http://www.uefi.org
Will this be the standard way to boot an operating system?
The UEFI specification
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Troy Martin
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Re: The UEFI specification
Probably not, it's highly criticized and I don't think it supports the some of the legacy BIOS functions.Gavin wrote:http://www.uefi.org
Will this be the standard way to boot an operating system?
I wish I could add more texSolar wrote:It keeps stunning me how friendly we - as a community - are towards people who start programming "their first OS" who don't even have a solid understanding of pointers, their compiler, or how a OS is structured.
Re: The UEFI specification
Hi,
AFAIK the only mainstream OS that doesn't support UEFI is Windows, but they had a version of Windows for Itanium which did support EFI and the code should be fairly portable (which is one of the advantages of UEFI - all of the boot code can be done in a high level language). Because Microsoft haven't released an 80x86 OS that supports UEFI, all (non-Apple) 80x86 still uses BIOS because that's where the $$$ is.
The only valid criticism I've seen for UEFI is lack of compliance/support. For example, you can get a normal 80x86 computer with UEFI support built into the firmware, but it won't come with a valid EFI boot partition on disk, and you won't get tools or drivers to create the EFI boot partition yourself, so even though the motherboard/firmware supports UEFI you can't get UEFI to work. From what I've heard the UEFI in Apple computers also doesn't comply with the UEFI specifications properly - I can't remember the details though (something about them supporting most of the older EFI specification with some pieces of the newer UEFI specification and some things not supported at all).
UEFI/EFI has been criticized by morons (including a very well known open source developer) for supporting trusted computing, etc; but this is a false argument - trusted computing isn't a part of EFI/UEFI or the BIOS, but it can be implemented on top of both, and therefore EFI/UEFI is no better or worse than the BIOS it replaces.
UEFI/EFI has also been criticized by some open source advocates simply because it's closed source, but it's a tiny bit more open than the existing BIOS (because half of it is typically derived from the open source "Tiano core" project), and it's no worse than the closed source BIOS it replaces.
In contrast, the BIOS has been criticized by almost everyone that has done anything with it - it doesn't support protected mode or long mode, it's full of silly quirks for backward compatibility, it's slow, it's support for some things (e.g. serial ports) is unusable, and there is no common/sane specification for it (it's legacy crud with lots of ugly/optional extensions slapped on top)...
Cheers,
Brendan
It's already the standard way to boot Itanium computers and 80x86 Apple computers.Gavin wrote:Will this be the standard way to boot an operating system?
It's not compatible with the ancient BIOS at all, but everything the BIOS does UEFI is also capable of doing in a different way.Troy Martin wrote:Probably not, it's highly criticized and I don't think it supports the some of the legacy BIOS functions.
AFAIK the only mainstream OS that doesn't support UEFI is Windows, but they had a version of Windows for Itanium which did support EFI and the code should be fairly portable (which is one of the advantages of UEFI - all of the boot code can be done in a high level language). Because Microsoft haven't released an 80x86 OS that supports UEFI, all (non-Apple) 80x86 still uses BIOS because that's where the $$$ is.
The only valid criticism I've seen for UEFI is lack of compliance/support. For example, you can get a normal 80x86 computer with UEFI support built into the firmware, but it won't come with a valid EFI boot partition on disk, and you won't get tools or drivers to create the EFI boot partition yourself, so even though the motherboard/firmware supports UEFI you can't get UEFI to work. From what I've heard the UEFI in Apple computers also doesn't comply with the UEFI specifications properly - I can't remember the details though (something about them supporting most of the older EFI specification with some pieces of the newer UEFI specification and some things not supported at all).
UEFI/EFI has been criticized by morons (including a very well known open source developer) for supporting trusted computing, etc; but this is a false argument - trusted computing isn't a part of EFI/UEFI or the BIOS, but it can be implemented on top of both, and therefore EFI/UEFI is no better or worse than the BIOS it replaces.
UEFI/EFI has also been criticized by some open source advocates simply because it's closed source, but it's a tiny bit more open than the existing BIOS (because half of it is typically derived from the open source "Tiano core" project), and it's no worse than the closed source BIOS it replaces.
In contrast, the BIOS has been criticized by almost everyone that has done anything with it - it doesn't support protected mode or long mode, it's full of silly quirks for backward compatibility, it's slow, it's support for some things (e.g. serial ports) is unusable, and there is no common/sane specification for it (it's legacy crud with lots of ugly/optional extensions slapped on top)...
Cheers,
Brendan
For all things; perfection is, and will always remain, impossible to achieve in practice. However; by striving for perfection we create things that are as perfect as practically possible. Let the pursuit of perfection be our guide.
Re: The UEFI specification
My completely unreasonable objections to UEFI are that:
It's monstrously ugly and overcomplicated;
It wastes megabytes of disk space for partitioning, when you can usually do it with one 512b sector;
Most of the boot functions are mature enough to standardize and move permanently into hardware (where they SHOULD be) -- UEFI moves all of it into sofware, which theoretically adds flexibility, but in realistic terms is silly.
It's monstrously ugly and overcomplicated;
It wastes megabytes of disk space for partitioning, when you can usually do it with one 512b sector;
Most of the boot functions are mature enough to standardize and move permanently into hardware (where they SHOULD be) -- UEFI moves all of it into sofware, which theoretically adds flexibility, but in realistic terms is silly.