On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:18:07 +1000, Alex wrote:
>
>> 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_exclusion_fears/
>
> I recently read several IT media articles for that news, but I find them
> a bit lacking, that is, what is the real scope for that -crazy- proposal?
It's not that crazy from MS's perspective. Not only is it intended to
make Windows more secure (at least from a sales perspective) but it
may very well prevent me, for example, from installing Fedora on my
netbook as I've done. It's not MS's first attempt. There was a
hardware-based attempt a few years ago with Trusted Computing and the
TPM chip. IIRC the GNU people re-baptized it Treacherous Computing!
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We can all see where this is going... MS has OEM's lockout UEFI, some new "team" will pop up and start the PC jailbreak/unlock scene, MS will cry that its illegal, court wont even understand wtf is going on, etc, etc ...
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:18:07 +1000, Alex wrote:
>
>> 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
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 8:31 AM, chris <tknchris@gmail.com> wrote:
We can all see where this is going... MS has OEM's lockout UEFI, some new "team" will pop up and start the PC jailbreak/unlock scene, MS will cry that its illegal, court wont even understand wtf is going on, etc, etc ...
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:18:07 +1000, Alex wrote:
>
>> 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
I have a new concern: I just tried to actually read the UEFI specs on their web site & surprise,surprise...You have to give them personal info just to get to it. I now wonder if I have already purchased & installed equipment that has this spec. enabled. I built a completely new system a few months ago. Is there any way to tell what has been enabled. It shows up as a regular AMI bios.
I am currently able to boot 4 different OS on it, but what happens if I upgrade the bios?? I will be researching this further..
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:31 AM, chris <tknchris@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:18:07 +1000, Alex wrote:
>>>
>>>> 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_exclusion_fears/
>>>
>>> I recently read several IT media articles for that news, but I find them
>>> a bit lacking, that is, what is the real scope for that -crazy-
>>> proposal?
>>
>> It's not that crazy from MS's perspective. Not only is it intended to
>> make Windows more secure (at least from a sales perspective) but it
>> may very well prevent me, for example, from installing Fedora on my
>> netbook as I've done. It's not MS's first attempt. There was a
>> hardware-based attempt a few years ago with Trusted Computing and the
>> TPM chip. IIRC the GNU people re-baptized it Treacherous Computing!
>
> We can all see where this is going... MS has OEM's lockout UEFI, some new
> "team" will pop up and start the PC jailbreak/unlock scene, MS will cry that
> its illegal, court wont even understand wtf is going on, etc, etc ...
Dell and co will have to enable UEFI's secure boot by default in order
to get MS marketing help/$ and stick Win8 logos on their boxes. The
question that's going to have to be answered is whether users'll be
able to turn off secure boot in order to install Linux/BSD/WinXP. And
if users can't turn off UEFI's secure boot, antitrust authorities'll
get involved.
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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.
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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/
One sidenote:
AMD is into promoting Coreboot for AMD based boards.
I dunno the current state and don´t have links at hand currently, but I
was pleased to hear that.
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Am Freitag, 23. September 2011 schrieb chris:
> On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 9:04 PM, Scott Ferguson
> >
> > Check out Coreboot - and research before buying a device/motherboard.
> >
> but does coreboot support uefi?
Sometimes I think: Better not.
I twice tried half a day to have that brand new ThinkPad T520 with newest
BIOS boot Linux with either UEFI and/or GPT.
To no avail.
And I do think that I am a Linux professional not giving up at first sight
of problems.
A co-worker tried as well with a FTS laptop. To no avail as well.
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Am Freitag, 23. September 2011 schrieb Weaver:
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:04:51 +1000
>
> Scott Ferguson <prettyfly.productions@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 23/09/11 09:01, Alex wrote:
[...]
> > Check out Coreboot - and research before buying a device/motherboard.
>
> That's one way, but new tech is getting to the stage where it won't
> work off a standard BIOS. You need the UEFI base to handle such things
> as the new 4 TB drives from Seagate and Hitachi now.
No. GPT should be enough and AFAIK there is nothing that hinders a BIOS
firmware from supporting GPT.
MBR is limited to 2 TiB with 512 byte sectors AFAIK.
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On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:49:01 +0200
Martin Steigerwald <Martin@lichtvoll.de> wrote:
> 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/
>
> One sidenote:
>
> AMD is into promoting Coreboot for AMD based boards.
>
> I dunno the current state and don´t have links at hand currently, but
> I was pleased to hear that.
>
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Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware
