D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk said on Mon, 13 Oct 2025 16:35:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: Steve Litt via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org>
It's very much relevant today. If you don't want that UEFI mess, you need to format the boot disk with the old MSDOS partitioning scheme that Carey described almost exactly, so that you can boot to an MBR. Assuming your motherboard allows you to do that.
Not actually: the BIOS doesn't know or care about partitions. UEFI is another matter: it does know about partitions (GPT partitions).
I didn't know I was disputing the preceding sentence. The preceding sentence is good information, but it doesn't negate UEFI's disadvantages.
The motherboard, in BIOS / MBR mode, only boots the first 512 byte sector of the boot disk and jumps to it. That requires no knowledge of partitions.
In the preceding two sentences, I think we have an ambiguity about the word "that". Bootloaders like Grub, LILO, etc have no knowledge of partitions, but the 512 byte MBR absolutely does: In fact it contains the partition table in MBR booted computers.
Everything after that depends on your boot loader and OS. Typically the MBR contains code to load more of the bootloader since 512 bytes is rarely enough.
My understanding is the same as what you express in the preceding 2 sentences.
With the right boot loader, you should be able to use GPT on any old BIOS / MBR system.
Fighting UEFI is a pretty lost cause.
Colonists fighting the British in 1776 was a lost cause. Satellite governments fighting the Soviet Union for independence in the 1980's to 1990's was a pretty lost cause. Supporting Nelson Mandela 1943-1990 was a pretty lost cause. Using a monolithic kernel for a Minix workalike was a pretty lost cause. Using Linux in the 1990's was a pretty lost cause. MBR is a "do one thing and do it well" solution, in 512 bytes, plus, as you pointed out, an intermediate hunk of code to run the correct kernel on the correct bootable disk, etc. Whatever flaws MBR had, the confusing, obfuscated, hardware-bricking UEFI is *not* the optimal solution, and not even an improvement. So you can call me the King of Lost Causes, because until I depart this earth, I will continue to advocate for simplicity and thin-interface modularity. It's because of people like me that you can still get Linux without systemd. It's because of us Lost Cause advocates that Linux remains a very DIY system. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com