The Extensible Firmware Interface - an introduction [LWN.net]

The Extensible Firmware Interface - an introduction

Posted Aug 23, 2011 10:50 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: The Extensible Firmware Interface - an introduction by etienne
Parent article: The Extensible Firmware Interface - an introduction

I miss how this is an answer to the previous question in the thread but anyway:

> ..., but you will need to upgrade your BIOS.

And? I have actually solved real boot problems (USB-ZIP/FDD/HDD, PXE,...) by upgrading BIOSes, this is not a pie in the sky. Note that, from the vendor's perspective it will be much cheaper to develop an upgrade in C (EFI) as opposed to assembly (BIOS).

If your PC is too old for maintenance then you will do what most people do in such cases: you will buy a new PC with an updated EFI/BIOS/whatever. Consider this very similar case: how many people actually try to shoehorn a brand new & big SATA drive into an old & slow pre-SATA PC? Practically none.

Working on a Windows 7 PC right now I often envy Apple, am tired of backward-compatibility and wish it were much more often thrown out of the window...

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The Extensible Firmware Interface - an introduction

Posted Aug 23, 2011 13:20 UTC (Tue) by etienne (subscriber, #25256) [Link]

I think we can agree to disagree on that one:
- for me, if it is possible to do in hardware, Linux should try to support it in software (because we do not know what will be the future).
- for you, if the number of people doing strange things is statistically insufficient, there is no point in trying to support it (because anyway we will have new PC including the evolution if it is good enough).

I would agree with you saying the world would be a simpler place if we did not have all those "strange" configurations to support, if the users would use their computer and OS for what it was designed for.