Comment # 42 on bug 1226122 from Martin Wilck

Mario/Felix, have you considered to install just any bootloader but leave the
option "Update NVRAM entry" switched off? I think this might just do what you
want (not certain though).

I am asking because this is what I used to do on the multiboot systems I
administered in the past. It roughly corresponds to the choice to not install
grub into the MBR (or active partition) but some other partition for legacy
systems.

That's at the core of it IMO: on multiboot systems, you may or may not have a
bootloader installed in any of the distros. But you ususally just want _one_
installation to manage the system-wide boot options (MBR for DOS, EFI boot
menu, ...). In my experience it makes sense to have a system-wide boot menu
that lets you select between installations, followed by an
installation-specific boot menu giving you the option to select kernels and
boot options for the previously selected OS. With grub, that's easily achieved
using "configfile" or "chainloader" directives.

On EFI systems, there are actually more options. You can have multiple ESPs,
one for each OS. You can also have a single ESP with multiple directories
(unfortunately the directory path under /boot/efi/EFI is more or less
hard-coded). All this can be (relatively) comfortably administered with
efibootmgr.

Having no ESP at all for linux on an EFI system, as in Mario's case, it unusual
at least (not saying that it's wrong).

Meanwhile, I'll work with Alberto to merge the two packages.