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Torvalds on EFI

Insightful quote of the day:

Not that I’d ever claim that the BIOS is wonderful either, but at least everybody knows that the BIOS is just a bootloader, and doesn’t try to make it anything else.
— Linus Torvalds (in reference to EFI)

I couldn’t agree more. Notice that GRUB is a bootloader too, and argueably a better one than BIOS. If we’re looking for a replacement to old legacy BIOS, why not use something modern and flexible instead?

EFI is just the repetition of the same design mistakes, which the industry already rejected, using a less obsolete instruction set. Today’s legacy i8086 realmode is tomorrow’s legacy ia32/amd64. Are we going to fall for it?

This entry was posted on September 13, 2009 at 13:56 and is filed under Sense categoria. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Torvalds on EFI”

  1. Links 16/09/2009: New Unbreakable, Berkeley DB | Boycott Novell Says:
    September 16, 2009 at 23:26 | Reply

    […] Torvalds on EFI Insightful quote of the day: Not that I’d ever claim that the BIOS is wonderful either, but at least everybody knows that the BIOS is just a bootloader, and doesn’t try to make it anything else. – Linus Torvalds (in reference to EFI) […]

  2. Roy Schestowitz (schestowitz) 's status on Wednesday, 16-Sep-09 21:45:45 UTC - Identi.ca Says:
    September 16, 2009 at 21:45 | Reply

    […] Explains #EFI and #BIOS https://robertmh.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/torvalds-on-efi/ […]

  3. nona Says:
    September 13, 2009 at 17:39 | Reply

    I like the coreboot approach. Reduce it to the strictest minimum, and then have payloads to deal with the rest.

    Because honestly, I don’t need another (usually crappy) OS on my machine other than the one I installed. I guess the BIOS makers need to justify their existance, though.

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