On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 05:46:10PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: >On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 5:41 PM, Steve McIntyre wrote: > >> Ugh, *no*. It's firmware supplied with the system. It lives under grub >> and provides standard interfaces. > >ISTR a discussion on this list about flashing system firmware and the >consensus was that yes we should do it where possible. I think the >discussion was mostly about u-boot, but the same applies to other >types of firmware. What changed in the meantime?
U-Boot varies massively from board to board and *doesn't* provide standard interfaces. Those are major problems when you're trying to give a consistent user experience for booting. On the various small embedded platforms where people are recommending to replace U-Boot, it's often (but not always) easy to replace it if you make a mistake (swap SD card, etc.). UEFI is explicitly specified to give standard interfaces with reliable, known behaviour across different implementations. It's often *not* easily user-replaceable (just like on x86 servers) and we should not be buggering with it once it works. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. [email protected] We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control.
