Re: Time to drop win32-loader ?
On Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 03:46:09PM +0200, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
> Hello there,
> (please CC me on replies, I'm not on these lists)
>
> (live from the d-i/debian-cd BoF)
>
> as some of you likely remember, win32-loader is shipped on d-i and debian-cd
> images, and is added in autorun.inf for automated launch on Windows machines,
> when USB/CDs are plugged in. What it does is allow a machine booted in Windows
> to download a d-i image, put a grub image and d-i in C:/debian-installer, and
> fiddle with the (old?) Windows bootloader to allow selection of d-i upon
> reboot. It either works from the image, or downloading stuff from internet.
>
> 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.
>
> 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 orphaned win32-loader back in September, and it still doesn't have an
> official maintainer; but I'd be happy to work towards ditching it away :-P)
>
> Best,
> OdyX
Also from the Debconf session - we recommend Rufus - lets just do that and
drop win32-loader?
All the very best, as ever,
Andy C.
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