Do I need boot partition for EFI stub?

[Hello!]

Hey, I'm thinking of using EFI stub.
1) So what are the pros and cons of not using a bootloader?
2) If I use EFI stub, do I need a /boot partition?

[spica]

1 booting is a few seconds faster
2 without a separate efi partition (/boot or /efi) the whole / has to be fat32, which is not an option

[pingtoo]

Hello!,

I am not sure I understand your mean of "/boot" partition. So beside spica said I would add a little bit so we are in sync.

/boot is a mount point where a storage can be access once mounted at mount point.

partition is a portion of storage that usually have a file system in the partition.

A efi partition have special meaning because the EFI spec defined it must be a storage with fat file system. It is also known as ESP.

Gentoo was using /boot as efi partition mount point for a while but later change the mount point to /efi.

you EFI stub kernel need to stored in a efi partition/filesystem. During boot time. it does not matter where it mount. your machine's bios(efi firmware) will find it because it is controlled by bios parameter. In computer boot procedure. the EFI stub itself is second stage boot loader.

[Hello!]

Okay thank you!