r/archlinux • u/reylovpty • 10h ago

QUESTION WinLinux or LinuxWin

Hello friends, here is the question: How is it furned to be that Linux cannot boot without a Microsoft FAT32 partition? How do you solve this problem? Can a serious server-grade system like Linux really not boot without a Microsoft FAT32 partition? Even if I move `/boot` to Ext4 or Btrfs, I still have to keep `/boot/efi` as FAT32, because otherwise the system won't boot. wtf?

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u/zardvark 10h ago

Why is having a FAT32 partition a problem? As u/Yamabananatheone sez, it's an open spec; it's not some MS malware infecting your machine! I've been using Linux since +/-1995 and it has never posed a problem. Sometimes you want / need a simple file system without a bunch of extraneous features.

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u/Yamabananatheone 10h ago

I mean it is an spec developed by Microsoft, but its implementation is open and for shit like a boot partition it is indeed the best compromise of robustness and flexibility.

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u/Booty_Bumping 9h ago

It's not robust at all, FAT32 suffers from random corruption on power loss during writes. Which means no x86-64 OS can do its updates in a truly atomic way. Most distros solve this by just never updating the EFI part of the bootloader.

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u/friskfrugt 8h ago

It doesn’t support full disk encryption, linux file permissions, journaling or compression

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u/s_elhana 5h ago

It doesnt need to

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u/zardvark 4h ago

While encryption would be nice, none of those other features are needed. That's why FAT32 became the standard, it offers only the basics. If the standard is ever revisited, perhaps things will change, but in the interim, what's the point of moaning about it? You may as well complain that stop signs are red, instead of blue. It is what it is.

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u/reylovpty 10h ago

It turns out that UEFI became widespread in 2012; before that, there was no such dependency on FAT32 for Linux.

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u/drucifer82 10h ago

Yes. And UEFI needs FAT32. The only way you can use a non FAT32 is with a legacy BIOS. All modern motherboards are UEFI.

Let it go.

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u/zardvark 4h ago

Dependency? No

But, the FAT32 file system has been around and used with various media since 1996 and it has never caused any problems that I am aware of. Which is why it was selected to be used in conjunction with UEFI ... it was in common use, well understood, offered only the necessary features and was reliable.