X-Git-Url: https://code.delx.au/refind/blobdiff_plain/a0a4ba44f4dc01c86499c0fc80730940b53f75c6..08c9041e9404458af750b30d60ae79843996c890:/docs/refind/getting.html
diff --git a/docs/refind/getting.html b/docs/refind/getting.html
index a027e46..5ff4f72 100644
--- a/docs/refind/getting.html
+++ b/docs/refind/getting.html
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
-10/6/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.4.6
+5/13/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.11
I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!
@@ -25,49 +25,87 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
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+
@@ -93,34 +131,61 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Getting rEFInd from Sourceforge
-You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at its SourceForge page. Note that rEFInd is OS-independent—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in four different forms:
+You can find the rEFInd source code and binary packages at its SourceForge page. Note that rEFInd is OS-independent—it runs before the OS, so you download the same binary package for any OS. You can obtain rEFInd in several different forms:
- A
- source code zip file—This is useful if you want to
- compile the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the A
+ source code zip file—This is useful if you want to compile
+ the software locally. Note that I use Linux with the TianoCore EFI
- Development Kit 2 (EDK2) to build my binaries (below), although the
- GNU-EFI
- development tools are also supported. rEFIt used an Intel/Microsoft
- toolchain. Backporting rEFInd to that toolchain is theoretically
- possible, but I've not attempted it.
+ Development Kit 2 (EDK2) to build my binary packages (below),
+ although the GNU-EFI
+ development tools are also supported.
- A
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.11/refind-bin-0.6.11.zip/download">A
binary zip file—Download this if you want to install
rEFInd and/or its filesystem drivers on an x86 or x86-64
computer and have no need to test rEFInd first by booting it on an
optical disc. This zip file package includes both x86 (aka IA32)
and x86-64 (aka x64, AMD64, or EM64T) versions of rEFInd.
Which you install depends on your architecture, as described on the Installing rEFInd page.
+ href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd page. Some users of Arch
+ Linux have reported problems booting some specific Arch Linux kernels
+ with rEFInd and some other tools. For them, a variant
+ package exists in which the x86-64 binary was compiled with
+ GNU-EFI rather than the usual TianoCore EDK2. This change helps some
+ users with this problem; but using GNU-EFI also means that this version
+ can't launch BIOS-mode OSes.
+
+- A
+ binary RPM file—If you use an RPM-based x86-64
+ Linux system such as Fedora or openSUSE, you can install the binary RPM
+ package rather than use the binary zip file. (I don't provide an
+ equivalent 32-bit package.) This package runs the install.sh
+ script (described on the Installing
+ rEFInd page) as part of the installation process. Distribution
+ maintainers can examine the refind.spec file in the source
+ package and tweak it to their needs. The source
+ RPM file might or might not build on your system as-is; it relies
+ on assumptions about the locations of the GNU-EFI development
+ files.
+
+- A
+ binary Debian package—If you use an x86-64 version
+ of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or another Debian-based distribution, you can
+ install from this package, which was converted from the binary RPM
+ package using alien.
+
+
- A
+ href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.11/refind-cd-0.6.11.zip/download">A
CD-R image file—This download contains the same files as
the binary zip file, but you can burn it to a CD-R to test rEFInd
(and its filesystem drivers) without installing it first. (It boots on
@@ -146,6 +213,22 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
be an extremely valuable diagnostic tool if you know how to use an EFI
shell.
+
+
+- A
+ USB flash drive image file—Although you can create
+ your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download
+ this version and copy it to your USB drive with dd or some
+ other low-level disk copying utility.
+
- Source code via
git—If you want to peruse the source code in your Web
browser or get the very latest version (including pre-release bug fixes
@@ -164,15 +247,49 @@ href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories
-If you use Arch Linux, you can obtain rEFInd from its repositories, in both stable and git (experimental) releases. The git release is likely to include pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be poorly tested or undocumented.
+I know of a small number of pre-packaged versions of rEFInd, either in official OS repositories or in ancillary repositories:
-You can also obtain rEFInd from the Nix Packages collection, which creates packages for a number of OSes using its own packaging system.
+
+
+- Arch Linux—You can obtain rEFInd from the Arch
+ repositories, in both a stable version (the refind-efi package
+ installable via pacman) and an experimental release built from
+ rEFInd's git repository in the Arch User Repository (AUR), under the
+ name refind-efi-git. The git release is likely to include
+ pre-release bug fixes and new features, but those features may be
+ poorly tested or undocumented. The last I checked, both builds used the
+ Tianocore toolkit, and so support booting BIOS/legacy boot loaders on
+ UEFI-based PCs.
+
+- ALT Linux—This RPM-based distribution is experimenting with
+ using rEFInd on EFI-based computers. As I write, the ALT developers haven't
+ yet nailed down booting from an optical disc (it's a tricky and delicate
+ task, especially when preparing a "hybrid" image), but they're working on
+ the problem. They have an RPM of rEFInd; see this page
+ for details.
+
+- Fat
+ Dog—This variant of Puppy Linux uses a combination of
+ rEFInd and GRUB 2 to boot its installation medium in EFI mode and
+ provides a rEFInd package in its repository set.
+
+- The Nix Packages
+ collection—This site creates packages for a number of
+ OSes using its own packaging system.
+
+- Slackware—Although it doesn't seem to provide an official
+ build, this
+ site has links to rEFInd binary packages for Slackware 13.37 and
+ 14.0.
+
+
To the best of my knowledge, no other Linux distribution yet includes rEFInd in its repositories. That's likely to change in time. If you hear of rEFInd being included in an OS's official package set, feel free to drop me a line.
-copyright © 2012 by Roderick W. Smith
+copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith
This document is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.