I’m pretty sure UEFI systems don’t make use of a boot sector anymore. They look for the bootloader in the form of an .efi file in the ESP or EFI System Partition, of each sata drive (maybe other block devices too).

also, the disk it uses is not necessarily “/dev/sda”. first because it can be on any of the disks, second because that’s not a persistent ID but something that depends on detection order

Especially with software being called firmware and not being called motherbootware or pre-bootware or anything that indicates that this piece of software is the very first thing that starts running during boot.

firmware is a pretty common term for things like this (code on chip that manages low level startup)

which is not a solution, only a hotfix

I run all of these or their equivalents in docker containers and have up to date versions of them. to me it makes management easy and the system clean from random files at random places. just one example: fortunately it does not need babysitting but i2p keeps its files in a very disorganized way inside the container, and I would never want to install it directly to the system (maybe unless the system would be dedicated to that)

For android phone GrapheneOS.

it does not fix a lot of the bullshit changes

I don’t know whether it would be impossible to do, but using OBS would be much easier both on the short and long term

I also sometimes (but often enough, including a time this week) hear people discuss to not install updates because of this and that.

but then if I think about it, I have trained myself too to this:

• I avoid updates to my smart tv, because I know with facts that they’ll enshittify it, including patching in admin access (was not obtained by a no-interaction attack), flooding it with ads and even more tracking, and even more preinstalled apps and their own tracking. this applies to any “smart” appliences
• I am cautious with android updates, because they sometimes break things with no way back, not even a real way to do backups. besides that, major version updates always reset some settings including to not connect automatically to any random ISP’s cellular network. versions starting with 8 also introduced many new arbitrary limitations out of the user’s control that cannot be reverted
• I’ve seen many apps on the play store get enshittified, but sometimes f-droid apps to make changes that I would wish they rather didn’t do
• windows updates breaking expected and unexpected things just as well
• linux is fragile regarding updates, though at times an immediate reboot solves it (when the issue is caused by incompatibility between the the on-disk and in-memory versions of the programs and program libraries)

for what kind of software? also, do you maybe also have exact features on your mimd?

but then how does it override the default only once?

KDE too, but those users who have literally no idea how does the computer work, they won’t even remember to check that popup window. an automatic solution is what is needed.

I’ve done so similarly, but I can’t tell that to everyone I know if I don’t know an alternative that doesn’t have their friends

I’m quite sure Debian’s server-related packages are kept patched against security issues in a timely manner

does it use efibootmgr? if so,how is it handled on BIOS systems?

you haven’t ran out of space, then

the article does not tell about how to keep the system up to date

not really. services make the mobile site unusable. example:

• facebook: nags you to use the facebook app with popups and large banners
• facebook messenger: does not even let you to log in

well yeah actually it depends on how they are rotated. if they are “hanging” with the connectors facing the bottom/top, it does not make the box big in the dimensions I imagined

Absolutely. I think having this in mind would probably also solve the outdated packages problem. the docker based services won’t depend on it, and unless OP wants it to be a full blown desktop system too, the older packages shouldn’t get in the way

can you give examples of what you need more recent versions of?

the size of a toaster with lots of harddrives

a pretty big toaster then, isn’t it?

I have considered these operating systems. Are any of these bad ideas? What you recommend that is not here?

why not Debian? Perhaps Proxmox (but only if you are interested in virtualization based separation)?