EFI and Linux: the future is here, and it's awful - Matthew Garrett

The PC BIOS is a dreadful thing. Poorly standardised and often poorly implemented, it has one job to do and frequently does it badly. The kernel and bootloaders are obliged to devote extensive sections of code to working around issues present in the BIOS, code and time that could have been better spent elsewhere.

Everyone agrees that the PC BIOS is awful.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[AlexFromHowest]

Incredibly interesting. Thanks!

[eldersprig]

6:57 this was done in April. In kernel >=3.3 these is a new option CONFIG_EFI_STUB which allows launching the kernel from the UEFI Shell itself, thus removing the need for a separate boot-loader.

[spikeyseth]

I knew some of those words

[randyBatterydown]

Generally good work - yay! Thanks.

Suggestion: While most of us do genuinely appreciate a few humorously snarky asides and a bit of smart-ass Brit-Wit commentary in these kinds of presentations, please consider the possibility that compulsively tossing it in every 5 seconds might be, um, a bit much.

Also, stopping to blow your nose occasionally would be *much* less distracting than the constant sniffling...

But, again - nice work.

[MagikGimp]

Also, again stop me if I'm wrong, but the irony is that no one ever did anything with the BIOS (or indeed understood half of it) that was ever useful even if the nerdy types fiddled around with it (e.g. parallel port settings) instead of just getting on with using the computer (me included.) So, UEFI is that with pretty pictures to please the kids yes? Or is UEFI immensely important with modern hardware & includes detailed documentation for the stuff you didn't look up in the motherboard manual?

[MagikGimp]

Stop me if I'm wrong but being a Linux professional involves being a better programmer than the 'commercial' companies but not being told about all the problems the commercial companies already know about and have already worked past. I realise as I'm typing this that everyone already knows about something so obvious but my point is that if it's so obvious why can't something be done about it? I don't mean free access to proprietary code but free access to proprietary bug reports and suchlike.

[theweekendhacker]

Yes it does, you're just too dumb to find the option in the BIOS.

[frankandersson76]

If Microsoft really wants to save Windows 8 with Blue (or, as I'm starting to think of it, Windows 8 Second Edition ala Windows 98 Second Edition), they're going to need to do more than update its core apps and put some WIMP-style lipstick on the Metro pig.

[FullMentalPanic]

True, true, and true. But to be clear, some of your concerns are about Secure Boot, not UEFI. Various bootloaders have been able to load Linux on EFI for quite some time (rEFInd is particularly good; GRUB2 is a mess, but gets it done too), and the kernel itself can now be loaded directly from EFI. Matt's journal on Dreamwidth has a lot of info on the progress of Linux on UEFI and Secure Boot.

[tjpld]

Dude got pwned my Linus recently. :D

[ImTheBossTrapJesus]

I don't believe you, because Windows 8 mandates that you can. Can you just not get to the firmware, because on my Acer laptop to get to it I had to go under an option in Windows 8 called Advanced Startup.

Once I got there though, there was an option to enable accessing the multiboot menu and formware settings by pressing F12, an option to disable SecureBoot, and even an option to browse FAT32 filesystems (what EFI uses) and select files to sign so they can be booted by SecureBoot, like Linux.

[Jonathan Heynike]

And my new ACER laptop doesnt allow me to disable secure boot