ELI5: What’s the difference between UEFI and BIOS?

| Category: Explain

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ELI5: What’s the difference between UEFI and BIOS?

FBX: UEFI is the replacement specification for BIOS – it does the same basic role of bootstrapping on launch, but BIOS has a host of technical limitations owing to the fact that the original specification is nearly 30 years old and unable to work with some modern hardware (for example, BIOS can’t work with a hard disk of over 2.1TB).

An easy illustration – any newly built computer that boots into UEFI will have usb mouse support. No such luck on an old AwardBIOS.

ameoba: Every computer needs some *firmware* that tells it what to do when it first powers up, before it starts loading the operating system.

The firmware for the original IBM PC was called BIOS. Every x86 PC clone since then has been designed to be backwards compatible with it and suffers from a bunch of limitations due to that.

At least until UEFI came out. UEFI is a modern replacement for BIOS, designed from the ground up, based on the needs of modern systems. For starters, it can be a larger program – this allows you things like a GUI, the ability to go onto the network to get updates & room for a bunch of diagnostic/repair tools.

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Washuchan: That would be a great way to get the shoes off the power lines.

canadian_eskimo: Aw c’mon! That was like 4 seconds. I could easily easily watched one minute.

chocolate712: I love these toys

yesmaybeyes: Weaponised Drones, who can we thank for this.

robreddity: Watch for that wind change. No more done.

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