Re: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware
Am Freitag, 23. September 2011 schrieb Alex:
> Any comments on the "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)
> firmware" and its ability to preclude booting from alternative
> operating systems such as Linux, BSD etc., would be greatly
> appreciated, as per article entitled "Windows 8 secure boot would
> 'exclude' Linux" at
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/21/secure_boot_firmware_linux_excl
> usion_fears/
First I think that Linux already has too much market share for this to go
through silently. Look at those articles, also at Heise.
Second I did not yet get UEFI and/or GPT to work with Linux 3.0 on a brand
new ThinkPad T520 with newest UEFI capable BIOS. Only MBR with BIOS does
work currently. Not even GPT with BIOS boot.
To me currently that whole UEFI stuff is just a pile of crap - cause BIOS
vendors just test with Windows. Initial ThinkPad T520 didn´t even boot
Linux from MBR with BIOS unless I marked one partition bootable which
Linux does not require at all.
Consider blog entries by Matthew Garrett including, but not limited to
UEFI secure booting - part 1 and 2:
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/5552.html
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/5850.html
To me it seems that computer firmwares on the PC platform, namely BIOS, are
one of the last largest portion of proprietary crap that Linux users can´t
easily avoid unless Coreboot becomes more widespread. But even then there
are upgradeability issues.
But I also do not know an easy solution right now although I would like to
flash a Linux kernel directly to the CMOS flash.
The PC platform sucks so big time regarding partitioning schemes and
firmwares that it is not even funny anymore. MBR is just beyond words while
Amiga with Rigid Disk Block (RDB) has had something that was that much
more advanced that one could think it has been imported from another
universe. And then GPT rectifies lots of MBR problems at the price of way
more complexity than what IMHO is needed. And EFI drives the complexity to
a level that UEFI was invented which as far as I understand was an aim to
simplify things again.
I really pray for some sanity regarding:
- computer firmwares
- partitioning schemes
- and a interoperable filesystem for hotplugable storage devices, cause
FAT32 is a joke nowadays and ExFAT is not by any means free as far was I
heard
Somehow I hope that Linux becomes widespread enough to have hardware
vendors build hardware specifically for it instead of breaking things
horribly just to accomodate for limitations in Windows.
Pile of s..., if you ask me.
Thanks,
--
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7
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