UEFI Formed to Replace BIOS 422
anonymous cow-herd writes "Businesswire reports that several leading technology companies including Intel, AMD, Microsoft, IBM, Dell and HP and others have formed the Unified EFI Forum. The non-profit corporation will assume responsibility for the development and promotion of the EFI specification, a pre-boot interface originally developed by Intel that is intended to replace the aging PC BIOS."
More info (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Insyde? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.insydesw.com.tw/ [insydesw.com.tw]
Re:Sceptical... (Score:5, Informative)
It has limitations on which parts of the disk it can boot from..
It's not scriptable..
It can't be configured in any ways other than what the "setup" program makes available to you..
OpenFirmware as used by SUN is much nicer, you can run diagnostics, write scripts, and get some low level information about the hardware attached... You can control the whole system from a serial console easily, and even install the OS from there..
You can also explicitely boot from any partition on your disk, instead of requiring a bootloader in the MBR to do the selection for you.
Re:One thing UEFI will certainly do is... (Score:4, Informative)
Linux has been booting on EFI Itanium boxes since the beginning, even before there was a 64-bit Windows (outside MSFT labs, that is
EFI is certainly not pretty, but it's still a great improvement.
Best of all this will be Open Sourced by Intel! (Score:5, Informative)
Also, this standard should finally allow seemless integration of new hardware onto the linux desktop. The main hurdle for desktop linux has always been lack of seemless driver integration.
No Linux Support? (Score:5, Informative)
And there's a link on the main page of the Intel EFI [intel.com] page.
Nail on the head right there... (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Overview [uefi.org] page, Microsoft's listed as the only OS maker. First, why isn't Apple among the lineup? Novell? Red Hat Linux? Perhaps it's because they're not part of the real circle of friends...
Enter Microsoft's Trusted Computer Platform. According to the TCPA FAQ [cam.ac.uk], the companies belonging to the alliance are: "Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD". And let's take a look here [uefi.org]...yep, they're all there. But what are they really planning?
According to the specifications [uefi.org] page, nothing's listed as far as features that are to be included (" The UEFI specification is in development"). But currently, since there is no mention as to the true intent of this new technology, and right now the BIOS isn't broken, why reinvent the wheel? Load times are now less than three seconds, which is a tremendous step from BIOS beginnings. New equipment continues to be supported through new BIOS updates. So what do these companies need that the current BIOS can't give them?
Enter DRM. According to Microsoft's Patent on their DRM-supported OS [cryptome.org], Microsoft has a few issues with the current BIOS...This AEGIS model requires a tamper-resistant BIOS that has hard-wired into it the signature of the following stage. This scheme has the very considerable advantage that it works well with current microprocessors and the current PC architecture, but has three drawbacks.
1) First, the set of trusted operating systems or trusted publishers must be wired into the BIOS.
2) Second, if the content is valuable enough (for instance, e-cash or Hollywood videos), users will find a way of replacing the BIOS with one that permits an insecure boot.
3) Third, when obtaining data from a network server, the client has no way of proving to the remote server that it is indeed running a trusted system.
So, Microsoft admits that there are flaws that prevent them from using the BIOS in their Trusted Computing platform. But create a new way of booting a computer, protect the technical details from public view, and put the power of the DMCA behind it, and you have a nice foundation into the DRM frontier.
Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sceptical... (Score:4, Informative)
-Jesse
Good that the BIOS is finally going away (Score:3, Informative)
Then OS's that run on the new firmware standard would come in with a pre-defined protected mode setup ready to go and not have to mess around with switching into protected mode (OS's like windows and linux will need to be ported anyway)
I am not a systems programmer (I have programmed assembly but only as a userland programmer) so I dont know if doing this is actually possible or not.
Something else I want to see is a complete end to all limitations on what storage devices you can boot from and where on those devices you can boot from. (for example, any limitations on not being able to boot from partitions starting later than on the disk which I seem to remember used to be a problem)
You could even add a complete bootloader into the BIOS that would be able to read the boot sector from any hard disk partition, floppy disk (although in the ideal world, the floppy would disappear from the PC just like it has from the mac), optical media, USB storage device or whatever and boot that directly without the need for programs like GRUB and LILO and others to let you pick what to boot with.
By removing all the other legacy crap no-one really uses anymore (e.g. serial and paralel ports) you could create a new PC system without any legacy stuff. Done right, the only things that should care about the changes are operating systems like linux and windows plus device drivers for certain kinds of hardware.
Re:I'm confused? (Score:3, Informative)
cupieDoll man give (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think we need to get too fancy and, it could even support multiple machine architectures, since once the interpreter is loaded, you're running in Forth.
Re:Sceptical... (Score:3, Informative)
www.openbios.org
Re:What about Apple? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Use a Mac (Score:2, Informative)
With my PC, if I press a key, I get to a menu where I can choose from a number of boot methods, including network boot. My laptop's BIOS also has a special feature that allows me to boot straight off a CD/DVD by pressing a different key. With the right boot disk it's a breeze to, say, save files from affected partitions to USB/CD/DVD media, (re)install a bootloader or fix the partition table, without having to touch another computer.
So no, that's not really the key functional difference. It's the internals and their flexibility that counts far more. For starters, the PC BIOS requires some of the hardware to initialise to what's essentially a legacy mode, retained for compatibility with the IBM PC circa 1983 and resulting in some rather useless weight in modern operating systems.
Re:Apple (Score:1, Informative)
Macs arent becoming pc's, they're just using X86, they're still macs. It's not like you're gonna pop one open and bam, looks like your standard pc now, it's gonna be the same hardware, just running a different cpu arch.
x86 != pc
a PC could have a sparc cpu for example. x86 is just commonplace.
So,
Re:Apple (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.firmworks.com/open_firmware/literature
Why change?
Re:Good that the BIOS is finally going away (Score:2, Informative)
"By removing all the other legacy crap no-one really uses anymore (e.g. serial and paralel ports)..."
I really get tired of all the people who think their computing environment is the only computing environment. That's exactly the attitude which has lead to half the world believing that the Windows PC is sysnonymous with computing.
For instance, I use the serial port on my workstation. Like many others, I have an external modem hanging from it. 4-5 years, that was the most reliable means of home Internet access for Linux users. Avoid Winmodems, and all that.
Secondly, it's still useful to be able to dial into client servers--some have a service modem. Thirdly, it's pretty much a requirement in setting up Linux or a BSD on the small appliance machines from Soekris engineering, etc.
Repeat after me, "There are other computing environments than my own."
more information on EFI (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/firmware
Re:Puhleeez (Score:3, Informative)
EFI's here already (Score:1, Informative)