Post #4261389

2026-07-30 19:46 UTC

Speaking of redundant bootloader features, where is the plug-and-play universal Linux bootloader distro? There should be a Linux distro dedicated for booting. There's LinuxBoot, but its focus is firmware customization, not easy net/multibooting. A "bootloader distro" would ship you a initramfs (or a Unified Kernel Image) as your second-stage bootloader, with its own GRUB-like boot menu and iPXE-like script engine. It would replace nearly all bootloader drivers, and would enable very complicated booting setups, such as booting via Amazon S3 over Wi-Fi.

Replies (4)

@niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be 2026-07-30 19:52

Until that happens, Everyone needs to keep using this hack: dhclient eth0 wg-quick up wg0 mount -o ro 10.0.0.1:/my_root /mnt cd /mnt pivot_root . old_root exec chroot . sh -c 'umount /old_root; exec /sbin/init' \ dev/console 2>&1 This doesn't even work well in 2026, because /sbin/init is not PID 1. Not a problem for old SysV init which is just a collection of shell scripts, but a huge problem today. You can start a PID namespace to work around it, using the existing system userspace as a do-nothing Dom0, but I hope someone else already did the hack for me in a distro.

Open ##4261385
@nate@snac.justnat3.com 2026-07-30 21:49

I've never heard of a more _meta_ form of booting "such as booting via Amazon S3 over Wi-Fi." CC: @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org

Open ##4367167
@higuma@sakurajima.moe 2026-07-30 21:08

@niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be Frankly, I think bootloaders are largely unnecessary in the UEFI era, I don't have a bootloader at all on my main PC so I don't see the point in a bootloader distro. It seems like the UEFI spec allows for HTTP boot, although it's a question how many firmware vendors actually support it

Open ##4367169
@hj@shigusegubu.club 2026-07-30 19:58

@niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be refind?

Open ##4367175