Intel Releases BIOS Implementation Test Suite

Phoronix: Intel Releases BIOS Implementation Test Suite

As many Linux users know, there's a number of motherboard vendors out there who put out very poor/buggy/broken BIOS implementations for their products. For Linux users this can be particularly painful if the changes are catered to workaround issues in Windows but in turn cause a greater mess for non-Microsoft operating systems. As a step to improve the situation, assuming BIOS developers actually will use it, Intel has released a BIOS Implementation Test Suite...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTEzMQ

Hmmmmm....good news...i like the idea!:cool:

how about coreboot? would that fix things aswell? why not investing there?
does coreboot (with sea biosor whatever) use motherboard features? can configurations be made like HTT on, or other bios features?

IMHO it is usually not a problem to find out that you BIOS is broken. It is much harder to convince your vendor to actually fix it unless its brokenness also affects Windows.

Fort example I have a GIGABYTE M1305 notebook, and every time I boot it there is a kernel crash with "Your BIOS is broken; DMAR reported at address 0!" so I reported this to GIGABYTE and the only response I got was "you OS isn't supported, try Windows7 and see if this helps". I tried to explain them that I bought this notebook without any OS so neither I can nor I want to try Windows7, but they again responded they can only support Windows7. BTW quick search at kerneloops.org shows there are many more: http://www.kerneloops.org/searchweek...n_invalid_dmar

And that is not the only issue I have with this GIGABYTE BIOS.

I don't think any test suite is gonna help here :-(

Just tell them that starting from today you will always talk bad about them around the internet and discourage people using linux or any other non-windows OS from buying their stuff.

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Originally Posted by bulletxt

Just tell them that starting from today you will always talk bad about them around the internet and discourage people using linux or any other non-windows OS from buying their stuff.

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That accomplishes nothing.

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Originally Posted by jakubo

how about coreboot? would that fix things aswell? why not investing there?

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Intel differentiates some "products" through their control of BIOS code. The most obvious example is "RAID" vs. "non-RAID" ICH chips, but they also introduced an "upgrade" program for some of their budget chips last year where you'd pay $50 and get a code to unlock extra cache on the CPU. How long would that scheme last if people were using coreboot?

AMD supports coreboot [1]! Intel also should, but probably they think it's not woth the pain in the end for them. Also it's up to the MB vendors to create a coreboot version, if no independent dev makes this. But if Intel would provide processor and chipset support there would be less work, really.


[1] http://www.coreboot.org/News#2011.2F...ries_Platforms

has anyone dared to flash their laptop bios to coreboot?

I would love to do it, but on the other hand, I am quite scared that something would go wrong. If it does, there is no way back except physically digging out the bios...