> it allows to dual-boot with Windows easily: motherboard boot menu is often not easy to access, you need to perform some key combination in a short window
Hardly a problem in my experience - just hold down the key while booting.
And dual booting is rarely needed anyway and generally just a pita. Just always boot into your preferred OS and virtualize the other one when you really need it.
> also modern bootloader save the last boot option such that if Windows reboots for an update Linux does not start
You can change the EFI boot entries including priority from the OS, e.g. via efibootmgr under Linux. Should be easy to setup each OS to make itself the default on boot if that's really what you want.
> it allows to edit the cmdline of the kernel to recover a system that does not boot, e.g. start in single user mode. That can really save your day if you don't have on hand an USB stick and another PC to flash it
All motherboards I have used had an EFI shell that you can use to run EFI programs such as the Linux kernel with efistub with whatever command-line options you want.
> it allows you to choose between multiple kernels and initrd images easily, again for recovery purposes
EFI can have many boot entries too.
> it has a voice for entering the UEFI setup menu
What does "a voice" here mean? Or you meant "a choice"? Either way, same as with the boot menu you can just hold down the key while booting IME.
> it allows you to boot any other EFI application, such as memtest, or efi shell. Most UEFI firmwares doesn't have a menu to do so.
In my experience the EFI shell has always been accessible without a bootloader.
> And dual booting is rarely needed anyway and generally just a pita. Just always boot into your preferred OS and virtualize the other one when you really need it.
I've been dual-booting linux since the kernel 2.2.x era and being able to do it was a major driver to migrate away from windows. It is super important for onboarding of new users that can't yet get rid of windows fully - mostly because of gaming (yes proton is nice, but anything competive that uses anti-cheat won't work yet is the majority share of gaming). And that is the reason I still boot into Windows on my dual-boot machine: Gaming. For me that windows is just a glorified bootloader into GoG or Steam, yet desperately needed and virtualization won't solve anything here.
Ideally rather than dual booting I would welcome something like running both OSes in sort of a virtual machine but being able to switch between them as easy as with a physical KVM.
Having to actually restart a PC is a pain in the ass which is why I don't dual boot.
is a pain in the ass? All the virtualization solutions are moot for gaming due to anticheat (plus 3d graphics virtualization not really working for windows)
I have experience with two different laptops:
1. Dell enterprise laptops generally have a robust EFI system which allows for all kinds of `.efi` files to boot on `vfat` partitions. Dell laptops also have a good firmware setup for stuff like mokutils to work so that people can use measured boot with their own version of linux. They also work extremely well with self-encrypting nvme drives.
2. HP consumer laptops which are the worst of lot and essentially prevent you from doing anything apart from stock configurations, almost like on purpose.
3. All other laptops which have various levels of incompetence but seems pretty harmless.
For all laptops apart from Dell, Grub is the bootloader that EFI could never be.
Hardly a problem in my experience - just hold down the key while booting.
And dual booting is rarely needed anyway and generally just a pita. Just always boot into your preferred OS and virtualize the other one when you really need it.
> also modern bootloader save the last boot option such that if Windows reboots for an update Linux does not start
You can change the EFI boot entries including priority from the OS, e.g. via efibootmgr under Linux. Should be easy to setup each OS to make itself the default on boot if that's really what you want.
> it allows to edit the cmdline of the kernel to recover a system that does not boot, e.g. start in single user mode. That can really save your day if you don't have on hand an USB stick and another PC to flash it
All motherboards I have used had an EFI shell that you can use to run EFI programs such as the Linux kernel with efistub with whatever command-line options you want.
> it allows you to choose between multiple kernels and initrd images easily, again for recovery purposes
EFI can have many boot entries too.
> it has a voice for entering the UEFI setup menu
What does "a voice" here mean? Or you meant "a choice"? Either way, same as with the boot menu you can just hold down the key while booting IME.
> it allows you to boot any other EFI application, such as memtest, or efi shell. Most UEFI firmwares doesn't have a menu to do so.
In my experience the EFI shell has always been accessible without a bootloader.