Foxconn ‘sabotages’ BIOS to stop Linux running

no one can tell for sure if it was a deliberate act or not, but i do not feel anyone should restrain themselves to giving microsoft hell, and foxconn hell, just to keep them in place lets be clear, anytime we give microsoft an inch they take a mile I trust there operating system not in the slightest, right now i would not be surprised by running there operating system, that it keeps records of some of my files and sends it back to them. i know paranoia, you cant prove it, you cant disprove it.

Comment by nikopol at 4:41pm 1st August 2008

hi there, I dont know how this is going to come out, mistake or otherwise but I seriously doubt FC would take a bribe from anyone to only later get caught by a bios probe, which surely they were smart enough to know wasn't impossible. If they were and that happened they should pay the price X10000000, but beyond that I suspect an apology coming along soonish. On the whole linux front, I mean come on give me a break here.... Linux is mostly about geeks with HUGE ego's, all setup and ready to pounce on anyway not clever enough or with enough time on their hands to 'get' what linux is about and being tech-saavy enough to 'use' it. If you dont conform to that perceived default look out . If linux could agree to stand behind a ONE operating system base like windows and mac have done for how many years now ??, dont you think the game industry ( and everyone else ) would rally behind it and start doing alot more crossplatform game development ????? HOw often have we seen linux distro XYZ, release every 6 months, to be basically pretty unuseable on some level, compared to its windows cousin that out of box does everything, that most everyone on this planet needs it to, short of of course the pricetag and not being OSS, - yes we all get that. The trouble is the tipping point; at what point do people change to those two important criteria to avoid the opposite that atm M$ is counting on, and I tell you it wont happen until linux and its users get 'serious' about commiting to ' stable-on-release ' just like windowsXXX has done for years now, instead of just ' reasonably useful for geeks-on-release ' . m2chad

Comment by m2chad at 2:06am 31st July 2008

hi there, I dont know how this is going to come out, mistake or otherwise but I seriously doubt FC would take a bribe from anyone to only later get caught by a bios probe, which surely they were smart enough to know wasn't impossible. If they were and that happened they should pay the price X10000000, but beyond that I suspect an apology coming along soonish. On the whole linux front, I mean come on give me a break here.... Linux is mostly about geeks with HUGE ego's, all setup and ready to pounce on anyway not clever enough or with enough time on their hands to 'get' what linux is about and being tech-saavy enough to 'use' it. If you dont conform to that perceived default look out . If linux could agree to stand behind a ONE operating system base like windows and mac have done for how many years now ??, dont you think the game industry ( and everyone else ) would rally behind it and start doing alot more crossplatform game development ????? HOw often have we seen linux distro XYZ, release every 6 months, to be basically pretty unuseable on some level, compared to its windows cousin that out of box does everything, that most everyone on this planet needs it to, short of of course the pricetag and not being OSS, - yes we all get that. The trouble is the tipping point; at what point do people change to those two important criteria to avoid the opposite that atm M$ is counting on, and I tell you it wont happen until linux and its users get 'serious' about commiting to ' stable-on-release ' just like windowsXXX has done for years now, instead of just ' reasonably useful for geeks-on-release ' . m2chad

Comment by m2chad at 2:06am 31st July 2008

'We are huge, and we're not that stupid.' /cough...yeah right, not certifying a motherboard for an os so you can get as many people buying it as possible plus the negative feedback on your company when people realise it doesn't work, that's just a well considered marketing strategy is it? As to whether MS has something to do with it, let's face it, with their track record, let's just say guilty before innocent! ;)

Comment by titan at 6:24pm 29th July 2008

.... and the rising oil prices are all thanks to a banana called Marvin, who had been brainwashed by the Force Fruit To Action Group. ;-)

Comment by cjagusz at 8:32am 29th July 2008

i did tested with a custom motherboard from ASUS it does work well with Linux but on oem manufacture motherboard it only prohibited to use any OS accept vista. This is another example what can Microsoft can do with their BIOS anticrack to program the ACPI on the BIOS to use on activation on VISTA only. I have same problems with downgrade to XP seems the BIOS has refused to run xp stable. And the same problems using retail drivers on VISTA seems to not functions well that manufacture has prohibited me to use only oem drivers not retail latest drivers. This are the list of manufacturing motherboards have been infected are: HP, IBM, ACER, DELL, SONY, COMPAQ, and Foxconn. That are intentional rigg the acpi on the bios to force the consumer to use only Microsoft Vista to boost sales. That's why Intel need to look this matter quickly. for now i am using a nvidia chipsets with no problem what so ever .

Comment by user78405 at 10:15pm 28th July 2008

i did tested with a custom motherboard from ASUS it does work well with Linux but on oem manufacture motherboard it only prohibited to use any OS accept vista. This is another example what can Microsoft can do with their BIOS anticrack to program the ACPI on the BIOS to use on activation on VISTA only. I have same problems with downgrade to XP seems the BIOS has refused to run xp stable. And the same problems using retail drivers on VISTA seems to not functions well that manufacture has prohibited me to use only oem drivers not retail latest drivers. This are the list of manufacturing motherboards have been infected are: HP, IBM, ACER, DELL, SONY, COMPAQ, and Foxconn. That are intentional rigg the acpi on the bios to force the consumer to use only Microsoft Vista to boost sales. That's why Intel need to look this matter quickly. for now i am using a nvidia chipsets with no problem what so ever .

Comment by user78405 at 10:15pm 28th July 2008

i did tested with a custom motherboard from ASUS it does work well with Linux but on oem manufacture motherboard it only prohibited to use any OS accept vista. This is another example what can Microsoft can do with their BIOS anticrack to program the ACPI on the BIOS to use on activation on VISTA only. I have same problems with downgrade to XP seems the BIOS has refused to run xp stable. And the same problems using retail drivers on VISTA seems to not functions well that manufacture has prohibited me to use only oem drivers not retail latest drivers. This are the list of manufacturing motherboards have been infected are: HP, IBM, ACER, DELL, SONY, COMPAQ, and Foxconn. That are intentional rigg the acpi on the bios to force the consumer to use only Microsoft Vista to boost sales. That's why Intel need to look this matter quickly. for now i am using a nvidia chipsets with no problem what so ever .

Comment by user78405 at 10:15pm 28th July 2008

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Foxconn_says_Linux_killing_BIOS_is_AMI_s_doing

Comment by AlmightyCthulhu at 6:57pm 28th July 2008

Ever heard of the benefit of the doubt? Seems AlmightyCthulhu is one of the regular Ubuntu high horsers seeing conspiracy in everything. I see bugs and errors every day between Linux and all sorts of hardware - usually it just amounts to a mistake.. Occams razer: it is probably a mistake or genuine error. Until proven otherwise why not accept that. Attacking Foxconn like this (that) is just a bad idea.. it's hardly going to make them take the time to sort out any problems (or even listen to anyone..) I wouldn't blame them if they deliberately left the problem Bios's in future Motherboards now! The board wasn't certified or tested for Linux (as far as I can see) and so Foxconn would have had no idea if it worked or not. I highly doubt that they would deliberately sabotage Linux.. what would be the point ;)

Comment by Superman at 11:52am 28th July 2008

If the feature is on the board, it should be available to any O.S. (or code if you're not actually running an O.S.) that chooses to use it.

Perhaps it's a simple mistake and was caused by a lazy BIOS programmer performing a copy/paste from older source?

cstill?

Comment by cjagusz at 9:40am 28th July 2008

Sorry for the duplicate post.

Comment by AlmightyCthulhu at 4:43am 28th July 2008

This is on my blog and more directed at Matthew Garrett too (one of the kernel.org guys): I am glad that everyone can have their say in this. And quite frankly, I respectfully disagree with *some* of what Matthew Garrett has said. First off, this has to be a BIOS issue, it’s only affecting Foxconn-made boards, on several different chipsets (whereas the Intel-branded equivalent works fine, as well as many manufacturers with the same specs, that I believe demanded a Linux-compatible BIOS), the BIOS in all cases is a similar customized AMI (American Megatrends), and I still think it’s quite possible that either they, or Microsoft’s BIOS compiler, or American Megatrends has slipped Linux some poison, I will reiterate that Matthew has only seen the DSDT table, with none of Foxconn’s commenting intact, and he has said it should not be doing what it is, and that there are several weird things in it, including telling the CPU to execute code hidden from the operating system, Matthew’s summary boils down to “it may be a kernel bug”, and I say it may be Santa Claus, I do not know everything, he knows a lot more, but still far from the whole story, and even though he says it shouldn’t do this, I have the hardware, and it *does*, as several others have corroborated. “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” I find that with this being the one connecting factor, that the BIOS is responsible for this nightmare, AMI/Foxconn/(Microsoft?) are doing something they shouldn’t be, for reasons unknown, this is where “Microsoft and the black helicopters” comes in”. Did I say this was the case? No. Is this what I strongly suspect? Yes. Why would they go out of their way to sabotage Linux otherwise? Saying they’ve triggered a Linux bug later, when they’ve been found out, is the perfect cover story, (and at this point, I give 50/50 odds between a patch and more “Go Buy Vista” cowbell) and mjg59 is giving them all the ammunition they need to make this crap fly, should it be their intention. If this is the fault of American Megatrends and/or Microsoft, and Foxconn simply shipped it without knowing what they were doing, I can also accept that, as long as explanation and acceptable BIOS patch are provided, and in such case, will gladly apologize to Foxconn for this entire situation. This is also conceivable, in a rush to ship Vista-compliant stuff, they really might just not have cared about anyone else, and didn’t worry about clobbering Linux, and AMI and/or Microsoft could have easily taken advantage of that.

Comment by AlmightyCthulhu at 4:39am 28th July 2008

I have this posted on my blog, directed at Matthew Garrett: --------- I am glad that everyone can have their say in this. And quite frankly, I respectfully disagreee with *some* of what Matthew Garrett has said. First off, this has to be a BIOS issue, it’s only affecting Foxconn-made boards, on several different chipsets (whereas the Intel-branded equivalent works fine, as well as many manufacturers with the same specs, that I believe demanded a Linux-compatible BIOS), the BIOS in all cases is a similar customized AMI (American Megatrends), and I still think it’s quite possible that either they, or Microsoft’s BIOS compiler, or American Megatrends has slipped Linux some poison, I will reiterate that Matthew has only seen the DSDT table, with none of Foxconn’s commenting intact, and he has said it should not be doing what it is, and that there are several weird things in it, including telling the CPU to execute code hidden from the operating system, Matthew’s summary boils down to “it may be a kernel bug”, and I say it may be Santa Claus, I do not know everything, he knows a lot more, but still far from the whole story, and even though he says it shouldn’t do this, I have the hardware, and it *does*, as several others have corroborated. “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” I find that with this being the one connecting factor, that the BIOS is responsible for this nightmare, AMI/Foxconn/(Microsoft?) are doing something they shouldn’t be, for reasons unknown, this is where “Microsoft and the black helicopters” comes in”. Did I say this was the case? No. Is this what I strongly suspect? Yes. Why would they go out of their way to sabotage Linux otherwise? Saying they’ve triggered a Linux bug later, when they’ve been found out, is the perfect cover story, (and at this point, I give 50/50 odds between a patch and more “Go Buy Vista” cowbell) and mjg59 is giving them all the ammunition they need to make this crap fly, should it be their intention. If this is the fault of American Megatrends and/or Microsoft, and Foxconn simply shipped it without knowing what they were doing, I can also accept that, as long as explanation and acceptable BIOS patch are provided, and in such case, will gladly apologize to Foxconn for this entire situation. This is also conceivable, in a rush to ship Vista-compliant stuff, they really might just not have cared about anyone else, and didn’t worry about clobbering Linux, and AMI and/or Microsoft could have easily taken advantage of that.

Comment by AlmightyCthulhu at 4:35am 28th July 2008

I find it strange that a company would deliberately annoy it's customers. This isn't like the Intel & Dell situation where Intel can bribe Dell. MS shouldn't be paying any money to board manufacturers. This is either incompetence on Foxconn's part or there is something very very fishy going on.

Comment by l3v1ck at 7:47am 27th July 2008

NickoBellic comments about Ubuntu taking a long time to setup is rubbish. You can go from blank hard drive (or partition existing windows setup) to fully working operating system with a shed load of applications amazingly quickly. Hardware just works with no driver chasing, applications install when you load Ubuntu. There is no way you can install XP or Vista, load drivers and programs in anything like the short time Ubuntu takes. Hardware makers take note, If your products will not support linux then I will not buy them. I used to be Windows only but Linux is so convienient I have found myself using it more and more.

Comment by wilfy1 at 6:28am 27th July 2008

I used Ubuntu last week and it takes too much time to setup, as for the server version, I ain't tried it yet, although I'm sure after the reviews I've read from serious Windows enthusiasts I'm sure its brill as a Server OS, just not great for the day to day stuff...

Comment by NikoBellic at 2:46am 27th July 2008

Niko, Have you actually used many linux distros? And the one on the eee pc doesnt count as a proper distro, it's a kids one. I myself have used countless, I could probably fill up a LOT of the space in here with distros that I have used But I digress. Linux is a decent OS for the enthusiast, too much fine tuning for my likes, however for a HTPC/server it can be great. The fact that the mobo was ACPI for vista but NOT linux stinks for an industry standard, I'm glad I dont work with the Open source techies at MS as they must be really peeved off if it kept going this way (and yes there is open source at MS)

Comment by finlay666uk at 1:37am 27th July 2008

Crafty like a fox and out to conn people, Think I'll stick with Asus, Great boards no matter what OS you use :)

Comment by Atomic34 at 7:17pm 26th July 2008

We'll probably find out Mr Gates is working with the CIA in some vast Deus-Ex style plot :-)

Comment by Frohicky1 at 1:43pm 26th July 2008

I find it quite disturbing that the people who make these MOBOs have to do things like this. I for one have Ubuntu in most PC;s in the house, and dual-boot it on my Vista PC. Infact, I'm typing to you on an Ubuntu laptop! Its just another case of Microsoft vs The World, IMO

Comment by bally199 at 11:30am 26th July 2008

Just a member of staff at FC who hates Linux. - tbh I wouldn't reccomend anyone to use it who are quite busy people anyway, It requires too much fussing about just for something small, just stick to various versions of windows, which probably takes about 5 mins to setup the way you like it - mind you I went to my mates place cuz he wanted to ask whether I can speed his system up a bit (vista x86 and x86 OS's are pretty crap with todays HW) but I looked at his power saving settings and f*ck me it was setup to run at optimal power savings pretty much, and thats one thing gamers dont need to have lol - BOT though, If you've grown up with windows stick to that. (Oh and if youy are gonna use linux, make sure you use a old and cheapy mouse, lol)

Comment by NikoBellic at 9:55am 26th July 2008

If, (and it's still a big 'if' at the moment) what this guy has said is true, then it's difficult to see how detecting a specific OS and then pointing it to a corrupted set of DSDT tables could be a mistake. While it could, potentially, be nefarious activity on the part of MS, it's far too early to say - only fair to let Foxconn make their report & see what they have to say on the subject. And yes, clearly open standards should be just that...

Comment by John_T at 6:38pm 25th July 2008

I think hardware should be compatible with ALL operating systems and vice-versa (within reason!), mac owners can have a dual-boot OSX & windows machine now they have Intel CPU's, and it should also be true for PC users. Windows does have greater software variety, but if I'm just doing some web-browsing or MS Office work, then the quick start-up time of OSX/Linux would be more beneficial. In tis case I'm inclined to believe it's a mistake, as Foxconn have nothing to gain by doing this on purpose. Maybe the workers got confused one day and let their kids into do their jobs while they enjoyed a 'staff bonding' day in the creche.

Comment by EdArch at 5:38pm 25th July 2008

I must confess that I am more prepared to believe that this is a mistake. The only possible reason for doing it deliberately would be if they were getting backhanders from MS, but in the current climate that would be rather unwise from MS's point of view. With Creative it is pretty obvious that they just wanted to force people to upgrade, whereas for Foxconn this is a new product.

Comment by jonlumb at 5:09pm 25th July 2008

Windows thought to put the big book of Codeing down on linux with DX10. Since that has failed perhaps this is there new path to 1 platform for all. Ray tracing the penguin into extiction with windows 7 will be plan C.

Comment by Cool_CR at 4:48pm 25th July 2008

Same old story isn't it...

Comment by Zhaoman at 4:47pm 25th July 2008

I think the gaming community would benefit if Linux and Macs could play more games, hardware should be compatiable with Linux and Macs, and game developers should try to support Linux & Macs in future games, it would help break the grip Microsoft has on the gaming world.

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