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EFI Sucks (2012)

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Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#51

Post by icebraining »

garmaine wrote: post #26
pebers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, but a pretty obvious retort is that it's necessarily complex; there is nothing else to do all the things that it does. Whereas for BIOS and EFI the argument would be that they should do as little as possible to hand over to the real operating system.

> but a pretty obvious retort is that it's necessarily complex I would like to offer, as a counter example, every micro kernel ever.

It's not obvious that a micro kernel plus all the modules necessary to do what Linux does is less complex.

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#52

Post by zaarn »

pankajdoharey wrote: post #25

Unfortunately his statement is still valid even after 6 yrs, it is still a complicated disaster. And it uses Fat32 and PE. An abomination in my view.

FAT32 is not a bad choice. It's a relatively simple filesystem that reduces the amount of stuff the UEFI has to deal with while also being understood by basically any modern operating system (modern = since 2000)

The only other option I'm aware of that is cross-OS would be UDF, which back then wasn't popular outside DVDs and even today people continue to ignore. Though it would have been patent free.

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#53

Post by appleflaxen »

majewsky wrote: post #50

I'll go against the grain here: I go out of my way to use UEFI over BIOS, because it Just Works for me. When I got my first UEFI-using notebook in 2012 (same year as the submission), things were a bit rough because the Arch wiki did not quite know what it was talking about, and the Arch ISO was not UEFI-bootable, so you had to use some trickery to install an UEFI bootloader, but even then, it only took me two hours t…

> it only took me two hours to figure out partitioning and install the bootloader

This doesn't read like a success story to me.

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#54

Post by nszceta »

Arch Linux on VirtualBox using EFISTUB

Super simple steps to install an Arch Linux guest on VirtualBox with pure EFISTUB. No bootloader! Fill in the blanks with https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide

timedatectl set-ntp true

gdisk /dev/sda

# 256 MB partition type EF00

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda2

mount -o discard,compress-force=lzo /dev/sda2 /mnt

mkdir /mnt/boot

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel btrfs-progs vim openssh

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

arch-chroot /mnt

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime

timedatectl set-ntp true

vim /etc/locale.gen

locale-gen

vim /etc/hostname

vim /etc/hosts

systemctl enable dhcpcd

systemctl enable sshd

passwd root

useradd -m user

passwd user

# /boot/startup.nsh

fs0:\vmlinuz-linux rw root=/dev/sda2 initrd=\initramfs-linux.img

exit

umount -R /mnt

poweroff

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#55

Post by arghwhat »

swiley wrote: post #40

The one thing I really love about EFI on non-macs is that you don't need a boot loader. You just compile your kernel with an EFI stub and whatever you want in the initrd and then select it with the firmware GUI. That's nice

The EFI stub is the bootloader, and is analogue to the bootloader needed on a BIOS system.

You don't need a seperate bootloader, or a multi-bootloader on any system. They only exists as a convenience. People still use GRUB on EFI for exactly that reason.

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#56

Post by arghwhat »

majewsky wrote: post #50

I'll go against the grain here: I go out of my way to use UEFI over BIOS, because it Just Works for me. When I got my first UEFI-using notebook in 2012 (same year as the submission), things were a bit rough because the Arch wiki did not quite know what it was talking about, and the Arch ISO was not UEFI-bootable, so you had to use some trickery to install an UEFI bootloader, but even then, it only took me two hours t…

Now try to install arch to a bootable USB stick from your UEFI booted system, and see all hell break loose.

I boot UEFI, but it's just so bloody cumbersome and fragile. The entire concept of having boot configuration in NVRAM is terrible.

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#57

Post by harijay »

Had the same experience with my plastic MacBook from 2007 and I could install Fedora 27 and Mint using a related program to iso master. Good to know about ISO master.

Wrote about the process: “The 2007 plastic MacBook lives again with Mint-y Linux awesomeness” @harijay https://medium.com/@harijay/the-2007-plastic-macbook-lives-a...

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#58

Post by salawat »

mercer wrote: post #35
nikofeyn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i never claimed he wasn't entitled. i have simply stated i am tired of his complaints and rants. and my point is that the world he has helped nurture is not without its travesties, so maybe he should concentrate on that rather than constantly bitching about what other people have built. it would be nice if you stopped twisting my comments to say what you think they say. and i don’t even understand your retort anyway.

"i would just like to get error messages that actually said something more than something went wrong. yea, no shit something went wrong, i already know that, but what and why and how do i fix it are questions i want answered. i know the code knows what went wrong, so just tell me." ..and then a whole bunch of other comments with you bitching and being entitled about stuff. Hi pot!

I'm sorry, but you won't get that. That isn't how computer's work.

There is no magical "understanding" available through a computer to tell you WHY an error occurred.

It is a computing device. It can tell you THAT a problem occurred, and WHAT it was doing at the time. With a debugger, you are free to ask the WHAT question at many points within the program to figure out WHERE the problem is coming from.

But the answer to WHY can only be divined by you. Mom had a saying she was fond of: "You must be at least 10% smarter than the piece of equipment."

Computers are not smart. They are dumb things that are exceedingly trainable at doing very dumb, repetitive things very quickly. Layer on a bunch of layers of dumb stuff and finding the spot where someone derped becomes very difdicult, very quickly.

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#59

Post by garmaine »

zaarn wrote: post #36
garmaine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but a pretty obvious retort is that it's necessarily complex I would like to offer, as a counter example, every micro kernel ever.

You mean all those micro kernels that are in widespread use and see huge market shares? The closest relative is NT and that is a hybrid, not purely micro. Modular and hybrid kernels (Linux and NT respectively) offer better external vs internal complexity tradeoffs; Linux and NT are internally complex since they do all the hard stuff, micorkernels are externally complex since someone else needs to do the hard work. Mi…

The most prolific (non-embedded) operating system on the planet is MINIX, a micro kernel based OS. On the embedded, medical, automotive, and aviation side there are plenty of micro kernel OS’s that give Linux a run for its money. Just FYI.

Re: EFI Sucks (2012)

#60

Post by zaarn »

garmaine wrote: post #59
zaarn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean all those micro kernels that are in widespread use and see huge market shares? The closest relative is NT and that is a hybrid, not purely micro. Modular and hybrid kernels (Linux and NT respectively) offer better external vs internal complexity tradeoffs; Linux and NT are internally complex since they do all the hard stuff, micorkernels are externally complex since someone else needs to do the hard work. Mi…

The most prolific (non-embedded) operating system on the planet is MINIX, a micro kernel based OS. On the embedded, medical, automotive, and aviation side there are plenty of micro kernel OS’s that give Linux a run for its money. Just FYI.

But is that because it's a microkernel or for other reasons? Crash stability can be achieved in monolithic and modular kernels too, it's not unique to microkernels.
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