SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Sulla
Intel is planning to end "legacy BIOS" support in their new platforms by 2020 in requiring UEFI Class 3 or higher.
Making rounds this weekend is a slide deck from the recent UEFI Plugfest. Brian Richardson of Intel talked about the "last mile" barriers to removing legacy BIOS support from systems.
By 2020, they will be supporting no less than UEFI Class 3, which means only UEFI support and no more legacy BIOS or CSM compatibility support mode. But that's not going to force on UEFI Secure Boot unconditionally: Secure Boot enabled is considered UEFI Class 3+.
Intel hasn't removed legacy BIOS / CSM support yet due to many customers' software packages still relying upon legacy BIOS, among other reasons. Removing the legacy BIOS support will mitigate some security risks, needs less validation by vendors, allows for supporting more modern technologies, etc.
Source: Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday November 25 2017, @07:16PM
All that needs to happen is somebody cook up a BIOS compatibility layer as an EFI executable and GPL it. It could even support a classic looking BIOS Setup screen to configure it where the variables get stored in the UEFI space. Since TianoCore includes a CSM it should not be a big effort to pull it out as a standalone piece distributed as a bootable image with an installer. If MBR support is eliminated entirely it would mean you would need a small boot volume to hold the EFI partition.
A wee USB stick should suffice, get an image signed and distribute it ready to toss onto a stick. Pop it in the back of the machine, configure it to boot and UEFI basically goes away, even against secure boot. At least until Microsoft demands the UEFI keys be omitted and only the Windows keys installed. Which is of course where this is supposed to end, with the PC platform as locked down as iOS, Android and Windows tablets. For our protection.