[Wylug-discuss] UEFI

[John R Hudson]

On Monday 24 October 2011 11:32:25 Andrew Lindley wrote:
> Apropos is Professor Ross Anderson's blog article which states that the
> UEFI thing is 'clearly illegal' linking a page on EU competition law
> [1]. UEFI is clearly constraint of the Linux kernel development
> methodology.  Any awareness raising should involve promoting the idea
> of a pooled complaint by GNU/Linux businesses and developers to the
> Competition Commissioners.
> 
> Andrew / Leny
> 
> [1] http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2011/09/20/trusted-computing-2-0/
> 
The debate has moved on because UEFI can be implemented as an alternative to 
BIOS or on top of BIOS and, while MS originally spoke in terms of using it as 
an alternative to BIOS for OEMs, they have since said that they to do intend 
to exclude 'legacy' [their word] operating systems from operating alongside 
Windows.

It will be up to OEMs how they install Windows; some may choose to install 
UEFI as an alternative to BIOS, others on top of BIOS.

However, from a Linux perspective, UEFI would allow the implementation of GPT 
and therefore the use of >2Tb drives; so a general move to UEFI ought to be in 
Linux favour - the devil as always is in the detail. But I think we should 
separate out the desirability of a move to UEFI from the specific 
implentations of particular companies.

John
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