Re: Time to drop win32-loader ?

Hello,

On Tue, 19 Jul 2022, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
> I haven't checked (as I don't have access to Windows machines...), but I'm 
> quite confident that the Windows Bootloader fiddling is quite unlikely to work 
> on modern (Secure Boot ?) machines.

I think I had read some report that it was indeed not working... it was in
the context of Kali but there are no specific changes that might justify
that the breakage would be specific to Kali.

It's also one part of the ISO that still contains Debian references
by default and where it's not trivial to replace it (it's embedded in
the executable IIRC).

> That brings two sides of the question:
> * should it still be shipped on amd64 netinsts, CD's, other images?
> * should it still be offered on the mirrors ?
>   on https://deb.debian.org/debian/tools/win32-loader/stable/
>   (where it lands via dak's byhand handling upon uploads; but is manually 
>   moved by ftp-master on migrations and release days)

I think it was a cool feature (even though I never used it myself) but if
we don't have the manpower to maintain it properly, we'd better ditch it.

Also with EFI, the setup screens tend to be more graphical and more user
friendly, and the benefit of the "Boot from Windows" feature is more
limited IMO.

Cheers,
-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀   Raphaël Hertzog <[email protected]>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋    The Debian Handbook: https://debian-handbook.info/get/
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀   Debian Long Term Support: https://deb.li/LTS

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