*countable infinities only

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2012-06-01 at 20:08 +0200, Tomasz Torcz wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 07:53:36PM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > Jon Ciesla wrote:
> > > For all available firmware vendors and models?
> > 
> > For the ones that end users are actually likely to have, which aren't that 
> > many. There are much fewer BIOS vendors than hardware vendors.
> 
>   Documenting the procedure may be viable after all.  Kevin, could you start
> writing such guides on Fedora wiki?

I replied elsewhere in the thread, but I believe KK is significantly
underestimating things here. There are indeed only a few system firmware
vendors, who write the firmwares for just about all PCs under contract
from the manufacturers, but the manufacturers usually insist on having,
and exercising, the power to customize the interface. I have no goddamn
clue why. It's completely stupid. But they do it. You can't rely on a
system from HP with, say, a Phoenix firmware to have the same interface
as a system from Dell with a Phoenix firmware. You can't rely on a
system from HP with a Phoenix firmware from 2010 to have the same
interface as a system from HP with a Phoenix firmware from 2011. You
can't rely on a system from one of HP's product lines to have the same
firmware interface as a system from another of HP's product lines.

It is utterly insane, there is no reasonable justification for it, and
it surely massively inflates the hardware manufacturers' support costs.
But they do it.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net