[csdvrx]

> Over the years, I've been pleased to see that more and more distributions are writing their disk images and the like to the ESP. (Previously, dd'd USB images for distro installing _required_ the creation of a /boot partition)

Same. The boot partition is a relic of the past, and you can easily do without it when you remove other relics like grub2: simply make EFI payloads the Arch way: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_kernel_image#Manual...

> The logical next step would be to standardize everything through systemd, and ensure all boot images are autodiscoverable and automatically bootable.

As much as I like systemd, I think it's not necessary here: I have a EFISP that's about 16G: it also contains a few .ISO that can be loaded in case system maintenance or a full reinstall is needed. GrubFM and others like Ventoy let you boot directly on say Windows11-22H2.ISO, Ubuntu22-10.iso etc.

When I buy a new drive or computer, I just copy this partition: it's much faster than playing with thumbdrives or PXE Boot.