Fedora 29 To Fully Embrace The FreeDesktop.org Boot Loader Specification

Adding to the growing list of features for Fedora 29 is a plan to fully support the FreeDesktop.org Boot Loader Specification and making use of their defined fragment files to populate boot-loader boot menu entries, including the kernel entries.

The FreeDesktop.org Boot Loader Specification is an existing spec for trying to allow a standardized boot configuration format between operating systems / Linux distributions that are based upon drop-in files. The goal has been to be "robust, simple, works without rewriting configuration files and is free of namespace clashes." The specification can be found on FreeDesktop.org and in its current form for the past two years.

Making use of the "BLS" specification will help unify the different Fedora boot-loader configuration files regardless of architecture, eliminating some of Grubby's work as their utility for boot-loader configuration the past decade and a half, and other improvements thanks to relying upon BLS fragment files for kernel entries and other simplifications.

The F29 change proposal explains, "Getting rid of grubby and using BLS fragments will simplify the kernel installation process significantly and make it more consistent across the different architectures. This will also make it easier for automation tools to manage the bootloader menu options since it will just be a matter of adding, removing or editing individual BLS entry files in a directory."

Fedora 29 is aiming to be released by the end of October and has certainly been piling on the new features and changes this cycle.