BIOS boot vs UEFI boot

Kaminar said:
It wasn’t so long ago that some users preferred BIOS boot over UEFI boot for its robustness and lack of issues. I’d like to know what the situation looks like today. What would you choose for a system on which only FreeBSD is installed? Is BIOS boot still considered less problematic than UEFI boot?
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I install each FreeBSD in BIOS+UEFI setting after choosing Auto (ZFS) option - but these times I mostly (like 95%) boot with UEFI - I just keep BIOS option as fallback ... not sure if that helps.
 
vermaden said:
I install each FreeBSD in BIOS+UEFI setting after choosing Auto (ZFS) option - but these times I mostly (like 95%) boot with UEFI - I just keep BIOS option as fallback ... not sure if that helps.
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I had BIOS+UEFI configuration, too, for several installations for testing UEFI boot codes (first smh@'s and later Naomichi Nonaka's) for emergency legacy BIOS boots. And I'm still using the latter (my variant), now with UEFI-only configuration.
 
_martin said:
But coreboot is a firmware, i.e. it replaces the old firmware, either legacy BIOS or newer UEFI. Coreboot's payload can be UEFI.
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It can be, but its not. If AMI bios is flashed, system becomes UEFI with the ability to switch on CSM. If core boot is flash, system is legacy mode only. And this is by design.
T-Aoki said:
PCs having legacy BIOS is decreasing.
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That doesnt bother me at all as i have no plans to upgrade my desktop system any longer. Im too old for this shit. This is my last system before i die.
T-Aoki said:
And I've heared that some of recent PCs with UEFI stop providing CSM at all.
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That is correct. I saw several laptops that are full UEFI mode with no CSM option. It was few years ago to be honest.
T-Aoki said:
Maybe it would become harder and harder as time goes by to find PCs with legacy BIOS.
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This is why i run legacy hardware with open source firmware.
T-Aoki said:
Me, too.
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Me too. Both TPM and secure boot are disabled.
 
All that to read that even reticent people use or will use UEFI because there will be no choice.
As I said about another unrelated subject, if there were huge problems with UEFI, it naturally disappeared. Here, we can clearly see, it's not a trend, but a progress and no one will go back.

Still, there are people who want to teach me what is protected mode or how an OS is starting, just to insinuate there are right...
 
loveydovey said:
Notably, UEFI mode is the only mode that allows you to boot with graphics on a bhyve VM without using remote desktop software.
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Maybe by this commit?
As seen in the commit message, this is a trade-off as of the quite strict restriction in size of boot codes for legacy BIOS.

See the unit described. Kilobytes, NOT megabytes nor gigabytes!

And for (p)MBR at boot sector, the restriction is more strict, in bytes, even not kilobytes!
 
Emrion said:
That said, I don't use anymore BIOS booting for bhyve VM, it's so easier with UEFI and, as already mentioned, you can have a graphical output (without 'passthru' a graphic card).
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Can you (or loveydovey ) elaborate more? Up to date, I'm using the built-in VNC support with bhyve, but it is not much fast, and net/waypipe that is rather fast, and I like it. My GPU is rather old, so I cannot use virtual passthrough GPU (i.e. sharing a GPU with multiple VM). If there are other approaches, I'm curious.
 
hruodr said:
What will be the substitute of home PC? The android smartphone?
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Sadly, yes. Locked down, custom boot systems like ChromeOS, iOS, Android are looking more and more likely for consumer devices. Many households don't own a PC anymore and the last consumer holdouts seem to be Steam DRM Platform gamers. If Valve gets them to migrate to Steam Machines, then that will be a landmark moment.

(A real tragic eye opener is that there are basically only a handful of companies that even sell retail x86_64 motherboards anymore)

If I am optimistic and x86_64 becomes legacy as we move to RISC-V, then much of that is u-boot anyway. We may well see BIOS hardware outliving UEFI hardware purely for legacy industrial use-case.

Either way, probably won't be in our lifespan. BIOS abstractions will also very likely hold out until then in workstation hardware for those who need it.
 
OpenFreeNet said:
Can you (or loveydovey ) elaborate more? Up to date, I'm using the built-in VNC support with bhyve, but it is not much fast, and net/waypipe that is rather fast, and I like it. My GPU is rather old, so I cannot use virtual passthrough GPU (i.e. sharing a GPU with multiple VM). If there are other approaches, I'm curious.
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Yes. it's just a framebuffer, but this last is a feature of UEFI. I don't know waypipe, and to be honest, I didn't even look on the wayland side. I should.

Well, I don't use VMs with a graphical view, it just helps at installation time (or in case of network problem inside the VM). After what, I disable VNC support because it's a huge security issue.
 
OpenFreeNet said:
... "worsly", I were not able to boot bhyve VM using BIOS
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To boot a bhyve VM using legacy CSM (booting via bhyveload) instead of UEFI firmware, you must perform two main changes:

1. Pre-load the Kernel using bhyveload​

Unlike UEFI (which uses BHYVE_UEFI.fd to handle the boot process inside the VM), CSM/Legacy boot requires running the bhyveload utility first to load the FreeBSD loader into memory before launching the bhyve process.

Run this command before starting bhyve:

bhyveload -m 4G -d /path/to/disk.img my-vm

2. Update the bhyve Command​

Do not use the -l bootrom,... line in your bhyve command. Otherwise, just use your bhyve launch script normally. As mentioned earlier, you will NOT get a framebuffer this way, just serial access.
 
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