Installations of release-blocking desktops, Server and Everything images which use the default automatic partitioning layout to a single empty SATA or NVMe drive.
- Cloud image boot in Amazon EC2 (no change).
- System upgrades (no change).
- OS and application functionality (no change).
- Anaconda rescue mode (no change).
- Both bare metal systems and virtual machines are covered in the cases above.
The following use cases would no longer be release-blocking in BIOS mode (but would be kept blocking in UEFI mode):
- Any partitioning layouts not specified above.
- Any storage device types not specified above.
- The fallback video driver (available as the “basic graphics mode” from the install media).
- Booting CoreOS images (in BIOS-only mode).
The proposal is still being considered and for those interested can learn more via the Fedora discussion list.