Comment 36 for bug 1893964

I *have* read the previous comments, all of them.

This is *not* a "feature". This worked correctly in all Ubuntu versions up until 19.10.

The correct behaviour is very simple:
* detect if system booted using UEFI or BIOS
* if UEFI, require ESP
* if _not_ UEFI, do not check for ESP, do not create one, do not warn, install GRUB to MBR or root FS and continue.

Again: no other distro makes this mistake.

I review Linux distros professionally and have done since the 1990s.

For what it is worth I have now criticised this behaviour twice in published articles to millions of readers and I will continue to do so until it is fixed.

The argument about potentially moving a distro to from a BIOS machine to a UEFI one is bogus; the OS won't boot without GRUB in the MBR which is incorrect for UEFI and won't work anyway on a UEFI machine.

It doesn't work the other way either: I have tried moving a UEFI install to a BIOS machine and that will not boot, and reinstalling GRUB did not work.

This is a mistake introduced in Ubuntu 19.10 by someone who did not consider the impact on BIOS-based systems. Fedora works and does not complain, as do Debian, Alpine and Arch.

This is a BUG and it is unique to Ubuntu post Eoan.