Slashdot Mirror
Demystifying UEFI, the Overdue BIOS Replacement
An anonymous reader writes "After more than 30 years of unerring and yet surprising supremacy, BIOS is taking its final bows. Taking its place is UEFI, a specification that begun its life as the Intel Boot Initiative way back in 1998 when BIOS's antiquated limitations were hampering systems built with Intel's Itanium processors. UEFI, as the article explains, is a complete re-imagining of a computer boot environment, and as such it has almost no similarities to the PC BIOS that it replaces."
Article was a little too light on technical details for me. This article read like something you might find in an “intro to computers” textbook. Vague somewhat-technical description of what it does and a few somewhat unclearly described differences.
Not necessarily a bad article, just wasn't what I was hoping for :(
It's called U-boot. This is just a way to lock out open source.
It's not UEFI as bad as much as the possibility that Microsoft will require OEMs to use the secure boot feature of UEFI to lock out the owner of a PC from installing a competing operating system as a condition of shipping the PC with Windows 8.
What the point was of this article? There is no meat at all in there. I expected a complete deep technical overview of UEFI, not something you can summarize as "It's a little operating system providing services to the actual operating system".
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
There's nothing wrong with Slashdot "articles" contradicting themselves, because they are not articles written by Slashdot staff. They are stories submitted by users and there's nothing wrong in contradiction arising out of two stories (which are basically opinions based on some facts) submitted by two different people.
Is that what we need, DRM in the firmware?
What is wrong with the BIOS anyway? Why does the boot process need to be all flashy? It seems like adding complexity there will just end up causing problems...
Maybe I'm just a relic...a lot of people don't even know how to get into their BIOS anymore, let alone what the POST and such is afterwards.
The plural is viruses. Also, the boot sector is on your disk. There have been attacks that hit the firmware/bios for a long time. Someone doesn't remember CIH/Chernobyl.
You seem to be missing the difference between UEFI and UEFI systems defaulting to only running signed boot loaders (possibly without a way for the end user to change the setting, though if I had to guess that won't be happening in anything but some tablets from companies like say Sony). As to EUFI being a complete re-imagining, not really. It's more of a proprietary implementation of the ideas from Sun's OpenBoot.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It seems that EFI may not be the brilliant thing that it is supposed to be. Somebody doing a lot of work involving it blogs here - http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/ - and there are lots of depressing things to read there. To quote from the page:
> It's an awful thing and I've lost far too much of my life to it. It complicates the process of booting for no real benefit to the OS. The only real advantage we've seen so far is that we can configure boot devices in a vaguely vendor-neutral manner without having to care about BIOS drive numbers. Woo.
There's nothing wrong with Slashdot "articles" contradicting themselves, because they are not articles written by Slashdot staff. They are stories submitted by users and there's nothing wrong in contradiction arising out of two stories (which are basically opinions based on some facts) submitted by two different people.
Whoa!
You mean we don't all agree on everything?
I'm in danger of forming an opini... Nope, it went away.
What is the probability that vendors won't exploit the lock-in capabilities with UEFI? I bet close to 0%.
Good luck trying to convince people that vendor lock-in is a bad thing, though. Seems like most just want a fucking iPad so they can play Angry Birds...
With any luck, it'll be close enough to Apple's EFI implementation that Hackintoshing will be a simpler process. Not that it is terribly difficult now, geniuses like nawcom and netkas have made amazing advances in simplifying the process. But hey, the closer I can get to a vanilla install, the better.
They are just that, article about what is going in in the industry. There isn't a 'Side' to be pushed.
And no, it's not lost on me that someone with the UID of 'North Korea' thinks that a news site should only push one side of a discussion.
That said, the issues wasn't Win 8 using UEFI, there in a position to abuse UEFI by buying the OEMs.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since that quote is wrong, I don't think I;ll bother with the link.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How is the quote wrong? I didn't write it, so I don't make any claims to its correctness, but the entire blog appears to be written by a person knowledgeable in the field.
I'm not so much worried about MSFT requiring OEMs to use the secure boot feature to lock out the owner, but instead I am worried that the oem's will drop UEFI on the hard disk in a hidden partition, instead of storing it on the motherboard in a non-volitaile state. Wiping your hard disk when installing a new OS, or re-imaging a computer could have disastrous effects.
I am sure this will happen with several vendors. And then watch the resurgence of the whitebox. Also, a huge new swath of BIOS hacking forums. Not to mention eBay auctions for "Unlocked Dell Deminsion!"
From a screenshot in the ExtremeTech article: "Never run downloaded programs that are unknown to SmartScreen". So how does a software developer make a program "known to SmartScreen" for the first time other than by selling it on the Windows Store?
From the same article:
if you try to boot while an infected USB memory stick is plugged in, Windows 8 will warn you and refuse to load.
So how do I tell Windows that a USB mass storage device containing an Ubuntu install image is not "an infected USB memory stick"?
Microsoft wants you to hibernate Windows 8 rather than shut it down
So will we finally have the ability to come out of hibernate without that one peripheral not responding?
Reset restores Windows 8 to its base, just-like-new state. Refresh is similar, but it preserves all of your documents.
So now "reformat and reinstall" is becoming institutionalized.
The article links to an article about the Windows Store. It claims that "the process for getting an app certified and listed in the Windows Store will be as painless as possible." Does this include applications developed by high school students who aren't 18 yet? Or college students who don't want to spend $99 per year? It also mentions "content compliance checks", and if "content compliance checks" are anything like the ones that Microsoft uses for Xbox Live Indie Games, this could shut out entire genres of applications. It says "you won't be able to download a Metro app from Download.com", but wouldn't one just be able to load an app into Visual Studio Express and run it that way?
Secure boot is bad. What is mysterious about that? If you want to understand more, related to booting Linux, read these. UEFI secure booting x86 EFI boot stub
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Fuck everybody who uses that word. It belongs in the marketing buzzword incinerator with "thought-shower", "synergy", "pro-active", and anything "in the cloud".
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I'm finding a lot of people here have a hard time with reading comprehension lately. Maybe I'm getting older and crankier about bullshit...I don't know, but I get tired of the half assed discussion I see from people sometimes. Read the fucking article. COMPREHEND WHAT IT SAYS. Apples and oranges are different things though they are both fruit.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Yes, I recognize that MS can abuse UEFI. Given that my work machines are WinXXXXX I don't have a choice about that, and I would assume that at some point there will be mobos that aren't controlled by M$.
My question is ten times simpler: If this thing is flashable memory, etc., doesn't it open the doors to way more cracking by folks I'd really rather avoid, that is, identity thieves et. al? How is going away from silicon going to affect this?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
...to use the secure boot feature of UEFI to lock out the owner of a PC from installing a competing operating system as a condition of shipping the PC with Windows 8.
OK, that might be a side effect. However, MS gains nothing from it as you've stated it. At that point, they've already sold their license. If you replace it with something else they don't really care (those 1% of users on desktop Linux aren't really scaring them). However, you've really twisted it. They are doing it not to lock out other operating systems. They are doing it to lock out boot kits / root kits. It is just a side effect that it would prevent other operating systems who don't have the correct security systems in place to sign their boot loaders from installing.
I read the articles attached to this Slashdot story, and my impression was that Microsoft could use UEFI secure booting to make it much harder for PC owners to install Linux alongside or in place of Windows. Red Hat develoer Matthew Garrett explains: "Microsoft requires that machines conforming to the Windows 8 logo program and running a client version of Windows 8 ship with secure boot enabled. [...] A system that ships with only OEM and Microsoft keys will not boot a generic copy of Linux."
It is just a side effect that it would prevent other operating systems who don't have the correct security systems in place to sign their boot loaders from installing.
Such as any homemade operating system or any other operating system whose user base is too small to convince a major OEM to sign its key.
Right - and Apple's MacOS X always has required EFI or UEFI and not BIOS on Intel processors (and even have their own proprietary partition map rather than MBR or GPT), so it's not like the tech itself is the problem, it's the vendor lockout possibility that Microsoft may use that is the problem. Even then it doesn't stop you from running Linux in a virtual machine, but the fact that you can't install Linux as the primary boot or set up a dual boot system on Windows preloaded PCs is what people are complaining about.
While Linux supports UEFI, I have never known anyone to install with it, but I know of at least one person that could - me. From what I remember, Windows 64 bit (Vista or 7 I think - I don't think XP 64 bit supported it) needs to be installed with UEFI/GPT partitioning or BIOS/MBR partitioning and it defaults to the latter, but it can be changed. I thought that maybe setting it up with UEFI I could make it dual boot MacOS X on non-mac hardware but I never got that working (I did manage to get it working in a VM on my laptop, however - on my desktop I believe my hardware got invalidated for not supporting Vx instructions, whereas on my laptop I have hardware essentially identical to a machine Apple ships). As far as Apple's legal requirements go, I own a real mac too, and I think their EULA is on shaky ground because copyright law allows me to back up licensed software on any hardware I want.
YOU-fee?
YOU-fi?
you-EF-ee?
load "linux",8,1
Wiping your hard disk when installing a new OS, or re-imaging a computer could have disastrous effects.
Better buy that Extended Service Plan! Best Buy has professionals that can reinstall your OS for you! What, you want to do it yourself? What are you, some sort of hax0r?!!?
(Dos) BIOS aint done 'till (Lotus) Linux won't run.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If only we could start a contest where Millions of iPad and iPad2 owners play angry birds while crossing busy intersections.
Surviving player with the highest score (Angry brids score + number of feet walked) wins an iPad3.
I would pay to watch it.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
So it's the Ourobios?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The only reason UEFI is overdue is not because they are slow in development. It's simply the fact that UEFI isn't an open standard. If UEFI was made an open standard every new computer in a month would all have UEFI.
The main issue for me is that BIOS is just SLOW.
There are limits to how fast any BIOS or BIOS replacement can proceed to reading and executing the bootloader. How long does it take to write to every page of RAM and read back from it? How long does it take for a hard drive to spin up?
if it allows me to have that instant-on computer that Intel has been promising us for the last decade or two
The only instant-on computers are computers with the operating system in solid-state memory. This can be an SSD. Or it can be RAM, which means the computer has been put to sleep and the hard drive spins up while the user is entering his password.
Just like Androids, sever vendors will remain unlocked, or give out the keys to owners.
By "sever" did you mean "cut off"? I don't think you did. So you meant either "several", which is OK, or "server", which excludes people who want to buy laptops. Which?
There isn't a 'Side' to be pushed.
But there is a side to be pushed. The side that says that UEFI is a good idea at all. It isn't.
It's an awful thing and I've lost far too much of my life to it. It complicates the process of booting for no real benefit to the OS. The only real advantage we've seen so far is that we can configure boot devices in a vaguely vendor-neutral manner without having to care about BIOS drive numbers. Woo.
That quote is spot on. UEFI is a giant stack of unnecessary abstraction that doesn't "fix" anything. Everyone who has to work with it at any scale despises it.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Try to boot to a partition greater than 2TB on Bios.
Try using a mouse in BIOS (Hint, if you're using a mouse, you are not in BIOS)
Additionally, EFI doesn't have to do sanity checks on the HW every boot like BIOS, doesn't require reboot when changing RAM like BIOS. It is superior to BIOS in almost all ways because it has more features and can boot much faster.
The benefit is beyond the OS, it goes to whole system management. But the average Joe won't care about most of these things because they don't ever go to BIOS.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
What are the chances that the secure boot is a simple switch that we can change?
Slim. Otherwise, trojan horse programs that claim to "make Windows faster" would ask the user to turn off secure boot and restart so that they can "do their job" (actually install malware).
So it's the Ourobios?
Wishing I had mod points for you.....
-- Don't call me "Sir," I increase entropy for a living!
"you can surf the internet from the UEFI interface" Even though it might be highly useful to network this way does anyone see that this could be a major downfall? Aren’t they just taking the most important part of the computer and opening it up to everyone?
I ran Ubuntu on my MBP for a while. Since EFI isn't that widely used on Linux, it makes for a fun time if you need to configure anything..
It just convinced me to buy a Dell for my next machine, since Dell were actually selling machines preloaded with Ubuntu, with good old BIOS, so I could be sure that the hardware was supported.
which is totally what she said
That's only short term thinking, if a large portion of people buy systems with windows preinstalled, and then wipe it to install something else sooner or later OEMs will catch on to this and start providing systems either blank or with whatever people are replacing windows with... At which point, MS stop making any money.
Also MS want to sell you other products, which generally only run on their OS... If you've wiped it and installed something else you won't be sending any more money their way.
They absolutely want to prevent users installing any other OS, security is and always has been of very little concern to MS. Ensuring continued sales is the overriding goal, and MS only bothered paying any attention whatsoever to security when their lack of it started driving users to other systems.
Remember the crappier a system is, the more money they can make selling you extras to fix it, as well as expensive consultancy etc. A system which is reliable doesn't need fixing, nor upgrading and is therefore bad for business.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Some should make a soft core porn game for metro and make it very clear that it is a adult game and if it gets banned sue under 1ST amendment rights and antitrust laws.
Read UEFI as UFIA. On further review, yep, that's about right.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Needs a marketing department.
OSX uses GPT partition maps on x86 machines, they only had their own partition map on PPC systems. Current OSX running on x86 macs can still read disks which use the PPC partition map (as can linux), but can't boot from them.
Linux has supported EFI for a long time, and Intel have been pushing EFI for a long time.... We would have had EFI many years ago, only MS never bothered to support it until very recently.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I've been dealing with UEFI-based servers for the past couple of years - IBM System x specifically - and while I see the potential for UEFI, it's still got a lot of teething pains in the Enterprise space as far as I am concerned. IBM was the first to basically put their entire x86 product line on UEFI-only hardware.
However, I have actually encountered machine configurations that BIOS was unable to deal with (add-in PCIe cards utilizing all of the ROM memory space and bringing the machine to a halt, amount of RAM beyond what BIOS can handle natively, etc...) so I can see the requirement for a BIOS replacement.
In its current incarnation in the servers I deal with, the architecture is essentially booting two full-blown microprocessors running code *BEFORE* the machine will even attempt to POST. The service processors in the current IBM machines (IMM - Integrated Management Module) are the first thing to fire up when power is applied to the server - since IMMs are small microprocessors in their own right (can't remember the make, but I remember hearing 100MHz speeds) loading what I believe is a micro-Linux kernel it takes time for these things to fire up. This process can take up to two (sometimes more) minutes before the power button stops blinking rapidly and goes to a normal "power off" blink. At this point you can turn the server on, which is when it will fire up the UEFI microprocessor and begin to load all of that code into the system. UEFI goes and "talks" to all of the internal hardware, loads profiles for devices, etc... during this phase. That can take up to another four minutes or so (it has gotten faster over the last two years) at which point the actual POST screen will display and you can either enter SETUP or allow the server to boot - note that add-in cards will have to load their own ROM as normal (if in Legacy Mode, which most of our server are due to OS limitations). Note that the more cards you put in a machine and more boot options you leave enabled, the longer this pre-POST initialization takes. I've seen reboot cycle times of over ten minutes in some instances, whereas the BIOS-based systems would complete that cycle in under two minutes.
So here's a brief summary of the current state-of-the-art in server UEFI:
PROS:
* Allows configuration of peripheral devices from the SETUP screen.
* Allows up to 1TB (much smaller in practive) of Option ROM space for add-in cards.
* Allows for huge amounts of memory, and very large disk sizes.
* In theory, allows for additional software to execute before the primary OS kicks in. Not really utilized in these machines.
CONS:
* Horribly slow boot cycles. Length of boot cycle dependent on amount of hardware in server. Had an IBM ATS Engineer tell me they had a machine in the lab that they plugged so much stuff into that it took 23 hours to POST.
* Corrupt firmware or firmware updates is the kiss of death for many of these machines. While there are backup firmware spaces and the appropriate jumpers to recover, this does not always work as intended. We've had quite a few brand-new systems that had to have complete system planar replacements because the code wasn't executing right.
* As these are actual mini-OSes running there are all kinds of strange quirks and odd behavior from the servers. Lots of troubleshooting involves resetting the service processors and praying they reboot properly in order to just get the server to POST normally.
* Speaking of quirks, there are lots of situations where hardware failures are either false-positive failures or not indicated as an issue when they actually have faults. Troubleshooting on these machines becomes guesswork based on intuition rather than having a solid grip on what component is doing what.
* Example: As the UEFI handles all of the components on the server, we have run into issues where bad code for the UEFI causes the Operating Systems to malfunction in strange ways, only to find the OS was reacting to thousands of repeated error messages being
UFIA and UEFI. The latter means Un-Expected Finger Insertion
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
lot's of hardware raid cards have some kind of text mode GUI or a GUI that looks like the old MS-DOS Editor.
Now it can be a big plus to have gui with mouse to config a raid card with out having to boot a full os.
BIOS, all the way down.
Some old P90s that I worked on had an Award or American Megatrends BIOS, which had a graphical (640x480x16) environment and supported a PS/2 mouse. I like UEFI, especially for the ability to boot external software directly (such as bios updaters or OS installers), but the bells and whistles could be done in BIOS, at least to a certain extent.
"UEFI, being a pseudo-operating system, can access all of the hardware on the computer — you can surf the internet from the UEFI interface, or backup your hard drives — and it even has a full, mouse-driven GUI"
Why do we need that? Why we can't have a "BIOS" that just boots the bootloader or the system itself and nothing else. Maybe an option from where it should boot (from harddisk, CDROM, network, etc). Just a thing, that don't have the limitations of the old BIOS, but with the sole purpose to boot the system/bootloader as fast as possible and then just go out of the way.
"The fact that all of this boot data is stored on NAND flash or on a hard drive means that there’s a lot more space for things like language localization, boot-time diagnostics (begone meaningless POST beeps!), utilities (backup, restore, malware scanners), and so on."
If the graphic card or the motherboard is broken, all the computer can do is to beep, with UEFI or without. If I need diagnostics and utilities I just use my Linux live-CD or live-USB-stick (like Knoppix or SystemRescueCD). They are easy to use and much more sophisticated.
UEFI sounds like the shiny new GUI interface that nobody will use, but it was developed because the old boring program was too old fashion. Like Nero, with was 50MB and then later became a 1GB full blown suite.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
The only reason you should need to be in the BIOS setup is to configure basic, low-level system options. You don't *need* a mouse. BIOS isn't supposed to be user-friendly, all pretty pictures and clickable things. It's not a place you go to get work done - it's a place you go to make things work.
...BIOS’s antiquated limitations were hampering systems...
What exactly are these limitations, in real-world terms? My systems all seem to boot & run fast right now...
If the BIOS has limitations, why not just flash an updated BIOS? All of my machines have had at least one BIOS update since manufacture. No problem.
As for the mini-OS-before-boot concept...I already have a bunch of Linux "Live CDs" that I use to partition drives, image & restore partitions, scan for viruses, etc without having to boot Windows. Why would I want to put a "pre-boot" OS on my hard drive, where it can be hacked and infected?
Someone please enlighten me if UEFI has any real-world benefits to outweigh its costs.
Does it still throw the CPU into busy loops and leave the CPU too overheated to boot an OS that bothers to check the temp sensors after less than 1 minute of configuring? Yes, my BIOS does that.
Someone had to do it.
And then watch the resurgence of the whitebox.
That's assuming there are any vendors left to purchase the parts from to put it together.
As it is now the whitebox market is pretty damn niche as compared to the computer market overall. The death of the homebuilt PC has been heralded for years while we all scoffed, but not only is it happening, it's being deliberately driven that direction not only by the companies that benefit from vendor lock-in but consumers themselves. PC Gaming is being deliberately killed off in lieu of DRM-laden consoles and the cash cow that is DLC; meanwhile, "the cloud" is absorbing everything else.
Add in the new on-board DRM that prevents overclocking and such that Intel is working on (and I'm sure AMD will emulate eventually) and the overall drive towards portables in lieu of desktops by a large segment of the population and frankly it doesn't look good at all. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I see too much ambivalence towards these trends by too large of a percentage of the population. People like you and I are the odd ones, and the people that just want to update their Facebook and play Angry Birds are the new norm. 10 years from now hardly anyone is even going to have a "real computer" anymore, they're going to have a terminal fetching data from somewhere else, whether that terminal takes the form of a laptop or tablet or even a desktop computer, the days of putting together a powerhouse computer yourself seems to be coming to a close.
Yeah, UEFI boot time is insane. Even on my home server which doesn't have any fancy monitoring hardware the UEFI boot takes about twice as long as booting Linux once it's finished.
Reminds me of my old HP tc4400 laptop. One day I decided that I needed to upgrade the network card to 11n (I wanted the 5GHz band, and more speed than a). So I ordered the new card, put it in, and... no boot. The BIOS would only show me a message saying that it had detected an unrecognised PCI device ID, and refused to even go into setup. No options to disable it. No, the tc4400 just will not accept anything in that mini-PCI slot other than the exact model of wireless card it's made to use. The only way around it is to hack a BIOS image and reflash. Why would HP put such a feature into their laptops? I can only imagine it's to prevent people fixing their own laptops, and thus encourage upgrades or the use of extended warranty programs.
Well, I did find one way around... you could boot it with the slot empty, put it into sleep mode, remove the keyboard, install the card, wake it up and run hardware detection again. Then it works. But you have to do that every time you reboot, which is hardly practical.
Its been a while since I've needed to diagnose a problem with those beeps, but last time I did I'm pretty sure that each and every one of them had a very specific meaning.
I used a BIOS setup WITH mouse pointer support around before year 2000
blog.sam.liddicott.com
It is superior to BIOS in almost all ways because it has more features and can boot much faster.
Perhaps it 'can', but the real world my quad-core 3GHz i5 UEFI system takes twice as long to start booting Linux as my dual-core 1.6GHz Atom system with an old-fangled BIOS.
And it's not disk spinup time because the i5 has an SSD whereas the Atom has a 'green' hard drive.
Newer Dell BIOS allows you to use a mouse.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Okay, I'm going to be a dick and say that UEFI is a load of crap. It has its own cute little platform-independent bytecode, which I suppose would come in real handy if you're in the business of selling motherboards that support more than one CPU architecture... wait, what ? And then manufacturers love to store a bunch of extensions on the hard drive, like in the Asus screenshot - but let's not call it an operating system okay ? Hell, Gigabyte even ships a few crappy games as EFI extensions on the motherboard CD.
UEFI is an overdesigned solution to a non-problem. Intel has basically given everyone carte-blanche to bloat up the pre-boot experience. We already had gimmicky mouse-driven BIOSes back in the day, I remember one as far back as the 286, where AMI had replicated a Windows 2.0 style GUI. Pointless, slow, but hey it's shiny right ? :P
What the BIOS needed was an update from its 35 year old roots - a little less 16-bit legacy cruft, a little more forward compatibility for the 64-bit era. What we got instead was a reinvention of the wheel that doesn't actually solve much. It simply replaces one simple interface with another. Instead of VESA VBE, we now use GOP, which provides (dun dun dun!) a linear frame buffer. Instead of calling interrupt 13h for disk access, we now call a C++ object. Nothing has really changed, except for the bloat.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I would actually be surprised if UEFI didn't support this.
Microsoft will presumably refuse to 'Windows certify' motherboards which allow you to turn off 'secure boot'. All for the user's security, of course.
They've wanted a completely locked-in system for a decade or more since they started pushing DRM. They couldn't do that with the old BIOS, but they can now; if not in this generation then they will for 'Windows 9' once the old BIOS-based motherboards are gone.
Add in the new on-board DRM that prevents overclocking and such that Intel is working on (and I'm sure AMD will emulate eventually)
Why would they do that? Both AMD and Intel even have processors specifically targeted to overclockers (I think they're called Extreme Edition and Black Edition, respectively)
(+1, Disagree)
Confirmed "Black Edition" for AMD. Not sure why I bought it, though. I'm too much of a wimp. :) I just jacked mine from 3.3GHz to 3.5GHz.
Guess that's not too shabby multiplied by 6x tho.
Any reason why AMD could not design an open & free specification with as much industry participation as possible? That would seem like a good move.
Do you think that maybe, just possibly, there are real people that are submitting articles. And as real people, they might sometimes have differing opinions about things?
Like movie DVD players there are bound to be one or two manufactures who will leave in a back door to allow install of any OS. Also, any lock in specifically designed to only allow Windows to work will either be worked around or will result in another anti-trust lawsuit for MS.
Another scenario is that Linux users will buy Macs to run Linux, since Macs already support EFI. Then seeing the impact of this other companies will try to add ways of installing Linux.
I think in the long run we have nothing to worry about, though we should be careful about the hardware we buy.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
mnem
*Tired being expected to get excited about what is essentially the transmission in his computing device*
with all this extra memory needed to put in this GUI crap, malware can be 100% embedded in the BIOS without any way to get rid of it!
permanent remote access anyone?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So yeah, just add XEN and it is another hypervisor with Windows or whatever being the DOM0.
Well I would assume that if the secure boot thing checks the keys of software that runs at boot, there would be some similar key based check done before something was flashed onto UEFI. This of course brings us back to the problem of just how reliable are digitally signed keys?
Another problem I have is that my gaming rig is always a Windows machine, and I'm okay with that. But then about every two years I build a new one, and the old one becomes a Linux machine of some flavor. If the way things shake out I'd have to build two machines to accomplish what I want, instead of just maintaining a machine whose only crime is still being worthwhile as a computer, just not a game machine.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Yeah, and they're giant, overpriced ripoffs. Back in the day you could buy a mid-range processor, gamble on getting a good chip, strap a fan the size of your face to the sucker, and crank that multiplier into the stratosphere. Then intel wizened up because people were taking their midgrade offerings and turning them into steroid injected beasts that would utterly crush their own top-of-the-line offerings. Enter the land of the locked multiplier for no reason other than to push people towards the "XTREEEEEM POWAAAH" processors with a great margin. It's like if Chevy started building 350's with a fracture in the block so you couldn't get more than 450hp out of them unless you ponied up for their big crate motors. Car enthusiasts would scream murder, but over in PC-hobbiest land we just shrug and take it. Bah.
I understand it from a business sense, but still... it frustrates me.
Microsoft will presumably refuse to 'Windows certify' motherboards which allow you to turn off 'secure boot'. All for the user's security, of course.
So this whole "Microsoft kills Linux" thing is more of a "Microsoft may presumably do something that indirect may be bad for Linux".
10 years from now hardly anyone is even going to have a "real computer" anymore, they're going to have a terminal fetching data from somewhere else, whether that terminal takes the form of a laptop or tablet or even a desktop computer, the days of putting together a powerhouse computer yourself seems to be coming to a close.
Sorry, I don't buy it. There's a whole slew of giant Fry's Electronics retail stores out here in the West where they have aisles and aisles of PC components for people who build their own computers; each has an entire aisle just for motherboards from Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, etc., another aisle just for CPUs and memory, two aisles for cases, etc.
Newegg.com and its competitors also sell tons of PC components like this online. Companies like Gigabyte and MSI make all their money selling only components, and they don't sell them to Dell.
Just because iPads and iPhones are selling in huge numbers doesn't mean that everyone's suddenly stopped building their own computers. They're two different markets.
I also don't see the game software companies giving up on the PC market; they're still selling PC games left and right. Consoles can't compete; they're always years behind the PCs in technology.
if it had some kind of hypervisor functionality.
Nullius in verba
Why would they do that?
Well, so they can sell you a software upgrade later on, of course!
Can't have people buying cheaper processors and overclocking them now, can we? Gotta close that loophole STAT!
Also, any lock in specifically designed to only allow Windows to work will either be worked around or will result in another anti-trust lawsuit for MS.
By whom? An anti-trust lawsuit requires the US DOJ to do the prosecution. If the DOJ doesn't want to do it, then it's not going to happen. What makes you think the DOJ would have any interest in enforcing anti-trust law? Did you forget that Bush ordered the DOJ to drop their case against MS back in 2000? What makes you think the Republican who takes over the White House next year would be any different? Or that Obama, if he somehow got re-elected (fat chance), would do anything different? (He's been one of the best Republican Presidents ever.)
From what I remember, Windows 64 bit (Vista or 7 I think - I don't think XP 64 bit supported it) needs to be installed with UEFI/GPT partitioning or BIOS/MBR partitioning and it defaults to the latter, but it can be changed.
Windows 7 x64 appears to allow all combinations of firmware (BIOS or UEFI) and partitioning for boot drives with 2^32 sectors or fewer.
Once you move to larger drives, you have to use GPT, and thus must also use UEFI.
..as a condition of shipping the PC with Windows 8
Let the sheep of the world continue to buy shitty pre-built PCs, and the rest of us will continue to build our own from components.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
OS X uses GPT.
UFIA, if Microsoft gets their way.
Actually, I doubt this will happen for business class machines because businesses will make it a part of RFQ's that the machine be capable of running Windows 7, and since there is no signed bootloader for Windows 7 obviously the major OEM's will provide a way to disable the signed boot requirement. Either that of Windows 7 SP2 will have a signed boot loader and everyone will be expected to run that as the minimum level.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
... on a subject, and... and... more than one of them are posted... on the same website. Wow, what a mind-blowing concept. Seriously, dude, "Slashdot" is not a monolithic brain that has one and only one opinion on any given topic. UEFI is a controversial topic, and postings on Slashdot are going to reflect differing views.
Graphical picking of boot disk
If your hard drive or SSD dies and you replace it, or if you destroy your version of OS X Lion somehow, the latest Macs, using UEFI, will go out over the network to Apple, download a new copy of Lion, and install it.
Try that with BIOS.
But my general feeling is that users sophisticated enough to wipe and replace their hard drive are probably sophisticated enough to understand not to wipe out that hidden partition labelled "UEFI". Sure, some won't be, and they'll suffer. But we're not talking about a very large portion of the population - your grandma is not going to be wiping and reloading the OS in the first place, and 1337 haxxxors are probably going to figure out how to do this safely.
Time for them to find an easier job.
From a user perspective, UEFI rocks.
Your bios is already flashable. That's how bios updates work. And yes, there are bios viruses.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If only we could start a contest where Millions of iPad and iPad2 owners play angry birds while crossing busy intersections. Surviving player with the highest score (Angry brids score + number of feet walked) wins an iPad3.
I would pay to watch it.
It could be called Angry Frogger!
Oh come on! Just look at NewEgg's or CompUSA's websites and see how many different motherboards and processors you can buy! Not to mention video cards, hard disks, etc. There are PLENTY of parts available to build your own PC. This isn't going to change. Asus, Gigabyte, Biostar, and all the other MB makers will end up putting UEFI on their boards (probably a minimal version on nand flash, and provide a full version on a CDrom that you can copy to your hard disk. As for "white box" PCs, there are still many out there to chose from, especially those that make custom Linux or Game machines. It may be harder to find OEM copies of Windows to install on your home built computer, but M$ hasn't stopped Win7 from being sold by the parts vendors to "OEM" buyers yet. And of course you can just grab a copy of Ubuntu (or other distro) off the web.
BIOS has a LOT of limitations. >2TB hard drives, network boot, disk controllers, GPU's, IPMI, ... everything has to subvert the BIOS in some way which makes it mightily slow. My iMac boots with Lion in 7 seconds. My Linux machine takes 15 seconds just getting to Grub, my servers take up to 45 seconds to get to the boot loader.
All of the things you mentioned above are _positive_ things, in that you would have to be crazy to use the bios for anything other than loading the os and getting the hell out.
How exactly is a longer boot time and slow operation that needs to be circumvented a "positive" thing? The mere fact that you can work around the BIOS does not make it good.
Try to boot to a partition greater than 2TB on Bios.
Try using a mouse in BIOS (Hint, if you're using a mouse, you are not in BIOS)
Why would you want to do either of those? It's easy enough to set up a boot partition. And arrow keys work just fine TYVM.
It is superior to BIOS in almost all ways because it has more features and can boot much faster.
More features doesn't mean it's superior. In fact, the BIOS could do with far fewer features. Provide a boot loader and let the OS do all the hardware stuff with drivers.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Well there were the chip pirates that re-labeled chips to higher speeds knowing that you could just set the multiplier and it would work. Locking the chips at least kept these crooks honest. What burns me about Intel was when they tried to lock the old Celeron chips so they would not work on multi-processor boards. There was a hack where you had to add a trace on the Celeron slot-I module to enable SMD mode. The PGA versions of the Celeron didn't need this surgery and Biostar came out with an SMD motherboard that would work with the Celeron chips. People were over clocking one version of the Celeron to 500mhz and running two of them on this board to get a "1 ghz" processor. Intel was OUTRAGED and made all sorts of threats (which they didn't carry out).
kingdom for modpoints
I remember using the pencil mod on the AMD Athlon. Good times.
I envy you all in the west :(
On the east coast, we have Tiger Direct and Newegg, no stores you can walk through, and this makes me a sad panda...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Now it can be a big plus to have gui with mouse to config a raid card with out having to boot a full os.
Hahahaha! Really? Being able to use the mouse is such a big advantage?
Still, if you really want to use the mouse to configure things, no need to throw out the BIOS. I remember old (early 1990s) Compaq BIOSes that had GUIs, mouse and all. IIRC, they looked kind of like Windows 3.x.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I'm wondering if we're headed back to the era of the access-dongle, so you get a dongle with your new computer, just like you get a key with your new car.
[Cue mutterings about how if the dongle isn't write-protected, all sorts of nasty effects could ensue.]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Because there have been more recent antitrust lawsuits by the DOJ as they have actual balls. Such as the AT&T lawsuit currently ongoing.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yeah, same here in the Midwest. Our only choice for hardware is the internet or Best Buy...and Best Buy can hardly be called a choice, unless you're looking for a ridiculously marked up Hard Drive.
10 years ago there were five Mom and Pop places within a 15 minute drive of my house, not to mention a CompUSA (back when they sold computer components in their stores!!), Circuit City, Best Buy. Newegg is great and all, but I really miss the days of being able to go out and replace a stick of RAM or a burnt out CD/DVD burner in 15 minutes...
Micro Center serves some places in the Midwest.
and the rest of us will continue to build our own from components.
Know of any good sites selling components with which to build a laptop?
Ever heard of the EU? They're a bit keener on anti-trust actions against US companies than the US is.
From a user perspective, being able to boot off my 3TB 4K sector HD, and start actually loading my OS in 2 seconds vs 42 seconds is a big plus. I don't care that not every code monkey straight out of college can't handle it.
The mom-n-pop places were all driven out of business by Best Buy and internet sellers; they couldn't compete on price. Be honest, if you had a choice of buying that DVD burner for $20 from Newegg or $80 from your local mom-n-pop place, which would you choose? Mom and pop aren't being greedy with such high prices; they have to pay their rent and their employees, and they don't have a lot of sales to afford a razor-thin mark-up. A low-volume business trying to compete against a high-volume business selling the exact same thing is never a winning proposition. The only businesses like that that still survive make most of their money on service, and only sell parts as part of the service ("looks like your DVD burner has died. I got a new one right here that I can sell you for only $40 and install it for free on-the-spot" == $20 profit on part, plus the charges from the service call itself), but there's only so much of a market for PC service, as most people probably just buy a new PC if it's too old and is having a problem.
And what happens when the HD develops a bad spot in the middle of the hidden UEFI partition?
A thin layer of error correction like Par2 on the recovery image might help with that.
Here's another stumper: What happens when the HD develops a bad spot in the boot sector?
What I don't understand is how we're able to support not one, but two Fry's stores here in Phoenix. Sure, they make plenty of sense in places like the Bay Area or LA where there's a large population of tech-heads and other highly educated people, but Phoenix is probably one of the stupidest cities in the US.
Last I heard, they're in a giant financial crisis which threatens to actually destroy their monetary union, so their attention might be occupied.
Anyway, the EU doesn't have any say over what gets sold in the US. Even if the EU forbade Windows-only secure-booting machines, MS would still be free to require all machines sold in the US to be made that way, and the US is a giant market. Of course, this could create a small gray market, with EU-market machines being sent over for Linux users. Of course, it's far more likely we'd have gray-market machines or motherboards being sent over from Asia, where they're all made anyway, but expect the prices to be higher since it'd be a specialty item.
why UEFI and not common used standards like Openfirmware? This is already used in many systems and not so bad..
There's a lot of aerospace in Phoenix, isn't there? Those employees are probably the ones supporting the Fry's.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Don't forget that high-volume stores get a huge break on their wholesale costs as well, due to volume purchasing power. A friend of mine owned his own little very successful local camera store for decades, but the past ten years things just got worse and worse to the point where he had to shut down. Costco was literally selling identical camera equipment at retail prices that were 2/3 or sometimes even 1/2 his WHOLESALE costs. I imagine small electronics and computer stores have the same problem.
In the past, dodgy computer shops would buy up Intel/AMD chips, remove the sticky labels indicating the clockspeed, put on new labels claiming a higher clockspeed, and overclock the CPU's. Even if the CPU's did end up melting into the motherboard.
Intel/AMD stopped this by adding serial numbers and processor descriptions into the CPU die itself.
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Those Compaq machines had a hidden service partition that actually booted DOS and ran the setup program along with diagnostics programs. If your HD died or you completely wiped the service partition off, you couldn't get into setup until you restored it. The only self contained BIOS I can think of that used a mouse was the AMI WinBIOS, which everyone seems to hate for some reason.
Remember seeing that bios - the mouse was neeed to be able to adjust scrollbars and click options.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
There's a lot of defense contractors, plus Orbital and Honeywell. There's also a couple of big Intel facilities. Still doesn't seem like enough to support the two Fry's, plus on top of that both the Fry's are in ghetto locations.
Yeah that is all we need, more DRM bling bling overbloated BS. Thanks a lot. And why do we need it? Do we REALLY want to make BIOS more friendly? Hell I deal with users all day and even without fiddling with the BIOS those suckers can tear up a Sherman tank with a toothbrush I so DO NOT WANT some GUI that makes it easy for them to mess with shit as low level as the BIOS!
Lets just hope that the companies that make BIOS like Award and Phoenix keep selling to the Chinese so we can still get good old fashioned BIOS. I have enough of a PITA dealing with proprietary laptop crap and even worse proprietary cell phone crap I sooooo do not want proprietary crap in my fricking boot sequence!
The only nice thing about this crap is if the OEMs lock the shit out of it it should give more business to whitebox guys like me to rip out their horseshit for a good old unlocked motherboard. Can you imagine the stink if they would have made Vista the ONLY choice on all those machines in 07-08? And I have yet to have a single customer look at screencaps and say they want metro. Every single one has so far said variations on a theme "Why would I want a cell phone desktop?" so I have a feeling if they don't lock it down Win 8 will be going the way of Vista.
If they lock it down, can we have MSFT back under antitrust, please?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I miss CompUSA, they had some great self branded hardware.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yeah, same here in the Midwest. Our only choice for hardware is the internet or Best Buy...and Best Buy can hardly be called a choice, unless you're looking for a ridiculously marked up Hard Drive.
10 years ago there were five Mom and Pop places within a 15 minute drive of my house, not to mention a CompUSA (back when they sold computer components in their stores!!), Circuit City, Best Buy. Newegg is great and all, but I really miss the days of being able to go out and replace a stick of RAM or a burnt out CD/DVD burner in 15 minutes...
'Round here there's still a few mom and pop computer stores. Usually I find their prices better than big box stores, and on par with newegg (until you add shipping costs from new egg). The big guys usually only have better prices during sales. Of course the cost of a pre-built from a big box is usually cheaper, but these small shops are still in business, and seem to still do well. They also have much better service than Geek Squad, etc. Though I don't understand. People ask me where to take their broken computer. I list a number of shops and add on "anywhere but best buy. Do not bring it to best buy. They overcharge and and less knowledgable". Yet even though they asked my advice, they ignore it and go to best buy.
Ah, the AMI Color BIOS . I had a 486 motherboard with it and I remember a Pentium-era motherboard which had both a standard text-mode BIOS and the graphical one, user selectable.
If you used the AMI Color BIOS with a pre-VGA adapter it would use text characters to draw the GUI elements and the pointer, much like old DOS programs.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip, by the way.
I looked in the motherboard section of NewEgg and all I could find were for desktops, not laptops. Are we entering a market where desktops can run Ubuntu but new laptops can run only Windows?
That probability is exactly: 0. It's laughable FUD.
They make all the margins they need on cooling systems. That is why Houston has 3 Fry's. :)
Actually there sadly was a reason why both Intel and AMD started locking down the regular consumer level chips (although AMD still can be cranked with an unlocker board) and that is because of douchebaggery by some of my fellow whitebox builders.
I don't know how many times I ran into machines in the late 90s with both Intel and AMD chips where some customer would bring a PC to me and say "My expensive new PC is acting funny!" and I would find some asshole had OCed the shit out of it and sold a lower chip as a higher one. There was even some out there where the chips had traces cut and other traces soldered so that an AMD Geode would read as an AMD Athlon. Of course it didn't run worth a shit for more than a few weeks, just long enough for the douche to get their money, but it happened.
So I support splitting the gamer chips from the consumer ones. Granny don't know shit about OCing and this helps to keep her from getting jacked by assholes making a slow chip into a fast one that will become unstable, while at the same time it lets the gamers have the highest quality chips that have binned at the highest speeds for them to go nuts with. Besides at least on the AMD side the difference between the BE and the regular is usually pretty negligible price wise. When I bought my Deneb quad it was a whole $40 if I wanted BE but since I don't OC (I actually underclock a little when not gaming to keep the chips nice and cool during long transcodes, as the difference in speed isn't much but the heat is) I saved the whole $40. hell last I checked you could get the highest Thuban 6 core for something like $189, so it isn't a big jump here.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As I understand it, these two companies don't manufacture their own laptops. Instead, they refurbish the major OEMs' laptops, install Ubuntu, and resell them. Once the major OEMs' laptops are locked down with UEFI secure boot to run only Microsoft operating systems, where will these two companies get laptops to refurbish?
Maybe they're cellphone- and car audio-heavy locations. The Microcenter near my house is half console games now.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Coreboot is a much better path than UEFI. And the code monkeys you refer to are apparently the ones who *wrote* UEFI. It is quite insane, and for no good reason.
It's like someone wrote a BIOS with .net
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
I suggest it may be Intel's Centrino marketing garbage. Consumers used to demand "Centrino processors", but Centrino wasn't even a processor. It was a Pentium-M (or Core /Core2) processor mated with an Intel chipset, and Intel Wireless card. That was the requirement for the platform. This helped lock out other chipset makers, and of course with an Intel Chipset, enabling Intel's crappy integrated was only a few pennies more for the OEM. Much cheaper than specing even a low end ATI or nVidia card. ***
Where I'm going with this is I know some computers the "Centrino" logo would disappear off the boot screen if the wireless card was changed to a non-Intel. This could be part of that detection (though poorly implimented)
***Of course this has meant for the longest while getting a cheaper computer with an AMD processor meant an nVidia or ATI graphics adapter, of which the bargin basement integrated models outperform Intel's garbage. I think Intel's latest efforts may be better but they have a history of making absolute crap. i815 was a crappy integrated solution based on the crappy failed i740 discrete card. Tons of junk video adapters branded "EXTREME GRAPHICS" that couldn't run modern games of the era, i910 chipset which Intel convinced Microsoft to allow in the "Vista Capable" branding fiasco even though the card couldn't run WDDM drivers and thus Aero. It involved lawsuits including one from HP because they invested in new platforms that were actually capable while other OEMs could sell from must have been warehouses of stockpiled 910s. i950 represents the absolute bare minimum adapter that can run Aero. You can not buy a GPU card that runs WDDM, all of ATI and nVidias low end WDDM models are better. Intel continued to sell this for years in netbooks (N270 and N280 processors), even though the power consumption was magnitues higher than the CPU. GMA500 running on Atom Z-series was decent spec hardware (based on PowerVR) for embedded market, but the driver support was absolutely terrible for both Linux and Windows. Some of the hardware accelerated decoding, etc didn't work right. GMA3000 was also terrible as it's based on the crappy 950 line. Starting with the X3000 they've slowly been making progress.
And witness the vendor lock-in imposed on you from the largest manufacturer on the planet of EFI powered machines. Notice how you can't boot any other OS on a Mac. Oh, hang on...
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
OpenFirmware - which is what PPC Macs used was a proprietary implementation of OpenBoot.
The Extensible Firmware Interface is vaguely similar (ie, they're both a lot more powerful than a BIOS) but they don't really share many features other than that...
Re: UEFI only allowing signed bootloaders, my guess (and the sane thing to do) is to have a trusted path and an untrusted path in the bootloader.
If you boot from the trusted path with a signed bootloader, it will boot a signed OS and ensure a cryptographically safe boot process. This will then work with a signed bootloader and a signed OS and protect the OS from some kinds of rootkits.
If you boot from unsigned code, then it won't boot a signed OS - this will mean that an unsigned bootloader with a rootkit, won't be able to boot a signed OS like Windows 8. If you boot unsigned code, you can run an unsigned OS, such as Linux.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
2+ TB GPT boot drives
Graphical pre-boot interfaces with mouse
Graphical installation of my OS over the network
No more legacy 16-bit
From a user perspective, I don't care about all the crap you're talking about. It just works.
I think it should be Angry birds score × number of feet walked, since otherwise an experienced Angry Birds player could win without moving. This way, you need to be crossing the intersections or you won't get anything.
This isn't going to happen. The initial boot HAS to happen off word-addressable memory. So it's not like you can brick your PC by losing that partition.
How dumb. If your OS is already so crappy that it gives someone access to the bootloader when what hope do you have that the virus won't write itself into the OS just after the boot loader. Just hook in anywhere/everywhere else. AND now you have created a place to STORE more viruses when this dumb thing gets hacked.
I shed a tear for the poor souls who can't have their Angry Birds needs met. It's as if their lives have no meaning.
Oh yeah? What do you propose to fill potholes with Mr Smarty Pants? Morons are useful (and cheap).
I'd rather they leave it on hard disk, the better to facilitate dissection.
They'll HAVE to cater to users who want remote imaging.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If it's a SWITCH or jumper, Bubba and LaQueefa ain't cracking the case.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The BIOS has problems. So fix them, change the BIOS. Adding a new level of abstraction between the BIOS and the OS, or making a BIOS replacement that is a shiny toy, is asking for trouble.
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If only we could start a contest where Millions of iPad and iPad2 owners play angry birds while crossing busy intersections.
Surviving player with the highest score (Angry brids score + number of feet walked) wins an iPad3.
I would pay to watch it.
It could be called Angry Frogger!
That's funny :)
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
Well except that coreboot doesn't run on anything released in the past decade, perhaps.
The key point is whether the end user can install a signature for his *own* operating system in his own hardware, and then secure boot linux. Nothing in the document suggests this is possible (and MS slams linux as an older operating system for "enthusiasts", but that isn't really the point)
Taken directly from the article.
"UEFI, being a pseudo-operating system, can access all of the hardware on the computer — you can surf the internet from the UEFI interface, or backup your hard drives — and it even has a full, mouse-driven GUI (below right). The fact that all of this boot data is stored on NAND flash or on a hard drive means that there’s a lot more space for things like language localization, boot-time diagnostics (begone meaningless POST beeps!), utilities (backup, restore, malware scanners), and so on."
Unless the UEFI can be wiped FROM the underlying system (DOS, meet BIOS: they won't get rid of you, they'll just get better at hiding you from the base of heathen users), and users are GIVEN this option, this does not get rid of the possibility of rootkits. This just makes it laughably easier. Anyone who believes otherwise is clearly an idiot and has little to no understanding of actual system security. This will turn out to be little more than a prettied up version of DOS. I'm even willing to bet money on it.
The reason UEFI will replace BIOS is that it's a standard and not every vendors will have their own BIOS implementations. It also provide support for fast boot and large disks (> 2.2 TB).
Would the real /. please stand up? Please stand up.
if they manage to do this, it's creating a monopoly, and I believe that there would be legal issues raised at that point
Remember how U.S. President George W. Bush dropped the DOJ's case against Microsoft as soon as President Clinton left office? If the Obama administration were to sue or prosecute Microsoft for such monopolistic practice, watch President Perry or President Romney drop the case.
how long do you think it would take for the Linux community to jailbreak computers built that way?
Should I include the years spent waiting for the next DMCA rulemaking to get the jailbreak exemption expanded from phones to also cover computers?