Intel Aims to End Legacy BIOS Support by 2020

[DooKey]

Intel's Brian Richardson in a recent presentation suggested that Intel will no longer support legacy BIOS after 2020. The plan is to pursue UEFI only from that point forward. Anyway, progress never stops and it's time to start getting rid of a lot of the legacy OS stuff running out there. This move to UEFI only will force updates to old software and devices unless a person decides to stay on old motherboards and OS.

Intel is deprecating legacy support. Intel is removing legacy BIOS support from client & data center platforms by 2020.
Platforms will be strictly UEFI Class 3
No 16-bit OpROM (VGA, LAN, Storage)
This will break any customer process that depends on "disabling UEFI" ("CSM ON")

 

[dgingeri]

There will always be the option of a BIOS based VM.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

This will instantly make lots of older hardware useless.

I don't know about you guys, but I often reuse old storage controllers, Ethernet cards, etc. These will be useless if legacy BIOS goes away.

That's kind of a bummer.

 

[trparky]

At some point you have to dump the old stuff or it ends up being a boat anchor tied around your neck.

 

[jardows]

Backwards compatibility is a great convenience, but it hampers future development.

 

[cjcox]

Must purchase land now (for future landfills).

 

[Dead Parrot]

We survived the end of ISA slots, VESA slots, 9 pin serial ports, parallel printer ports, game ports etc. We will survive this. There will be millions of older MBs around for decades. And several manufacturers will probably keep making BIOS MBs for years after Intel stops. They may not support the latest stuff but for those needing to keep an older machine going, they will be good enough.

 

[The Lamb]

We survived the end of ISA slots....

Some of the kit at my work runs off of ISA controller cards. I have to keep a stack of shitty old PCs just in case the workstations fail.

 

[/dev/null]

We survived the end of ISA slots, VESA slots, 9 pin serial ports, parallel printer ports, game ports etc. We will survive this. There will be millions of older MBs around for decades. And several manufacturers will probably keep making BIOS MBs for years after Intel stops. They may not support the latest stuff but for those needing to keep an older machine going, they will be good enough.

9 pin serial ports are still around....not on laptops, but usually have headers at least on modern motherboards. I still have a serial mouse around here somewhere

 

[dgingeri]

We survived the end of ... 9 pin serial ports...

Well, not exactly. I have about a dozen devices right now that I have to use serial to configure. I have a USB to serial adapter, one of the rare ones that work with Windows 10, sitting in my laptop bag so I can work with these things. Here's the kicker: at least half of them are brand new to 6 months old. Yes, that's right. Enterprise hardware is STILL being produced with serial interfaces. It's totally absurd. I hate it because I have to remember different speeds and connections settings for each one, and each one has their own unique sequence to start up once the serial port is connected. Hardware makers seem to just refuse to let it die.

 

[M76]

UEFI is torture. So many problems, and compatibility issues, while legacy just works. What does UEFI bring to the table anyway? Because to me it feels no different, the computer still seems to boot the same way. (in the few cases where it boots)

 

[silk186]

This sucks for a very small subset of users that wants to use very dated hardware with a very new MB and CPU but I don't think many people will be effected. 2020 is three years away.
If hardware makers are still producing products with these dated interfaces, it is because people are still buying them.

 

[trparky]

UEFI is torture.

Really? You'd like to go back to the days of old BIOS where you had to use a keyboard to navigate it? No thank you! I'll take my mouse capable UEFI any day of the week!

 

[M76]

Really? You'd like to go back to the days of old BIOS where you had to use a keyboard to navigate it? No thank you! I'll take my mouse capable UEFI any day of the week!

You should know that being able to navigate with a mouse in the bios setup has nothing to do with UEFI.

The amibios from my 1994 486 was capable of that.


Besides I prefer the text mode version. It's more straightforward especially when you're setting up multiple computers and only use a small temporary kb with a touchpad.

And by torture I mean setting boot mode to uefi and suddenly nothing seems to boot properly. Every hardware has to be 100% spot on to be able to use UEFI boot. I recently had trouble booting a system with a brand new 1080 in uefi mode. It worked with a 7 year old Quadro, but not with the brand new gaming card.
I get into trouble with UEFI every now and then. So far my track record with UEFI boot is about 10 to 1. As in 10 times there was some trouble or couldn't get it to boot at all, vs one time where it worked as intended. But that was a brand new I9 build.

 

[Dk975]

When I setup my Haswell system using no CSM and the onboard graphics, it looked all messed up, so I have used UEFI with CSM ever since 2013.