Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

Re:Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux by arminiusreturns on Monday May 02, 2022 @12:25PM (#31237269)

This got me looking around at how one would load a luks or dm-crypt encrypted drive from efi without grub. I didn't find anything solid but I've used initram shims for stuff like that before so that might be an approach but at that point you might as well use grub which has some nice features built-in.

I guess I'm really curious what there is to gain by bypassing grub if anything?

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Re:Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux by smoldesu on Monday May 02, 2022 @01:45PM (#31238346)

I don't use GRUB on any of my systems anymore, here's a couple loose answers to your questions.

> This got me looking around at how one would load a luks or dm-crypt encrypted drive from efi without grub.

systemd-boot lets you define an encrypted drive at installation, which is what I do for my LUKS devices. Whole thing works pretty flawlessly, in my experience.

> I guess I'm really curious what there is to gain by bypassing grub if anything?

I mean, you're not "bypassing" anything; Linux has molecularity at it's core, it's perfectly normal to swap out it's surrounding components to personalize your system. Personally, I pass on GRUB because systemd-boot is fast. Booting with GRUB takes 10-45 seconds depending on your hardware and encryption setup: I've never seen systemd-boot take longer than 15. If you're not dual-booting or doing any fancy baremetal stuff, I think most people would be perfectly happy with it. GRUB certainly still has it's place though, and I'm glad it exists.

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