[Bug 1839220] [NEW] Installation on EFI-requiring hardware requires expert intervention

[Chris Graham]

Public bug reported:

This issue is based on my experience installing onto an iMac, which
absolutely requires EFI boot. I don't know how well this applies to the
broader world of "PCs", I believe some of these either require EFI too,
or at least by default have it set in the firmware settings to require
it.

I apologise if I'm not entirely aware of the EFI capabilities (if any)
of the installer, I'm just going from my personal experience trying to
install in a normal way.

Launching the installer from a USB stick was no problem.

At the end of the installer it asks (I'm going from memory) about where
to install the grub bootloader.

However (unless I am misunderstanding something), this is never going to
work for an EFI-only machine. So it's leading the user down a path that
will not work for them, and not providing the path they do need.

What the installer should ideally do is ideally detect which machines
require EFI - or failing that, just provide an EFI option with some
advice. The EFI option would install rEFInd automatically, instead of
Grub. Even better is if it could even detect all available FAT
partitions and ask which to install EFI to (with detection what the
current EFI partition is, for the default).

** Affects: debian-installer (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1839220

Title:
  Installation on EFI-requiring hardware requires expert intervention

Status in debian-installer package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  This issue is based on my experience installing onto an iMac, which
  absolutely requires EFI boot. I don't know how well this applies to
  the broader world of "PCs", I believe some of these either require EFI
  too, or at least by default have it set in the firmware settings to
  require it.

  I apologise if I'm not entirely aware of the EFI capabilities (if any)
  of the installer, I'm just going from my personal experience trying to
  install in a normal way.

  Launching the installer from a USB stick was no problem.

  At the end of the installer it asks (I'm going from memory) about
  where to install the grub bootloader.

  However (unless I am misunderstanding something), this is never going
  to work for an EFI-only machine. So it's leading the user down a path
  that will not work for them, and not providing the path they do need.

  What the installer should ideally do is ideally detect which machines
  require EFI - or failing that, just provide an EFI option with some
  advice. The EFI option would install rEFInd automatically, instead of
  Grub. Even better is if it could even detect all available FAT
  partitions and ask which to install EFI to (with detection what the
  current EFI partition is, for the default).

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