Jumping to Conclusions on BIOS, Phoenix, and Windows

tomlasusa writes "In a post on LinuxQuestions.org, user 'chessonly' cites a 2003 article from Networkcomputing.com by writer Steven J. Schuchart as evidence of that Phoenix Technologies has made its BIOS more Windows-friendly — thereby locking out users from using other OSs. In a rebuttal posted at nwc.com, Schuchart says that this is just not true."

Comments

I have an idea that I can make money on

[Anonymous Coward]

The title for this article gave me an idea...
I need Slashdotter's opinion on this: what do you think of a "jump to conclusions" mat? I could make millions!

Re:I have an idea that I can make money on

[Anne Thwacks]

a "jump to conclusions" mat

A "Jump to delusions" mat would make a lot more money, especially here.

Re:I have an idea that I can make money on

[Random Destruction]

That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life, Anonymous Coward
Yes, this is horrible, this idea.

Hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

A Slashdot post about a Digg story? Now we really have gone too far.

Re:Hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you seem to make a good point. The entire point behind this story appears to be "Digg user posts false story!!1!11" with the apparent motive of painting Slashdot as being different from Digg and taking the time to actually fact-check stories and not falling to pure anti-MS sensationalism.

Which, of course, is utter bullshit. Slashdot does that all the time.

This story was posted only to take a shot at Digg. It's otherwise completely non-newsworthy, something I can't say about Digg's current stories.

Re:Hmm..

[mikeisme77]

Eh, I think if this had been posted to Slashdot then the users (not all of them, of course, but enough) would have called it out. I mean, it's an article from 2003 so it's pretty easy to prove false.

On a side note, I think a lot of Slashdotters go to both Digg and Slashdot (I do). The difference is though that I use Slashdot for the summary and discussion (article if it's interesting enough), whereas the summary and discussion on Digg tend to be pretty crappy, but some times I can find a link to an interesting article--although most of the time lately it's been to a blog entry and then I have to click through a few layers to get to the actual article... BTW, there's a special place in hell for people who post about news stories without providing a link to the news story.

Spazamataz?

[stratjakt]

Every time specs, or the workings of any piece of PC hardware changes, a certain part of the OSS community cries foul, or says its "Windows-friendly" because MSFT is (quite predictably) out of the gate with support.

Hardware development isn't going to stop just because 4 out of 5 kernel devs agree to release a driver as stable.

I think the programmer side of the community is flexible enough to deal with hardware changes, and it's just that annoying end-user whining because he wants hardware X to work today, and the fact that he doesnt have it proves some world conspiracy against him.

Re:Spazamataz?

[JohnFluxx]

What actually happens is when a piece of PC hardware is changed/created, the hardware manufacturer writes only windows drivers for it that mostly follow the specs, but also contain various workarounds for the bugs/mistakes that they introduced. It's then in MS's favour to then still allow that hardware to be classed as 'ready for Vista' despite not adhering to the various open standards/specs, since it will make Linux's work more trouble.

And yeah Microsoft does have various conspiracies against linux. See the recent news on Bill Gates asking how to make an open ACPI spec that would be difficult for linux to implement.

Re:Spazamataz?

[Ant P.]

Just for fun, try this command as root:
strings /proc/acpi/dsdt | grep Microsoft

Jumping to conclutions is human nature

[anss123]

It saves time, and is often correct.

What are the facts of the case?

[erroneus]

This guy's rebuttal doesn't do anything to address the facts save a call to a Phoenix BIOS person who says "we didn't and don't do that."

But what of the purported fact that the guy cannot get another OS on there? An effective rebuttal would include a good explanation why this problem occured; even better if it discussed a work-around or a fix.

Phoenix can claim they aren't [intentionally] doing this, but is it really happening in effect whether intentional or not? If it is, what is their response? If it isn't, who is this guy making this claim and what is he doing wrong?

Does anyone here have such a laptop? Would you care to install Linux on it as a test? Has anyone here tried? Did it work?

What are the facts? Can any of this be confirmed?

Re:What are the facts of the case?

[_xeno_]

From what I can tell, there's a bug with the user's laptop and some "USB-to-serial thing" according to his forum post. Whatever it did, it managed to get the BIOS to set a password. The user decides this is because they installed Linux, and the BIOS is "only for Windows Vista" and therefore locks out non-Windows OSes.

He then links to another post as "proof" which you'll not never mentions any non-Windows OS. My guess is that it's the "USB-to-serial thing" that's causing some bug in the BIOS that corrupts parts of the CMOS, causing a password to be set. (As an added bonus, if it's truly random data, it could be an untypable password.)

So, nothing to do with running Linux, and everything to do with the "USB-to-serial" thing that the user used. At least, that's my guess.

Re:What are the facts of the case?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the same poster as above (somewhere), but I do have an HP dv9000z
with a Phoenix BIOS.

There is no capability in the BIOS to boot off of the second hard drive;
fortunately GRUB on openSuSE 10.2 knows how to scribble itself in to the
MBR on the primary drive, and permit me to boot either Linux or Windows.

However, even despite setting the appropriate items in the BIOS, I'm having
a VERY difficult time booting off of an external USB(2.0) Western Digital "Book"
drive. I can get to a GRUB> prompt, but it won't automatically boot what's
been set up in the /boot directory of the first partition of the drive. Why?
The Phoenix crap CLAIMS it can boot off of a USB Drive, but I have very grave
suspicions, at the very least, that perhaps it can't for some nefarious reason.

Those are my personal observations, and I'm entitled to them. If Phoenix can
explain their way out of it, so be it. I'm sure HP will do their little dance
that basically says "Windows or nothing" as usual, since the spineless cowards
in Houston they inherited from Compaq absolutely hate any non-Windows OS, since
they're totally incapable of trying to understand them.

Re:What are the facts of the case?

[gsn]

But what of the purported fact that the guy cannot get another OS on there? An effective rebuttal would include a good explanation why this problem occured; even better if it discussed a work-around or a fix.

What'd be effective is to verify the purported fact first - the guy hasn't taken it in for servicing. The Phoenix guys do not have any information on the problem from the blog post and you want them to duplicate it, and figure out what is going wrong. Come on. If its a BIOS password a work-around or a fix is rather well known - its called flashing the bloody BIOS.

You go on to ask what Phoenix's response is - apparently you did RTFA so let me summarize "They didn't do it. They won't do it. This article is to spread anti-MS FUD. They do not know where the problem is and they won't find out from a bloody blogpost. And ofcourse the last line - I suspect that chessonly's problem is somewhere between the chair and the keyboard."

Does anyone here have such a laptop? Would you care to install Linux on it as a test? Has anyone here tried? Did it work?

You could check couldn't you. There I am linking to sites that apparently have the linux on his laptop. PROOF: that chessonly is a moron. [/sarcasm]

Re:What are the facts of the case?

[nicomachus]

I have a Toshiba Satellite U205 which has been happily running Ubuntu Linux since about 4 hours after I bought it in December 2006. The install, as is typical of Ubuntu, was completely trouble-free and required no intelligence at all (I did manually partition it first so as to leave the OEM XP system intact). Suspend to RAM doesn't work (not a surprise), and I've never taken the time to get the fingerprint reader working, but everything else is fine. And toshset works, for the most part. On the other hand, I've never tried to get the BIOS functions on the Fn keys working. I should add that my work desktop and the server I'm one of the admins for both run FreeBSD, so Linux isn't exactly my life.

Well, that was a waste of time

[jimicus]

At the risk of being modded troll...

The article basically says "a post made by a clueless chap on a forum is almost certainly conplete twaddle. I wouldn't have even written this but his post quotes me."

So, IOW: the article is one big "nothing happened"

How is this news?

So what...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Slashdot the official-Jumping-to-Conclusions-portal?

It sure isn't the official-Journalism-portal.

there is a precedent ..

[rs232]

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific

It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the results is that Linux works great without having to do the work

Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.

Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.

Or maybe we could patent something related to this.

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/0 11607/3000/PX03020.pdf

Bah!

[Cythrawl]

What this BIOS porbably does (apart form the mentioned updates on the webpage) is add the SLIC data for Toshiba into the BIOS. All OEM venders need to have the SLIC data in the ACPI section of the BIOS so they can use thier OEM Digital Certificates that they supply on the Install for Vista DVD's. The Digital Certificate allows Vista to be instantly activated on a PC with the SLIC data, VLK, and Digital Cert.

They are just covering thier own backs that on the slight chance that the data changes in the ACPI could cause some crap on other OS'es. The user probably set a password, or corrputed his BIOS during the flash phase, and is pointing fingers at anyone else so he no longer looks like a dumbass.

I get this all the time with people who bring thier CellPhones in for repair becuase they locked thier phones and forgot thier password. They state clearly that they never changed it, and when I load the phone into my PST's and retreive the code the look of realization comes over them and say, "oh yeah, I remember it now"

Re:Toshiba :(

[644bd346996]

In my experience, toshiba laptops have had several features that are windows-only, but they still do a great job of supporting Linux. What other manufacturer still has detailed specs online for 11 year old laptops?

Re:Toshiba :(

[sabernet]

To be fair: Dell

I've fixed 300Mhz old Dell laptops using freely available service manuals with detailed assembly and disassembly instructions from their support.dell.com site.

But it's good Toshiba does it too.

Gogo Shepherd Book!

[Kandenshi]

This special place in hell you speak of... Is it right next to the level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theate?

Re:Gogo Shepherd Book!

[heinousjay]

If you don't tell Spiderman that the wall is about to fall on him, then he might not see it. What will happen then, tough guy? Huh? Huh?