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
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature