On Wed, 19 Feb 2014 15:39:51 -0800, walt <w41...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just spotted that phrase in the sourceforge newsletter:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/cloverefiboot/
> 
> and it seems to me like an oxymoron.  If that phrase makes
> logical sense then my definitions of 'BIOS' and 'EFI' need
> the latest updates :)
> 
> Until now I thought that EFI is a recent replacement for
> "BIOS" based machines.
> 
> Can anyone clarify the linguistics involved here?

The scope of UEFI is somewhat greater than that of traditional BIOSes.
Both do various hardware initialization and such, but UEFIs (can) have
a number of additional features, including more flexibility in what it
can launch from where (eg. network booting without iPXE) and even an
interactive shell. See [1] for a less organized list of features.

I'm unfamiliar with this project in specific, but I'm going by the line

    This is EFI-based bootloader for BIOS-based computers created as a
    replacement to EDK2/Duet bootloader http://www.tianocore.org.

I have a box running Duet, which is an UEFI implementation that can be
launched by (eg.) the extlinux boot loader on a legacy BIOS system.
Once Duet is launched, the system is mostly indistinguishable from a
native UEFI system that has booted into it's UEFI firmware.

From here, Duet can let the user go through menus to select an EFI
executable to launch (a EFI-stub enabled kernel or some sort of boot
loader), or it can automatically launch something based on existing
configuration.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI#Features

-- 
eroen

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