zaval wrote:Somehow I'm more inclined to believe these quirks are due to laziness, rather that the "anti-Linux conspiracy"
Who said conspiracy? It's about basic economics - it is vastly less expensive if they only have to support their pre-installed configuration. It isn't laziness
per se, as the
effort put into initially is about equal, but the effect is the same.
So I won't say 'conspiracy'. 'Anti-consumer practices', maybe, but not 'conspiracy'. And as I said earlier, it does seem to be disappearing, as it is proving less effective as a cost-cutting measure than it had been expected to be (though someone needs to tell Apple that part, I guess.)
But you are right that it is no reflection on the standard itself - that was actually my point. The standard itself isn't at fault for most of the things people here complain about regarding UEFI (actually, most of those complaints seem to come from lack of information
about the standard, as you yourself keep saying). My statements were aimed more at Glaux et al than at you.
IOW, we're violently agreeing. I think we can drop it.
As for mobile, well, they already
have Linux - or at least a Linux derivative - on Android phones, though good luck getting it to work like a desktop
The real difference there has more to do with the lack of a single, legacy hardware platform with a consistent ABI for most major components; the chances of such a standard arising in the mobile sphere is exactly zero, for the same reason such will never quite arise for laptop PCs separate from that of desktops (i.e., the requirements of it being mobile, regarding ruggedness, power consumption, heat dissipation, etc) plus the added limits of the user interface (e.g., no physical keyboard or a very rudimentary one).
The desktop PC, for all its flaws (and there are a great many) is at least amazingly consistent across dozens if not hundreds of hardware vendors, mostly without formal standards other than 'can it run Windows?'. I may despise the x86 platform, but I do want to give it credit for that much.
But none of this addresses what I was actually talking about, namely a) whether this group can remain civil in its discussions, and whether the forum still serves a purpose even if it can; b) whether this hobby is worth pursuing any more, even just for fun; and c) whether OS-dev will even be possible any more if desktops themselves become uncommon, specialist devices, getting replaced by mobile and Smart TV type devices for everyone who can live without a physical keyboard and pointing device. The whole UEFI thing was topic drift from the outset - of a post that could be argued to be topic drift already.
I told, chapters 1-3 are a good starting point. The chapter numbers are for v2.4 at least. Of course, there is a lot of resources on the web, and maybe among the bashing UEFI, there is even a useful reading on it. but I didn't do that, I read the specification and asked questions on the EDK mailing list. They answer! 
This mailing list (edk2-devel-01) is about the UEFI itself. there is another one, dedicated to solving problems with the UEFI<->OS interaction. Less active. it's called fw_os_forum.
And by the way, those companies, except apple, do sell Linux PCs. I bought such a laptop. HP one. It had Linux and UEFI. And I easily installed Windows on it. So at least if their firmwares behave crappily, Linux fans still have a chance to pick a PC for their OS. Somehow I'm more inclined to believe these quirks are due to laziness, rather that the "anti-Linux conspiracy", ruled by Microsoft, of course. 
