Hey folks. We're gathering information on the systems Solus is installed on to inform development. We'd appreciate your input.
You probably recognize "boot loader" by its more familiar names, BIOS and UEFI. Regardless of what your system is booted into, we'd like to know what the hardware and firmware support. (The Solus installer can be run in BIOS on a UEFI system, this is not recommended).
Here's how to see what your system supports.
You'll need to boot into your firmware environment / BIOS menu. How to do this depends on your system.
Keep an eye on the screen during boot, your firmware may show you which key to press. Usually mashing the F2 button during boot will show the firmware menu. If not, press space during startup to see boot options, and see if you have an entry for firmware. Otherwise, consult the docs for your hardware.
Once in the firmware/BIOS menu, look for an entry like "Boot". In there, look for "Boot Mode" or "UEFI/BIOS Boot Mode" or similar. (Menus differ between different firmware vendors).
If you can choose between "Legacy" (aka BIOS) and UEFI, your firmware is UEFI. (Note: you should be using UEFI when installing the OS on your system if its supported).
If you don't have an option to choose, your system only supports one of the two modes. You need to look at your filesystem to see which.
In your file manager, go to Computer (top level folder) - sys - firmware
Or run this in command line
ls -la /sys/firmware
If you see a folder named "efi", your system is booted into EFI mode.
If you do not see a folder named "efi", your system is booted into BIOS / legacy mode.
Notes:
If you want to show the boot menu during boot, press the space bar.
Macs and Chromebooks have their own special firmware.
For the curious, here is an article with more information on UEFI and BIOS.
