[syslinux] Is Syslinux still in active development?

[Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2022 at 17:43, Frantisek Rysanek
<Frantisek.Rysanek at post.cz> wrote:
>
> On 12 Aug 2022 at 17:03, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:
> >
> > I found that Syslinux is being used in many Linux distro ISO
> > installers. I am just surprised that there have been no new releases
> > for the past 8 years.
> >
>
> Again, speaking my own mind, not from a position of authority:
>
> Yes indeed, the particular "personality" of syslinux, called
> isolinux, has been used to boot from ISO CD/DVD media in legacy BIOS
> mode for many years. The alternative would probably be the "floppy
> emulation boot" = an even older style, allowing you to load the
> kernel in yet other ways... Isolinux uses the so-called "no-emulation
> boot", which once was the progressive way (two decades ago?) and is
> probably the most popular bootloader with that capability.
>
> Note that legacy BIOS has been deprecated for how long... a decade,
> or thereabouts? And during that time, it has not developed any
> longer. Definitely not in those aspects / interfaces that are used by
> syslinux.
> UEFI has fought hard to take over the rule, and has managed that a
> few years ago in the office and in the datacenter, and the time has
> probably come as well by now in the industrial/embedded PC segment
> (which has struggled, in the best tradition of its inertia /
> resistance to change).
>
> With UEFI, all the "firmware services" are different, and the boot
> media format is different too - I mean the elements related to the
> boot sequence, the chain-loading of bootloader stages, the software
> interfaces involved.
>
> Apparently, other bootloaders were quicker to pick up that UEFI
> gauntlet.
>
> I mean to say that unless HPA et al have too much time on their hands
> (which they probably do not), there's not much point in converting
> syslinux to UEFI. I'd agree that competition is healthy and nice to
> have, but with UEFI the air of open firmware interfaces has gotten
> somewhat bittersweet. I cannot blame anyone that he doesn't want to
> code against that as a hobby. Even speaking of coding as a hobby,
> there are other areas that are more fun and bring more satisfaction.
>
> So... other than this front of progress (follow suit and convert to
> UEFI), during the years, Syslinux has kept adding various goodies and
> capabilities on other fronts. I myself have stayed with PXElinux 3.x
> for a long time. Newer versions have brought some eye candy and
> actual useful features, but e.g. the new menu style and graphics (in
> v5/v6) have never quite worked for me, so I gave up on those
> upgrades. I need the bootloader to do its core job first and foremost
> = reliably load my OS images and work reliably across a wide variety
> of hardware.
>
> Technical progress can be a nuissance, and it just happens :-)
>
> The CD/DVD/ISO is nowadays legacy technology, just like the BIOS.
> Does anyone still burn CD's nowadays? How many new machines still
> have optical drives? Rather, I tend to observe people flashing
> ISO9660 images onto USB thumb drives, which feels to me like fitting
> a square peg into a circular hole. Makes me wonder how isolinux still
> fits in there somewhere :-)
> Booting off an emulated CD drive in a virtualized environment, where
> you just submit the ISO image file, and there's no quirky physical
> optical hardware involved - that works nicely, and will probably be
> with us for quite some time. With those of us who still maintain our
> own servers, even if virtualized, not necessarily on premises...
>
> Frank
>

I recall I had extremely difficulty with booting up my Linux From
Scratch with Syslinux a few years ago. Let me try to find that record
and get back here again.

Rgds,

Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming
Targeted Individual in Singapore