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For those of us who still prefer to use legacy BIOS on current hardware when possible, the article is not obsolete. I suspect the downvotes were because your c

by johnr2 6y ago

For those of us who still prefer to use legacy BIOS on current hardware when possible, the article is not obsolete. I suspect the downvotes were because your comment comes across as unreasonably negative.

als0 6y ago
Why are you using legacy BIOS? It has been obsolete for a long time and is disappearing https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-the-last-vestiges-of-the-ancient-pc-bios-by-2020/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-th...
- johnr2 6y ago
  > Why are you using legacy BIOS? It has been obsolete for a long time It's simpler. That's sufficient reason for me.
- toast0 6y ago
  I still haven't seen much compelling about UEFI. If the enduring standard of BIOS boot is no longer available, I guess that's compelling. I can see that secure boot is compelling to the right audience, but it doesn't add much for me.
  - als0 6y ago
    I guess the only other compelling thing is that UEFI works the same across multiple CPU architectures like x86, POWER and ARM64
    - oofabz 6y ago
      I don't believe there are any POWER machines using UEFI. The standard POWER boot process uses OPAL (Open Power Abstraction Layer) instead. But POWER does use GPT disk partitioning, which is from the UEFI standard.
      - spijdar 6y ago
        Someone has ported TianoCore to powerNV, but I've never looked into it. You could replace the hostboot payload with any binary, it's basically just an ELF file with a payload delivered, an initramfs in the case of skiboot/petitboot. Not a lot of advantages in UEFI over petitboot, though. Edit: here it is. https://github.com/andreiw/ppc64le-edk2 https://github.com/andreiw/ppc64le-edk2 mocks the presence of ACPI tables using the equivalent OPAL calls.
    - toast0 6y ago
      Yeah, that's potentially compelling; if you've got UEFI enabled boards for those platforms. A quick search says maybe raspberry pi 4 supports uefi booting, which would be interesting.
      - als0 6y ago
        All ARM64 servers use UEFI and any SystemReady compliant board too. Sadly no desktop computers yet.
- fierarul 6y ago
  This is like asking why do you prefer to start your engine with a key when we have buttons that scan your fingerprint and authenticate you with Apple? If the BIOS is sufficient and simpler... why not?
  - 67868018 6y ago
    You can't boot from NVMe with BIOS, not interested in running systems that don't boot off NVMe
    - fierarul 6y ago
      I wonder why? I would expect that it is possible technically just that "the powers that be" made a policy decision not to allow it. If it were possible would you use the BIOS?
    - ADent 6y ago
      There are a handful of drives that support booting via bios - Samsung 950 Pro is the most common.

by johnr2 6y ago

als0 6y ago

Why are you using legacy BIOS? It has been obsolete for a long time and is disappearing https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-the-last-vestiges-of-the-ancient-pc-bios-by-2020/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-th...

johnr2 6y ago
> Why are you using legacy BIOS? It has been obsolete for a long time It's simpler. That's sufficient reason for me.
toast0 6y ago
I still haven't seen much compelling about UEFI. If the enduring standard of BIOS boot is no longer available, I guess that's compelling. I can see that secure boot is compelling to the right audience, but it doesn't add much for me.
- als0 6y ago
  I guess the only other compelling thing is that UEFI works the same across multiple CPU architectures like x86, POWER and ARM64
  - oofabz 6y ago
    I don't believe there are any POWER machines using UEFI. The standard POWER boot process uses OPAL (Open Power Abstraction Layer) instead. But POWER does use GPT disk partitioning, which is from the UEFI standard.
    - spijdar 6y ago
      Someone has ported TianoCore to powerNV, but I've never looked into it. You could replace the hostboot payload with any binary, it's basically just an ELF file with a payload delivered, an initramfs in the case of skiboot/petitboot. Not a lot of advantages in UEFI over petitboot, though. Edit: here it is. https://github.com/andreiw/ppc64le-edk2 https://github.com/andreiw/ppc64le-edk2 mocks the presence of ACPI tables using the equivalent OPAL calls.
  - toast0 6y ago
    Yeah, that's potentially compelling; if you've got UEFI enabled boards for those platforms. A quick search says maybe raspberry pi 4 supports uefi booting, which would be interesting.
    - als0 6y ago
      All ARM64 servers use UEFI and any SystemReady compliant board too. Sadly no desktop computers yet.
fierarul 6y ago
This is like asking why do you prefer to start your engine with a key when we have buttons that scan your fingerprint and authenticate you with Apple? If the BIOS is sufficient and simpler... why not?
- 67868018 6y ago
  You can't boot from NVMe with BIOS, not interested in running systems that don't boot off NVMe
  - fierarul 6y ago
    I wonder why? I would expect that it is possible technically just that "the powers that be" made a policy decision not to allow it. If it were possible would you use the BIOS?
  - ADent 6y ago
    There are a handful of drives that support booting via bios - Samsung 950 Pro is the most common.