Ipxe Alternatives

ipxe reviews and mentions

• Introduction to UEFI HTTP(s) Boot with QEMU/OVMF
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Jun 2026
• LTSP on LXD: A Fun Dev Trip
  5 projects | dev.to | 11 Dec 2025

  We need to disable UEFI Secure Boot so the VM will boot up. I'm asserting that should be fine, since 1) this writeup is meant for a developer context, and 2) we control the VMs and the virtual network between them. But if for some reason you're not comfortable with this, here are some resources.

• The Linux kernel is just a program
  1 project | dev.to | 3 Dec 2025

  qemu-system-x86_64 \ -m 256M \ -kernel vmlinuz-6.12.48+deb13-amd64 \ -initrd initramfs.img \ -append "console=ttyS0 rdinit=/init" \ -nographic SeaBIOS (version 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2) iPXE (https://ipxe.org) 00:03.0 CA00 PCI2.10 PnP PMM+0EFC6D30+0EF06D30 CA00 Booting from ROM... Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... o [ 0.000000] Linux version 6.12.48+deb13-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc-14 (Debian 14.2.0-19) 14.2.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.44) #1 SMP PR) [ 0.000000] Command line: console=ttyS0 rdinit=/init ... [ 1.922229] RAS: Correctable Errors collector initialized. [ 2.158525] clk: Disabling unused clocks [ 2.158865] PM: genpd: Disabling unused power domains [ 2.264545] Freeing unused decrypted memory: 2028K [ 2.327128] Freeing unused kernel image (initmem) memory: 4148K [ 2.406015] Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 28672k [ 2.407968] Freeing unused kernel image (rodata/data gap) memory: 488K [ 2.555150] x86/mm: Checked W+X mappings: passed, no W+X pages found. [ 2.557822] tsc: Refined TSC clocksource calibration: 2903.977 MHz [ 2.558399] clocksource: tsc: mask: 0xffffffffffffffff max_cycles: 0x29dbf0142be, max_idle_ns: 440795300983 ns [ 2.565700] clocksource: Switched to clocksource tsc [ 2.672446] Run /init as init process Hello from Go init! PID: 1 tick 0 tick 1 tick 2

• Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Aug 2024

  PXE [0] is a standard for netbooting, typically implementated in the system's boot firmware. A PXE-compatible client sends a DHCP request on boot, to which the network's DHCP server responds with the IP address of a server to netboot from. The client will then connect to this server via TFTP, download an executable image file in the PXE format, and boot it. Using PXE on your own computer requires enabling PXE the firmware setup, setting up a TFTP server to serve the PXE image, and configuring your DHCP server to point to your TFTP server.

  iPXE [1] is an open-source implementation of PXE, and much more -- it's much more flexible, it supports additional protocols including HTTP(S) and DNS, it has configuration and scripting options, a basic command-line interface, etc. In order to run iPXE, you need to boot an iPXE image somehow -- e.g. from a MBR or EFI image on a disk drive or USB drive (or even over PXE, I guess).

  An example of iPXE in the wild is the Arch Linux netboot image [2]. They provide pre-configured iPXE images that display an interactive menu to select a mirror, download the Arch Linux installer, and boot it. (It's really convenient since you can just drop the UEFI image at "/efi/boot/bootx64.efi" on a FAT32 thumb drive instead of having to download the whole installer image and 'dd' it onto the drive.)

  The submitted project, netboot.xyz, is a similar idea: a preconfigured build of iPXE that lets you interactively download and boot installers for many popular operating systems from a single image.

  [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment

  [1]: https://ipxe.org/

  [2]: https://archlinux.org/releng/netboot/

• Booting Linux Off of Google Drive
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Jul 2024
• Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Mar 2024
• iVentoy
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Jul 2023
• Netbooting Proxmox to automate cluster configuration
  1 project | /r/Proxmox | 1 Jun 2023

  Simplest version of what you are trying to do could be to use iPXE (ipxe.org)

• Need help running VMware ESXi 7.0 on Dell Precision T5610
  1 project | /r/homelab | 30 Apr 2023

  https://github.com/ipxe/ipxe/issues/349 suggested implementing this solution: " The solution is to restore the TPL to the original one but not always set it to TPL_CALLBACK". I am not sure if this is applicable to my Dell Precision T5610 or is it something specific to iPXE.

• Is there any alternative network boot to WDS?
  2 projects | /r/MDT | 5 Apr 2023

  Link: https://ipxe.org/

• A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
  www.saashub.com | 15 Aug 2026

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