Re: UEFI

[Neal Murphy <neal.p.murphy@alum.wpi.edu>]

On Wednesday, July 09, 2014 02:08:41 PM Slavko wrote:
> Ahoj,
> 
> Dňa Thu, 10 Jul 2014 01:49:12 +0800 Bret Busby <bret.busby@gmail.com>
> 
> napísal:
> > On 09/07/2014, Bzzzz <lazyvirus@gmx.com> wrote:
> > > BTW, sorry to hijack a bit this thread, but what could
> > > be the advantages to use UEFI (I just have Debian on my
> > > laptop and disabled it from ancient posts I read).
> > 
> > It is my understanding (and, once again, I am no expert), that two
> > distinct advantages of a UEFI/GPT system ofer what it replaced, are
> > that no differentiation exists, between primary and other partitions,
> > and, a UEFI/GPT system, can have up to 128 partitions.
> 
> I am no expert too :-)
> 
> The advantages mentioned by you are true (of course). Only small note,
> that the partition advantage is GPT (partition table) property, and to
> you can use GPT, you need UEFI, because old BIOS cannot work with GPT,
> not the UEFI itself.

How *old*? I have a 2000 Gateway PIII that happily boots from a GPT-
partitioned disk; the boot sector retains a PC98-ish faux partition table. 
Most non-UEFI PCs are able to boot from a GPT-partitioned disk. Of the many 
thousands of people who have installed Smoothwall 3.1 release candidates (and 
the preceding Roadster development system), *three* have complained about boot 
and install problems. And all three are using systems with brain-dead UEFI-
capable BIOSes. I may have to tweak the installer to provide the option to 
convert the partition table from GPT to MBR just to cover these faulty BIOSes.

Some BIOS writers errantly decided that only UEFI can boot a GPT drive and 
only non-UEFI can boot a PC98/MSDOS drive. Fortunately, most BIOS writers are 
better informed.

To be sure, older BIOSes likely require a boot loader to be able to boot from 
a selection of systems on a single GPT drive. But they *can* boot from GPT 
drives.