On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 1:18 PM Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I have never quite understood how UEFI worked. Initially I stayed away from it because of secure boot issues. Do you think I should put in the effort to move to UEFI? If so, would you be able to point me where to start? > BIOS vs UEFI is a function of the manufacturer's selection of firmware. Pretty much all x86_64 computers have UEFI for a while now, mainly because Microsoft certification for Windows branding has required it, as well as the operation of Secure Boot including the ability to disable it and load arbitrary certificates. The way this works on Fedora now, you don't need to worry about it. If you do, good chance it's a bug, unless you're doing something super custom. There is a catch somewhat worth knowing about, even though it's esoteric knowledge and you shouldn't have to know it: the firmware type is discovered by the installer when it launches, and it will produce a partitioning layout and installation predicated on that firmware type. It's not easy to undo, it's easier to just reinstall. And for legacy reasons, UEFI firmware computers often have a "legacy" faux-BIOS that can be presented to the OS instead of UEFI. It's still ultimately UEFI firmware but when this legacy option is enabled, it fakes the appearance of being a BIOS computer to the operating system and also the installer. So in that case, you'd get a BIOS installation of Fedora. Making things worse, many manufacturers treat their customers like children, and have decided to refer to UEFI firmware as BIOS. So when you go looking for firmware updates, you're likely to find them listed as BIOS updates. It's just terrible. They should have just called it what it is, firmware, from the outset and not caused end users to be confused with either a new term, UEFI, let alone by interchanging two different things, BIOS and UEFI, as if they are the same thing. But that's where it is. So how do you know if your system has BIOS or UEFI? If the legacy BIOS option is enabled, it might be difficult, you'd have to go through firmware setup to find it. And just because you can't find it, doesn't mean it's not hiding somewhere. And of course every manufacturer has different firmware user interfaces, so it's not like people can really describe to you what you're looking for. So if it seems frustrating, it's not you, it's the manufacturers who have done a bad job. They could have used the UEFI organization to standardize some of these terms and user interfaces, but they didn't care enough about the problem to compromise and come to an agreement for general user benefit. The bottom line is, they didn't care. But depending on the age of the computer, make and model, there might be hints somewhere that'll fairly conclusively confirm/deny if that model has UEFI firmware or BIOS, and then also how to confirm whether the faux-BIOS is enabled. For sure if the /sys/firmware/efi/efivars directory exists, it's UEFI. -- Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
