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So, how is this not a monopolistic practice...which are SUPPOSED to be illegal in the USA?!
And we will all be importing motherboards from Europe.
Maybe we should start calling them Big Brother Boards instead of Mother Boards.
Maybe we should start calling them Big Brother Boards instead of Mother Boards.
... yet no one is crying foul. Or a Mac, for that matter.
If UEFI was an illegal monopolistic practice, Apple couldn't sell a single Mac.
Being able to install an OS other than what came on your hardware isn't a "right" it is a "feature" and if you aren't happy with that, there isn't much you can do about it. There is no legal mandate for an OS to be installable on all compatible hardware either.
If someone can point to a law or legal precedent to prove otherwise, I'd love to know I'm wrong. Until then, all of this uproar over "monopolistic practices" is simply factually incorrect.
J.Ja
If UEFI was an illegal monopolistic practice, Apple couldn't sell a single Mac.
Being able to install an OS other than what came on your hardware isn't a "right" it is a "feature" and if you aren't happy with that, there isn't much you can do about it. There is no legal mandate for an OS to be installable on all compatible hardware either.
If someone can point to a law or legal precedent to prove otherwise, I'd love to know I'm wrong. Until then, all of this uproar over "monopolistic practices" is simply factually incorrect.
J.Ja
Get your story straight! Ever since the first x86 Mac you CAN install Windows on it. Going even further back, Macs have always had at least one Linux distro that supports them and quit a few BSD derivatives. Nowadays you can install pretty much anything on them since they have more or less an off the shelf x86 architecture.
Oh and one other thing, all Intel based Macs use EFI yet there is no requirement for an insane PK or any other stupidity like that. The reason why EFI works on Macs is that you have a limited hardware base and EFI gets a very extensive testing. Is that the case for any of the Taiwanese manufacturers ... hell no! And yet even the Apple EFI gets updates as there are in fact bugs ...
Oh and one other thing, all Intel based Macs use EFI yet there is no requirement for an insane PK or any other stupidity like that. The reason why EFI works on Macs is that you have a limited hardware base and EFI gets a very extensive testing. Is that the case for any of the Taiwanese manufacturers ... hell no! And yet even the Apple EFI gets updates as there are in fact bugs ...
If it you have a screwdriver and a little bit of time, I really don't see why you can not.
I requested the source code for my TV and Blu-ray player as it was stated in the manuals I could under the GPL. Don't know what I'll do with them, but I have them.
The thing about Macs is that they work A LOT better than a Windows PC. Your argument holds no water.
UEFI is Microsoft's "Magic Bullet" in so much as they will make it difficult for users of Linux (private and enterprise alike) to upgrade their hardware.
And yes, the is something you can do about it. Nobody has the b@ll$ to stand up and do it though. It is the same thing that we can do against the movie/music industry to put them in their place. Don't buy their products.
I requested the source code for my TV and Blu-ray player as it was stated in the manuals I could under the GPL. Don't know what I'll do with them, but I have them.
The thing about Macs is that they work A LOT better than a Windows PC. Your argument holds no water.
UEFI is Microsoft's "Magic Bullet" in so much as they will make it difficult for users of Linux (private and enterprise alike) to upgrade their hardware.
And yes, the is something you can do about it. Nobody has the b@ll$ to stand up and do it though. It is the same thing that we can do against the movie/music industry to put them in their place. Don't buy their products.
Australia's Trade Practices Act makes anti-competitive behaviour illegal in the lucky country 
Your analogy with the TV and SmartPhone is invalid, as these are "appliances" by virtue of having a fixed, defined function (albeit that is becoming much broader), and it is only in recent times that they have contained a "computer". As much as there are now Internet connected fridges and TVs, I can't see myself using them to update the accounting system, develop applications or compile code. The intent of the manufacturers is to use that capability to deliver services, not to turn them into general purpose computing devices.
The PC has always been a general computing device and for those of us who have been around prior to its inception, was originally sold sans operating system and the buyer then either wrote their own or purchased one of several alternatives. While true that practice pre-dates usage by non-nerds, it sets the scene.
There has always been a choice of operating system for PCs, even if we go back to the DR-DOS / MS-DOS days. In addition to the more recent history of retail chain stores selling PCs, there are still a lot of businesses that sell parts and you can either buy the parts and build it yourself or for a small fee, pick the parts and they will build it for you. In either of these latter scenarios, purchase of an operating system is optional.
There was a legal case (my memory suggests it was in South Australia), some time back (maybe 5 years ago), where Dell offered a PC with Windows pre-installed and priced it as a package with no option to just buy the hardware. The case against Dell was successful and subsequently they had to offer the option of just hardware purchase. In this case the buyer wanted to load Linux and while Dell tried to make the case (undoubtedly prompted by M$) that purchase of hardware without an operating system was likely to result in a purchaser loading a pirated copy of Windows, the buyer proved that was not necessarily the case, as he wanted to load Linux. Forcing him to buy an operating system we neither wanted or would use was seen as anti-competitive by the court and as a contravention of the Trade Practices Act.
These days, Dell provide the alternate option of pre-loaded RHEL on a reasonable range of their PCs and all servers. Indeed, on qualified servers there is also the option of pre-loaded VMware and thus no user O/S.
P.S. I'm a self confessed Nerd. I designed and built my first computer. Bought the chips and designed, etched, drilled soldered, wrote the firmware, wrote the O/S. That was back in the early 1970's and pre-dated the PC.
Your analogy with the TV and SmartPhone is invalid, as these are "appliances" by virtue of having a fixed, defined function (albeit that is becoming much broader), and it is only in recent times that they have contained a "computer". As much as there are now Internet connected fridges and TVs, I can't see myself using them to update the accounting system, develop applications or compile code. The intent of the manufacturers is to use that capability to deliver services, not to turn them into general purpose computing devices.
The PC has always been a general computing device and for those of us who have been around prior to its inception, was originally sold sans operating system and the buyer then either wrote their own or purchased one of several alternatives. While true that practice pre-dates usage by non-nerds, it sets the scene.
There has always been a choice of operating system for PCs, even if we go back to the DR-DOS / MS-DOS days. In addition to the more recent history of retail chain stores selling PCs, there are still a lot of businesses that sell parts and you can either buy the parts and build it yourself or for a small fee, pick the parts and they will build it for you. In either of these latter scenarios, purchase of an operating system is optional.
There was a legal case (my memory suggests it was in South Australia), some time back (maybe 5 years ago), where Dell offered a PC with Windows pre-installed and priced it as a package with no option to just buy the hardware. The case against Dell was successful and subsequently they had to offer the option of just hardware purchase. In this case the buyer wanted to load Linux and while Dell tried to make the case (undoubtedly prompted by M$) that purchase of hardware without an operating system was likely to result in a purchaser loading a pirated copy of Windows, the buyer proved that was not necessarily the case, as he wanted to load Linux. Forcing him to buy an operating system we neither wanted or would use was seen as anti-competitive by the court and as a contravention of the Trade Practices Act.
These days, Dell provide the alternate option of pre-loaded RHEL on a reasonable range of their PCs and all servers. Indeed, on qualified servers there is also the option of pre-loaded VMware and thus no user O/S.
P.S. I'm a self confessed Nerd. I designed and built my first computer. Bought the chips and designed, etched, drilled soldered, wrote the firmware, wrote the O/S. That was back in the early 1970's and pre-dated the PC.
...this is why my TV is 20 years old and I have a dumb phone.
We do not cry loud. We ignore, hack, some even pirate.
We do not cry loud. We ignore, hack, some even pirate.
Different things have different models. That is why 'real world' anolgies of IT/digital stuff are so stupid and don't make sense.
Just because I can't (shouldn't) change my phone (which is primarily because it interferes with my carrier's service of me) doesn't mean someone should have that control over my pc (which they have no business caring about after I've bought it).
Just because I can't (shouldn't) change my phone (which is primarily because it interferes with my carrier's service of me) doesn't mean someone should have that control over my pc (which they have no business caring about after I've bought it).
on a Lenovo laptop.
Installing Arch was a lot of fun, including a good period of no HDD detected after initial boot.
Even as a near-expert with computers, even I wasn't 100% sure what I was doing when playing with the UEFI setting (it pretty much came down to try a setting, see what happened), I fear to imagine how someone less willing than I am, would go.
Installing Arch was a lot of fun, including a good period of no HDD detected after initial boot.
Even as a near-expert with computers, even I wasn't 100% sure what I was doing when playing with the UEFI setting (it pretty much came down to try a setting, see what happened), I fear to imagine how someone less willing than I am, would go.
It's just not appropriate everywhere. But, perhaps the kernel devs don't have the resources to hire QA people.
I used to be a QA people; we are quite costly and tend to complain alot
Nobody likes to over-pay to be nagged.
I used to be a QA people; we are quite costly and tend to complain alot
Nobody likes to over-pay to be nagged. - Keyboard Shortcuts:
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