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Bios is outdated, but UEFI is even worse and became such a mess. It did not fix BIOS's issues and is unnecessary complicated. The efforts are regretfully wasted

Bios is outdated, but UEFI is even worse and became such a mess. It did not fix BIOS's issues and is unnecessary complicated. The efforts are regretfully wasted on UI.

keeperofdakeys 14y ago
Sorry, but the BIOS had many issues, and UEFI provided a solution to them, even if it wasn't an inherently good system. 1.The BIOS isn't portable, you can compile UEFI for any platform by porting a small base module. Everything uses this module, so the compiler will take care of the rest. 2. BIOS was a heap of 16bit assembly code, with a small memory space. It was quite hard to add any kind of complex functionality. 3. You couldn't use a boot volume greater than 2TB due to MBR. A new one wasn't added because of number 2. 4. UEFI is more like a micro kernel then a generic BIOS, and provides the functionality for vendors to write 'better' interfaces. Here the interfaces aren't actually provided in the official UEFI sample implementation, and most can be arguably called worse then an average BIOS interface. However, you have to acknowledge the capability is there. 5. It added a framework for kernel verification (unlike what some people think, it only verifies the UEFI firmware and the kernel/boot loader it loads directly). The direction that Microsoft is taking it is quite unfortunate, but it's actually a good feature. 6. It has a limited capability as a boot loader, allowing multiple operating systems to be started directly. These are all features that aren't present in the BIOS, that UEFI has fixed. Unfortunately the current implementation has many bugs, and many features are arguably implemented badly. However is was created to fix real problems, and has been undeniably successful at that. At a linux conference there was a talk about all this, from someone quite involved with the UEFI creation process. If you are interested, the recording will probably be released in a few weeks. There is also a talk from the previous year by Matthew Garrett (the guy who does UEFI stuff in Linux), talking about all the bugs present in UEFI, which is an entertaining watch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aq5M3Q76U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aq5M3Q76U.
- RexRollman 14y ago
  It sounds like UEFI is over-engineered. All I want is for something to initialize the hardware and hand over for booting.
  - guilloche 14y ago
    "over-engineered" is the right word for UEFI.

Bios is outdated, but UEFI is even worse and became such a mess. It did not fix BIOS's issues and is unnecessary complicated. The efforts are regretfully wasted on UI.

keeperofdakeys 14y ago

Sorry, but the BIOS had many issues, and UEFI provided a solution to them, even if it wasn't an inherently good system. 1.The BIOS isn't portable, you can compile UEFI for any platform by porting a small base module. Everything uses this module, so the compiler will take care of the rest. 2. BIOS was a heap of 16bit assembly code, with a small memory space. It was quite hard to add any kind of complex functionality. 3. You couldn't use a boot volume greater than 2TB due to MBR. A new one wasn't added because of number 2. 4. UEFI is more like a micro kernel then a generic BIOS, and provides the functionality for vendors to write 'better' interfaces. Here the interfaces aren't actually provided in the official UEFI sample implementation, and most can be arguably called worse then an average BIOS interface. However, you have to acknowledge the capability is there. 5. It added a framework for kernel verification (unlike what some people think, it only verifies the UEFI firmware and the kernel/boot loader it loads directly). The direction that Microsoft is taking it is quite unfortunate, but it's actually a good feature. 6. It has a limited capability as a boot loader, allowing multiple operating systems to be started directly. These are all features that aren't present in the BIOS, that UEFI has fixed. Unfortunately the current implementation has many bugs, and many features are arguably implemented badly. However is was created to fix real problems, and has been undeniably successful at that. At a linux conference there was a talk about all this, from someone quite involved with the UEFI creation process. If you are interested, the recording will probably be released in a few weeks. There is also a talk from the previous year by Matthew Garrett (the guy who does UEFI stuff in Linux), talking about all the bugs present in UEFI, which is an entertaining watch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aq5M3Q76U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aq5M3Q76U.

RexRollman 14y ago
It sounds like UEFI is over-engineered. All I want is for something to initialize the hardware and hand over for booting.
- guilloche 14y ago
  "over-engineered" is the right word for UEFI.