Linux compatibility and security dangers of UEFI "BIOS" in Asus N550JV

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffery Mewtamer

Sounds like I might be immune(or at least, less exposed) to the problems uefi causes on account of the fact that I haven't had reason to dual boot in nearly a decade, but it does sound like a issue that transcends distro and is hopefully one that gets ironed out before I am forced to upgrade to a machine that comes with uefi. Can't say I'm surprised the retailer and manufacturer are completely useless for any use case beyond the pre-loaded copy of Windows(personally, when I have problems I can resolve myself or via the internet, I do to my college's resident Linux enthusiast). Still, with the way Microsoft seems hell bent on preventing people from booting other OSes, I'm glad I was able to kick them to the curve a long time ago. As for splitting the thread, I would say discussion of the uefi problem was getting to in-depth to be appropriate in its original position. Do think the forum could do with some re-organization into fewer sections no more activity than we have though. Edit: If checking what kind of BIOS I had was as simple as entering my Bios, I wouldn't have bothered asking. I can get into my BIOS(or at least what I assume it to be the BIOS), but visual impairment prevents me from doing anything once I get in or reading any of he information displayed there, and no one in my household knows computers well enough to assist me. Oh well, I'm not having any issues related to booting, and since it will likely be several years before I need to buy another machine(barring unforseen hardware failure), hopefully the problems will be resolved by the time I come into possession of affected hardware. .

Business has become much more brazenly predatory in the past decade. We've become an "I'm allright Jack" society, and as business has gotten more monolithic, it goes for the low hanging fruit. Most PC users now (not to mention Mac users) are content to simply accept a disposable, preselected package of software and hardware, with no service except from the manufacturer's contracted service depot, which is probably so underpaid as to make screwing the client a necessity of staying alive.

Government doesn't care about people being ripped off systematically, let alone being incovenienced or having their own small business crippled by the greed priorities of "legitimate" corporations. And any media expose can expect to be hit with a major lawsuit, no matter how well documented the report is.

How else can you explain that a company like ASUS dares to sell a laptop for $1100, advertise it as being upgradable to 16GB, but provide no suitable upgrade chips, and refuse to direct the buyer to a source of a suitable RAM set. How to explain that they would sell a laptop of any kind with a battery which lasts 3 hours on a good day, and not only refuse to sell the buyer a spare, or direct him to a vendor, but even threaten to void the laptop's warranty if the user changes the battery. The only explanation I can come up with is that computer users have become sheep, and the manufacturers and retailers have turned in to wolves with a feeding frenzy.

Good luck with your old machine. I've been running old until last Fall. In fact, the ASUS was my first brand new PC since I bought a Tandy 100 back in 1985. But it's a hard slog. I'm just about to take a sledge hammer to my old hard drives, and am horrified to discover I've accumulated more than 20 over the years. They're not very well behaved either. I wanted to check them first for anything I might want to keep an failed to back up, but half of them won't work with the BIOS of the few older desktop machines I have left.

I've got enough old PC accessories and storage devices to create a small computer museum. but no one is interested in that stuff, and it will all end up polluting some beach in India and poisoning the board pickers who disassemble the precious materials.

Anyway, like so many things in our current social engineering storm, UEFI pretends to be defending us from harm by removing our options. Big business is all about creating captive markets now. And customers are coming to resemble feudal serfs more than free agents in an open market.

(I hope I haven't inadvertently started a new thread).