> For booting the computers, I either boot them from Ethernet or I boot them from a small USB memory that uses a FAT file system for storing the OS kernel, either in the format required by UEFI booting, or, when booting Linux in legacy BIOS mode, together with syslinux, which loads the kernel.
Creating boot USB drives (which I think need partitions don't they?) or setting up a PXE boot server would take me a lot more effort than an extra minute with gdisk to create partitions before formatting the disk.
If the USB drives were bought formatted as FAT, which is always true for those smaller than 32 GB, they already have the required partition.
For booting with UEFI, you just need to create the directories with the names expected by the firmware. For legacy booting, you just need to install syslinux, which takes a second.
Then the USB drive can be used to boot any computer, without any other work, for many years.
When you change the kernel, you just mount the USB drive (which is not mounted otherwise), then you copy the new kernel to the USB drive (possibly together with an initrd file), renaming it during the copy, you unmount the USB drive and that is all.
You can keep around a few USB drives with different kernel versions, and if an update does not go well, you just replace the USB drive with one having an older version.
Configuring a DHCP/TFTP server for Ethernet booting is done only once.
Adding extra computers may need a directory copy in the directory of the TFTP server only when the new computers have a different hardware that requires different OS kernels.
Updating a kernel requires just a file copy towards the directory of the TFTP server, replacing the old kernel.
None of these operations requires more work than when using a boot partition on the root device.
There is less work because you make booting USB drives or a DHCP/TFTP server only once for many years or even decades, while you need to partition the SSD/HDD whenever you buy a new one that will be used as the root device.
Yeah I don't see it. I don't really have any investment in how you boot your machines, but I can't see this being anything but significantly more work than just using the tooling that's already there for you. When I buy I computer I set it up once and then it lasts 3-6 years. Even setting the system you've got up once would likely take me more time that I've spent adding partitions to disks in the last 20 years. Heck that's probably true even if you include all the servers I've administered in that time as well as my personal machines, especially since those all ran Ubuntu or RedHat where the installer just does it for me, vs my personal Arch machines.
I partition a new computer once every few years. I upgrade the kernel a few times a month. With the normal way that's a simple `pacman -Syu` or `apt get dist-upgrade` and it's handled, no mounting thumb drives or sftp needed.
It's amazing what lengths people go to to justify their convictions and not realize the silliness. You've just described a convoluted setup with many drives and computers on network and claim there is no more work.
That is more work for everybody except if they wanted a) completely encrypted main disk and booting from portable guarded USB, or b) set of computers in school or internet cafe with boot process managed/updated efficiently via network.
This system does provide new special capabilities, but it is not for free. Meanwhile, most users are happy with defaults like 1G partition with bootloader and kernel, which allows easy updates without worrying about having the right USB drive, being in the right port, being mounted in the right path, or losing it.
When I install a new OS I typically just use the guided installer which makes the partitions automatically. This is usually the default too. I would actually have to go out of my way to set it up so that the drive is a single partition then on top of that create a USB drive that I'd need to always have on hand which sounds like a tremendous PITA with a laptop.
If it it works for you great but that is a LOT of extra work to regain less than 1% of the storage on a drive.
> For booting the computers, I either boot them from Ethernet or I boot them from a small USB memory that uses a FAT file system for storing the OS kernel, either in the format required by UEFI booting, or, when booting Linux in legacy BIOS mode, together with syslinux, which loads the kernel.
Creating boot USB drives (which I think need partitions don't they?) or setting up a PXE boot server would take me a lot more effort than an extra minute with gdisk to create partitions before formatting the disk.