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Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

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Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#51

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

jsheard wrote: post #14
skissane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft owns GitHub, and GitHub is crawling with Windows source code leaks… and I’m wondering it anyone at Microsoft really cares? Is it possible they’ve even made an intentional decision just to ignore it? If it were an Oracle source code leak, I expect they’d have a crack team of lawyers suing people 24x7 until it was all gone… maybe that’s why there haven’t (to my knowledge) been any Oracle source code leaks (I…

> Microsoft owns GitHub, and GitHub is crawling with Windows source code leaks… and I’m wondering it anyone at Microsoft really cares? Even weirder is that GitHub hosts all of the tools for activating (i.e. cracking) modern versions of Windows and Office as well. Microsoft really doesn't care.

Microsoft's current business is its cloud services, not Windows. Windows is just an onramp to their SaaS subscriptions.

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#52

Post by cesarb »

adrian_b wrote: post #43
Kwpolska wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much benefit would there be in whole-disk btrfs? The space taken up by GPT and the FAT32 EFI partition is a rounding error compared to the sizes of modern disks.

I have used only whole-disk XFS SSDs and HDDs for more than a decade. While the space wasted by GPT and partitions and by the arbitrary alignment rules used by various formatting tools is not great, I do not see any reason why it should exist. The space wasted now with GPT and UEFI is several orders of magnitude greater than it was with traditional partition tables, so eliminating it has become more attractive. Such…

> I have used only whole-disk XFS SSDs and HDDs for more than a decade.

I wouldn't recommend that. It makes the disk appear to be empty to many tools (and possibly some operating systems), which could lead to data loss. That's the reason GPT has the protective MBR: it makes the disk appear to be full to legacy tools which don't understand the GPT format.

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#53

Post by LeFantome »

mmastrac wrote: post #8

> Windows XP/7's video modesetting logic is a bit mysterious. It may try to set a incompatible mode using int10h, which will cause flickering or even black screen after transferring control to the legacy OS. I would really love to know more about this. I assume it's this VGA driver: https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/tree/master/Source/XPSP1/NT...

It is kind of amazing that Microsoft hosts leaked Windows source code on their own website.

Could this be seen a distribution by Microsoft? I mean, if you can sue Pirate Bay for the content they host...

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#54

Post by adrian_b »

cesarb wrote: post #52
adrian_b wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used only whole-disk XFS SSDs and HDDs for more than a decade. While the space wasted by GPT and partitions and by the arbitrary alignment rules used by various formatting tools is not great, I do not see any reason why it should exist. The space wasted now with GPT and UEFI is several orders of magnitude greater than it was with traditional partition tables, so eliminating it has become more attractive. Such…

> I have used only whole-disk XFS SSDs and HDDs for more than a decade. I wouldn't recommend that. It makes the disk appear to be empty to many tools (and possibly some operating systems), which could lead to data loss. That's the reason GPT has the protective MBR: it makes the disk appear to be full to legacy tools which don't understand the GPT format.

You are right, and such disks will appear as empty to any tool or OS, but I will never insert any of my SSDs or HDDs that are used in this way in a computer that I do not control.

Windows frequently overwrites any bootable Linux drive, so it might have even less restraints with an apparently empty drive that does not have GPT structure.

Because of the risk of Windows messing with them, I also do not insert any of my bootable USB memories in a live Windows computer, even when they have GPT structure. For data interchange with Windows, I use only clean and non-bootable exFAT formatted USB memories.

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#55

Post by justsomehnguy »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #46
axiolite wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the project page: "Boot FreeDOS, Windows XP, and Windows 7" Additionally, it was just 3 years ago that memtest86plus finally got a UEFI version. That was painful for a few years there. (Though the 4GB RAM limit would have made this not an ideal solution.) I'm sure there are other such self-hosting utilities that haven't been and may not be ported/rewritten to work under UEFI.

I think I remember Windows 7 (and maybe even Vista) supported UEFI natively.

It's a mishmash. Vista and 7 can't boot from the GPT partitions and overall widespread UEFI support on the hardware is ~2013, way beyond Vista and very late in 7 lifecycle.

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#56

Post by stewarts »

arccy wrote: post #45
bitwize wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I... wouldn't confess to having perused illegally leaked Windows source, as it could taint you and make you ineligible to contribute to certain projects, like Wine.

if you read it but didn't confess, you'd still be ineligible, you'd be harming rather than helping wine if you did sneak in contributions.

What percentage of people reading HN do you think are actively contributing to WINE source? I'm going to go out on a limb and claim less than a tenth of a percent. And that, to me, is probably 10-100x too high of a threshold.

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#57

Post by userbinator »

joshuaissac wrote: post #50
AStonesThrow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started college in 1989, my Pascal programming class used a cluster of AT&T 3B2 systems running SVR3. I poked around those systems like crazy over the course of two quarters. I don't remember if there was any significant source code exposed to unprivileged users. During the mid-90s, the Unix Wars were raging and Unix System Labs was suing U.C. Berkeley over the intellectual property of Unix source code. Unix h…

This type of restriction is still applied to contributors to the ReactOS project, in that contributions are not accepted from those who have seen any leaked Windows source code or have worked for Microsoft.

From those who claim to, to be precise.

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#59

Post by fuzzfactor »

Beautiful.

This is the project that I think has been needed for a while now.

So much that a Replacement CSM for user implementation has been top of mind to suggest here, awaiting the next time I see a request from programmers looking for a worthwhile project.

Now there's nothing more performant than a request being granted before it's even been made :)

Re: Get PC BIOS back on UEFI only system

#60

Post by mintsuki »

superkuh wrote: post #49
mintsuki wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very niche use case, and also won't really work on most real BIOS machines as they actually check for a proper MBR and/or BPB (and no GPT), which is also why GPT on BIOS support is very spotty, since a lot of BIOSes will detect the GPT and refuse to boot, or refuse to boot in legacy (CSM) mode. In any case that is far beyond the original scope of booting old PC OSes, which MBR support alone serves really we…

GPT is not UEFI. It's just the format of the storage device. I have many computers with GPT formatted disks with actual master boot records at the start of the disk that boot MBR on both original BIOS machines and CSM BIOS machines. MBR is two things with the same name. It is both the format of the storage device and describes a booting mode using a master boot record and up to 4 partitions. GPT is one thing. It is a…

I know every word of what I said in the message you're replying to. While what you said is mostly accurate, as in MBR != BIOS and GPT != UEFI, never in my original message have I stated that that is the case. And the rest of what you said is incorrect, as per my original message.

I invite you to read what I said again.

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