Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-11/8/2015, referencing rEFInd 0.10.0
+10/9/2016, referencing rEFInd 0.10.4
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0.8. Developing a better solution to that problem is a high
priority.
-
The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
- currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
- off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
- prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
- boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
- optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific
- icons.
+
rEFInd's Makefiles and, to a lesser extent, C code,
+ support x86, x86-64, and ARM64 CPUs. EFI is also
+ available for Itanium (IA-64) and ARM32 CPUs, so I'd like to add
+ this support.
-
Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for x86
- or x86-64 systems and displays this information in its
- "About" screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd
- like to add detection for Itanium and ARM systems, but I have no
- way to test such changes.
+
Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for x86,
+ x86-64, or ARM64 systems and displays this information in
+ its "About" screen (AboutrEFInd() in main.c). I'd
+ like to add detection for Itanium and 32-bit ARM systems, but I
+ have no way to test such changes.
Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
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probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
loader files or boot sector code.
+
The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
+ currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
+ off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
+ prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
+ boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
+ optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific icons.
+ This said, BIOS support is becoming increasingly unimportant as the
+ transition from BIOS to EFI continues, so I'm unlikely to put effort
+ into this issue myself.
+
Known bugs that need squashing:
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removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
remission.
+
Another Mac-specific display problem relates to "retina" displays:
+ Some users report that rEFInd comes up in a lower resolution than
+ the screen supports, and that this setting persists into the running
+ OS X instance, and can't be adjusted using the usual OS X means.
+ Unfortunately, I lack the hardware necessary to experiment and find
+ a solution to this problem within rEFInd. Thus, a fix will have to
+ wait for me to get my hands on such hardware (which is not on my
+ immediate purchase list) or until somebody with such hardware and
+ the necessary skills submits a fix. (Note that a fix could
+ conceivably involve passing options to the OS X boot loader or
+ something else that would require trivial or no changes to
+ rEFInd.)
+
Some EFIs have bugs that cause the allegedly case-insensitive
StriCmp() function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
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There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
- BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
- can see how it could be for some people.
+
Currently, debugging rEFInd requires adding Print()
+ statements to the code. Adding a logging facility that supports
+ multiple log levels and writes the output to a file would help with
+ debugging, especially when dealing with problem reports from
+ users.
I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
boot options and then save them to the refind.conf file.
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detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
them, so that they can be modified manually.
-
Support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for rEFInd's
- actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that lack
- complete keyboards.
+
Better support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for
+ rEFInd's actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that
+ lack complete keyboards. (Version 0.10.4 supports some
+ touchscreens, but this feature relies on support in the firmware,
+ which is not universally present.)
The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
monitors or who use tablets would be helpful.
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GUI toolkit, so that a single code base can be used on any of the
major OSes.
+
The ability to produce audio output (at least a simple "beep") to signal
+ to visually impaired users when rEFInd is ready to accept input would be
+ helpful.
+
+
There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
+ BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
+ can see how it could be for some people.
+
Improvements to the EFI drivers:
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