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.

What firmware does your system support?

This poll has ended.

    • [deleted]

    • Post #2

    files

    I installed on a BIOS-only system but migrated the disk to a UEFI+BIOS machine. I could switch to UEFI but I'd have to reinstall.

    TraceyC

    Okay I entered that command line as instructed and this is what was displayed;

    total 0
    drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 0 Nov 15 22:52 .
    dr-xr-xr-x 12 root root 0 Nov 15 22:39 ..
    drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 0 Nov 15 22:39 acpi
    drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Nov 15 22:39 dmi
    drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 Nov 15 22:39 efi
    drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 0 Nov 15 22:52 memmap

    Not a techie so cant interpret what it means

    Hope it helps though

        seanragout
        Thanks for posting. As it says above
        "If you see a folder named "efi", your system is booted into EFI mode."

            Bios only.
            I only used efi on win 10 never ever.

              MikeK61
              Just to be clear, we're looking for the information your system supports, regardless of the OS. A system that supports UEFI may be booted into BIOS, but it still supports UEFI.

                  TraceyC

                  You're welcome, note to self, must read the posts more clearly in future

                    TraceyC 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).

                    I can install solus in 'uefi and legacy' and it always knows what to do which is uefi. so I don't need the UEFI only for solus in my rig. In fact when I force test distros next to solus in 'uefi only' they will still ignore installing a bootloader and will still sneak a grub .img boot with no /efi addition.
                    Mine is older so I never thought these three settings were actually enforced much at all by the underneath system (bios/uefi)

                      TraceyC Maybe it's helpful to add the poll tag to your thread to get more attention.

                        TraceyC

                        My system supports uefi and bios mode.

                        Win 10 is on uefi and solus bios only.
                        Win always destroyed my linux distros.

                          brent The last time right? before you get into trouble..lol

                              Axios I'm going to wait a few more minutes then start double-clicking them all😉

                                OMG Tracey you can't just ask what's in someone's boot loader 🫢

                                I didn't want to do the poll since I have Solus installed on so many devices. Every device that it was possible on is an EFI install. About half or maybe a smidge more (that's a technical measurement) the hardware will support a legacy install as well. I think only one (old laptop) is legacy only.

                                Let's keep this discussion on topic. If you have a question about your system, or a comment that isn't about the poll, please start a new thread.