Sup niggaz. Hi, all. First sorry for my awful english. Next, let's go to the topic.
I am working on UEFI implementation. As an individual and it is in a very beginning stage by now. Nevertheless, if it succeeded, it might be useful not only for me. Uefi is an advanced firmware standard, and it can give a rich set of booting possibilities for end users. Of mini PC range as well. It's not tight to servers at all. GPT partitioning, exhaustive list of boot options from any imaginable media and protocol - eMMC modules, SD cards, USB sticks, SSD drives, SATA and SCSI HDD drives, CD roms, network, UART, etc. It has security options (if needed). It's a modern industrial standard having close relations with other modern and important standards like Acpi.
However there is no working and usable implementation of Uefi for mini PC range, and this was one of the reasons I decided to work on it. I won't tell about my uboot dissatisfaction here. I just say I am going to bring up Uefi here, on the arm miniPC range. At least for some boards. We know, Uefi has its place in the modern x86 desktop/server world, and it will be presented at the yet illusory armv8 server range when (and if) it comes out. But for armv7 and low cost machines with "little" armv8 cores (like A53), it is not presented. So I decided to fill this gap.
My target acrhitectures are armv7, armv8, mips (yes its support is even not declared in the spec, but this couldn't be a stop factor, there is no real (technical) prevention from implementing Uefi on mips, and also - the support can have been added later). And as such, I've chosen few development boards with these acrhitectures as target machines I will work on. For armv8, I have an rk3368 box and also I am waiting for my Pine64+ 2GB to arrive. So while it is being shipped, I, from the procrastination, have decided to create this thread, telling this story and asking about possible interest of general public. Kind of survey (for this, the poll is attached, please, don't hesitate to participate, and be serious, it's freaking serious question ).
So in essence, I want to ask you, guys, would you be interested in having Uefi firmware on your boards, you are playing with? In particular - on Pine64? I understand, for the end user the main interest is the working board with working FW/SW on it. But considering reality, how it goes, would you consider trying this firmware if it were available for download? Or maybe you want to say something about this. Share your thoughts it's very important for us!
For me this project is important and interesting. I would be happy if it succeeded and lived as a standalone project and were useful for others. It's for the future and now it would be interesting to have an input from the potential users.
I am working on UEFI implementation. As an individual and it is in a very beginning stage by now. Nevertheless, if it succeeded, it might be useful not only for me. Uefi is an advanced firmware standard, and it can give a rich set of booting possibilities for end users. Of mini PC range as well. It's not tight to servers at all. GPT partitioning, exhaustive list of boot options from any imaginable media and protocol - eMMC modules, SD cards, USB sticks, SSD drives, SATA and SCSI HDD drives, CD roms, network, UART, etc. It has security options (if needed). It's a modern industrial standard having close relations with other modern and important standards like Acpi.
However there is no working and usable implementation of Uefi for mini PC range, and this was one of the reasons I decided to work on it. I won't tell about my uboot dissatisfaction here. I just say I am going to bring up Uefi here, on the arm miniPC range. At least for some boards. We know, Uefi has its place in the modern x86 desktop/server world, and it will be presented at the yet illusory armv8 server range when (and if) it comes out. But for armv7 and low cost machines with "little" armv8 cores (like A53), it is not presented. So I decided to fill this gap.
My target acrhitectures are armv7, armv8, mips (yes its support is even not declared in the spec, but this couldn't be a stop factor, there is no real (technical) prevention from implementing Uefi on mips, and also - the support can have been added later). And as such, I've chosen few development boards with these acrhitectures as target machines I will work on. For armv8, I have an rk3368 box and also I am waiting for my Pine64+ 2GB to arrive. So while it is being shipped, I, from the procrastination, have decided to create this thread, telling this story and asking about possible interest of general public. Kind of survey (for this, the poll is attached, please, don't hesitate to participate, and be serious, it's freaking serious question ).
So in essence, I want to ask you, guys, would you be interested in having Uefi firmware on your boards, you are playing with? In particular - on Pine64? I understand, for the end user the main interest is the working board with working FW/SW on it. But considering reality, how it goes, would you consider trying this firmware if it were available for download? Or maybe you want to say something about this. Share your thoughts it's very important for us!
For me this project is important and interesting. I would be happy if it succeeded and lived as a standalone project and were useful for others. It's for the future and now it would be interesting to have an input from the potential users.