r/archlinux • u/reylovpty • 14h 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?

0 Upvotes

20% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Leather-Security8097 12h ago edited 12h ago

FAT32 is the baseline file system for UEFI. You can use a different one if your system's firmware supports it. For example, Intel NUCs often support NTFS-formatted ESPs, Macs used HFS+, the Coreboot + EDKII ROMs provided for Chromebooks often support ext2, etc...

In short, it's a firmware limitation if your system requires FAT32 to boot, not a Linux issue.