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Writing an End to the Bio of BIOS?
An anonymous reader writes "Intel and Microsoft are gearing up to move toward the first major overhaul of the innermost workings of the personal computer. The companies will begin promoting a technology specification called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) as a new system for starting up a PC's hardware before its operating system begins loading."
Why not just use Open Firmware?
Constitutionally Correct
So what happens when Intel and Microsoft decide they don't want anymore competition?
I have several IA-64 systems at work. IA-64 requires EFI (part of the intel spec). It's a major pain in the ass.. you have to have a dos fat formated filesystem to store bootloaders, and other utilities as a primary partition.. besides the fact that they changed the normal dos partition format for EFI. I wish they would have just ported OpenBoot.
When I see Microsoft and Intel working together I think of the platform lock-in of WinTel. This makes me wonder if they plan to have secret hooks offering advantages to their products. It will of course only be a matter of time for the likes of AMD and Linux to get up to speed, but sometimes a little time is all it takes to improve a market advantage through unfair practices.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Particularly Microsoft themselves - if X-Box reaches a third iteration - I doubt this'll make X-Box 2. It may well allow them to put a stop to the old trick of soldering in a new bios chip that takes precedence over the onboard bios, thereby allowing the user to run all sorts of software, legal oses and programs and illegal pirate copies.
No mention at all in the article of what has to be one of the biggest reasons for the push to change the boot process: Digital Restrictions Management/Trusted Computing/Palladium/Next Generation Secure Computing Base. (Notice how the name gets changed every time it becomes obvious what it really is.)
Imagine the horror of having to patch a system by swapping out chips. I think I recall some old time viruses that basically screwed up the bios royally, and which were not easily cleanable, to one degree or another.
Remember, this design is supposed to be a feature, not a flaw.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So in other words, since its not specifically good for Linux it shouldnt be done?
That's an inaccurate paraphrase. The concern, and a valid one, IMHO, is that MS will attempt to use this to lock out competition. IOW, the question is whether this is going to be designed to be specifically bad for Linux.
You guys are all forgetting one thing: Intel is involved, and they have a lot invested in Linux. There are millions of x86 boxes out there running Linux instead of Sun, IBM, HP, etc boxes running some flavor of Unix. Intel knows this, and they like it. They're not stupid...
So, earlier someone posted a link to a summrary of a discussion on the Linux kernel list. An Intel guy pointed out some issues with the Openfirmware model that make some sense.
The way I read it is, hardware manufacturers want cheap products, and nobody wants to get locked in to supporting just one system architecture for an expansion card.
With something like openfirmware, apparently you have to have a ROM big enough to contain valid code that can run on both IA-32 and IA-64 and PPC, etc., or you end up with things like PC-only and Mac-only cards, which isn't cheap, either. So as nasty as ACPI has been from an implementation point of view, it seems like it does some stuff that open firmware can't do. Same can be said for EFI. Seems like a hell of a problem to me - damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Now, that said, no arguments about the other fringe benefits Intel gets from pushing the standard.
P.S. To my mind, Linus' post on the issue in the thread seems like something that your average software dude (self included) might come up with. Come up with simple hardware specs that don't need ROM code, and standardize on THAT. I'd kill for that kind of utopia in my line of work. I don't work in PCs, I work in embedded systems. All the hardware guys talk about gaining a competitive edge by locking people into their proprietary hardware via a software interface that they control. Same thing going on here - it's not the software dudes in the industry that need convincing - it's the hardware and business dudes who aren't looking to the future, but to the next product.
"Seriously folks, we're not just gonna wake up one day and find that all our favorite OS's have been outlawed."
You know, back in 99 I heard a similiar argument by the vast majority of slashdotters in regards to a new propossed law called the DMCA.
I myself called RMS and the EFF, lunitics and mentioned it here in regards to it. I got modded +4 informitive. My responses were on the line of ya, like they are going to sue innocent software developers who want to watch DVD's or those who bad mouth a company.
Come on get real. The dmca will never be used to cancel free speech.....
Well, I was shocked to find out not only was RMS and the EFF right but it was far far more worse then imagined.
Why can't I watch my own dvd's?
You know what? What would MS and the MPAA do if I wrote a patch for Lilo or grub that uses the ultra secret boot signature? I would get thrown in the federal "slam me in the ass" prison!
I just posted another post mentioning how Linux will be still supported for some time like OS/2 is from many bios's. But still I am extremely cautous.
ALso look at soyo with the ACPI installed by default on some of their motherboards due to a bug. Linux and FreeBSD at the time could not use ACPI properly with it and it caused a major headache. The same could happen if pallidium is on by default so manufactors could avoid headaches with Linux support. I doubt this but its certainly possible.
http://saveie6.com/