[Wolves] Soooooooo off-topic

[chris procter]

--- Peter Evans <zen8486 at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> Wasn't a great deal of problem getting a different
> O/S to run on the new Apple 
> hardware connected to their use of EFI?

Yes, basically the new Mactels use intels EFI for
their firmware instead of a standard PC bios. The
problem with getting windows to run on them is that
the OS needs to support EFI and MS announced that XP
does not and Vista will not include EFI support
(despite previous rumours to the contrary). The
problem was hacking in EFI support to a closed OS, or
hacking bios support into EFI.

Apple have now got round this by adding a bios
compatability module to their EFI implemetation (the E
stands for Extendable) to fool Windows into beliving
its running on top of a standard bios. Bootcamp allows
you to resize the drive and gives you all the drivers
you need, but its the firmware update that lets you
run windows.

EFI is an open standard (in its interface if not in
implementation), so Linux should be easily modifiable 
to support it, and in fact linux has been running on
Mactel imacs since feb, experimentally at least.

Weirdly bootcamp is a universal binary so it will run
on PPC macs as well. No one has yet figured out why
you'd want to...

> afaik Apple have effectively taken the route of not
> engineering their hardware 
> to require you to only use OS/X. 

What do they gain from stopping linux users giving
them money?


chris




		
___________________________________________________________ 
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com