"Light" GRUB Alternative Package For Confidential Computing Approved For Fedora 45 - Phoronix

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"Light" GRUB Alternative Package For Confidential Computing Approved For Fedora 45

Written by Michael Larabel in Fedora on 14 July 2026 at 05:51 AM EDT. 5 Comments

A month ago there was a change proposal raised for offering a "light" version of the GRUB2 bootloader for use in confidential computing environments. While there were some differing views on the matter for this alternative, stripped-down GRUB package as opposed to just using other bootloaders like systemd-boot, ultimately, the proposal is now approved.

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has now approved this Fedora 45 change proposal for having a light, alternative version of GRUB2 focused on confidential computing needs. This independent package would have only UEFI support and the minimum number of built-in modules needed to help with modern confidential computing "CoCo" environments. This minimal GRUB would be able to boot unified kernel images "UKIs" using Bootloader Specification "BLS" files.

The motivation for a light version of GRUB comes down to confidential VMs depending upon remote attestation and working to provide long-term stable TPM PCR values, which are affected by any bootloader changes. Plus removing unneeded features/code is ultimately useful as well from a security perspective.

The proposal can be found on the Fedora Wiki while the news this week is the change proposal is now granted. Five FESCO members approved the change with no one voting against it.

FESCo this week also approved landing the LLVM 23 compiler stack in Fedora 45. That one is really not surprising at all as Fedora Linux has a tradition of always shipping the very latest LLVM and GNU toolchains in its releases.

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Fedora 45 Considering x86_64 Shadow Stack Usage By Default<br>Fedora Council Seeks To Shutdown Current Discussions Over AI Developer Desktop<br>Fedora 45 Looks To Finally Offer Install Support For Stratis Storage<br>Fedora 45 Considering A Lightened GRUB Bootloader For Confidential Compute<br>Fedora 44 RISC-V Images Released, Including New "Omni" Kernel For Broader RISC-V Hardware Support<br>Fedora 45 Considering Use Of PURL Metadata For Uniquely Identifying Software Packages

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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