On Mon, 2011-09-26 at 11:15 -0500, Dale wrote: > So buy a mobo without it or that can disable it. Got it. It'll be a > good while before I buy a new mobo tho. I'm sure they will have a > nice > fix by then but this is something I need to remember just in > case. ;-)
Ok, I'll bite... It depends on who makes your system. For example, I've got a new laptop, with UEFI BIOS and SATA HDD, but if you go in the UEFI settings and change a couple of settings, you'll be able to boot into DOS. Why? Because, surprisingly, they still have quite a few corporate customers that need to use DOS. So if you can boot DOS you can boot Linux. Some manufacturers still provide firmware and BIOS updates via DOS boot cds. If you can boot from a non-signed CD, you can boot Linux. Some manufactures still consider it a competitive advantage to offer "fast-boot" linux-based firmware. Likely those would be able to be manipulated in order to to boot Linux from disk. On the server side, I don't think there is any major server manufacturer dumb enough to sell a system not capable of running Linux. In short, it's probably less of a problem then than people make it out to be. It's akin to the old(?) days when Broadcom cards didn't work with Linux. The solution is always simple: don't buy a system that has a Broadcom card.
