UEFI: a kind of "BIOS" like booting interface.

[nooby]

http://www.uefi.org/home/

http://www.uefi.org/about/

Q: How is UEFI implemented on a computer system?

A: UEFI is an interface. It can be implemented on top of a traditional BIOS (in which case it supplants the traditional "INT" entry points into BIOS) or on top of non-BIOS implementations.

Q: Can anyone build their own Unified EFI implementations?
A: Yes. UEFI expect BIOS vendors, OS vendors and add-in card vendors to all implement products based on the Unified EFI Specification.

So in a sooner or later future I guess that Linux has to learn how to set up itself to such hardware too?

[aarf]

PC BIOS soon to be replaced by UEFI


October 2, 2010 by John Messina
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UEFI is an interface that takes care of handing over the pre-boot environment to the operating system.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The 25 year old PC BIOS will soon be replaced by UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface) that will enable PC's to boot up in a matter of seconds. In 2011 we will start seeing UEFI dominate new PC's, according to BBC News.

UEFI is designed to be much more flexible than the old PC BIOS that dates back to some of the first IBM PC’s since 1979. The BIOS has not changed much in the past 25 years and is one of the main reasons why a PC’s boot-up time is over 25 seconds.

The original EFI specification was developed by Intel but has now evolved into a standard which is now known as UEFI. The UEFI forum, which is a non-profit corporation, is responsible for the management and promotion of the specification. Their goal is to replace the 25 year old BIOS that’s responsible for slow boot-ups.

Mark Doran, head of the UEFI Forum, is quoted as saying: "With UEFI we're getting it under a handful of seconds. In terms of boot speed, we're not at instant-on yet but it is already a lot better than conventional BIOS can manage, and we're getting closer to that every day."

Some PC manufactures have already started using UEFI and system administrators who oversee thousands of PC and servers have already seen the benefits of swapping old-fashioned Bios for UEFI.

More information: UEFI

[Terryphi]

Intel demonstrated UEFI 3 years ago:

http://apcmag.com/intel_shows_pc_bootin ... rmware.htm

Manufacturers are very likely to support legacy BIOS implementations and drivers in UEFI. The transition to true UEFI booting and hardware will be a slow, phased approach.

[cb88]

UEFI is not like a BIOS.... its like OpenFirmware (Apple) or OpenBootProm (Sun/Oracle ... aka SnOracle)

UEFI can be good or it can be really bad (security wise)... depends on your vendor and if they are trustworthy or not...

If your vendor allows you full acess to the UEFI great! if not... then well don't buy stuff from them anymore. Though most users wont know if they can acess their UEFI or not... as it requires a fair bit of know how which I don't have myself as I don't have any EFI machines though I do have several Sun Boxes which have a very acessible openboot prom that loads ie when the computer boots you get a command propt built in with a forth interpreter even if you haven't installed anything yet!

on a sun box you can even leave the OS with 'halt-a' key combo and resume it with the go command

[cthisbear]

Secure Boot bootloader for distributions available now.

http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/59077

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20303.html

" As I discussed here, this is intended for distributions that want to
support secure boot but don't want to deal with Microsoft.

To use it, rename shim.efi to bootx64.efi
and put it in /EFI/BOOT on your UEFI install media.
Drop MokManager.efi in there as well.
Finally, make sure your bootloader binary is called grubx64.efi and
put it in the same directory. "

Read the comments.

Chris.