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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

you seem to be saying that they are using two separate kernels, one for the bootloader and one for the final boot target

the title text says 'Loaded by the EFI stub on UEFI, and packed into a unified kernel image (UKI), the kernel, initramfs, and kernel command line, contain everything they need to reach the final boot target' which sounds like they're not talking about using two separate kernels, one for the bootloader and one for the final boot target, but rather only one single kernel. possibly that is not the case because the actual information is hidden in a video i haven't watched

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40909165 seems to confirm that they are indeed not saying what you thought

edit: they're proposing both configurations

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I watched the video. They have two different configurations, one where there’s only one kernel, one where there are indeed two separate kernels with one kexec’ing to the other.

thank you for your sacrifice and for the resulting correction to my error

To be clear: the win here is that there's no longer duplicated (or worse - less capable and outdated) code to do the same things in both the bootloader and the kernel, however the two versions of that code might be deployed.

> It's just that the bootloader is itself using the Linux kernel

This sentence does not say "the bootloader is itself another, separate, Linux kernel", so I'm not seeing him saying what you're saying he seems to be saying.

although you stated your comment less aggressively, you don't have nmstoker's excuse of possible ignorance; you must have already known what i said in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40911469

>> you seem to be saying that they are using two separate kernels, one for the bootloader and one for the final boot target

This doesn't make sense. There's nothing in the post you responded to which could realistically be interpreted as making that point. And there haven't been any edits, which might have explained your confusion.

the comment says 'they are proposing a bootloader, which can still let you modify the cmdline, (...) the bootloader is itself using the Linux kernel'

possibly you don't know this, but in order to run a kernel with a modified command line, the bootloader-kernel would need to run a second kernel, for example using kexec; linux doesn't have a useful way to modify the command line of the running kernel. that's why i interpreted the comment as saying that they are proposing using two separate kernels. in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40910796 comex clarifies that they are in fact proposing using two separate kernels; the reason i was confused is that that's not the only configuration they're proposing

What I know or don't know is irrelevant, because what matters is that your statement rests of bringing in external knowledge/assumptions, so it's clearly not what the commenter is saying (alone).

Using external knowledge to interpret the meaning of sentences is how every communication works.

Indeed, but accusing someone of saying something based on unstated external knowledge/assumptions is the original problem here. They just needed to say words to the effect of "taken with point X what you say implies Y" and it would be fine and much less accusatory.

I don't find "it sounds like you're saying" on a rather neutral technical topic to be very accusatory, personally.

Fair point. I should perhaps have said putting words in someone's mouth. Anyway far too much on this side point, I'll bow out here.

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