It Turns Out Windows Unconditionally Reserves The First 1MB Of RAM, Linux Was Just Late To Do So

[lolren]

AI wonder if this was the reason Lenovo laptops use to break just by booting Linux: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/12/...vo-laptop-bios

[rene]

It's not detectable, that's why they apply this unconditionally in the first place.

well, normally we denylisted defects like this. It is also detectable, IIRC the linux kernel even has (or had) some periodical memory consistency checking option. If one wanted to be overzealous, e.g. for vintage hardware, one could periodically test pattern check it for corruption before use and allocate that area last ;-)

Any motherboard manufacturers to avoid? If they can't fix their shit, they certainly don't deserve my money.

They're probably all crap, but I haven't had any problems with MSI so far on two different boards. ThinkPad seems to work fine too.

Then again, it might just be due to kernel devs adding work around which is why it works so well for me.

I wonder how many hundreds of bugs will magically get fixed now..........

This is yet another case of when dealing with low level system interfaces, it's best to do whatever Windows does (as that's all firmware programmers tend to test) rather than what the spec says.

There was another similar issue a few years ago where doing what Windows does fixed reboot hangs on some systems: https://mjg59.livejournal.com/137313.html

Oh god. That's just so cringy (the things they have to do to get reboot working). Ew.

[AJenbo]

The correct way would be for both Windows and Linux to refuse to boot if the BIOS corrupts the memory. That would lead to an actual fix of the root cause....

It's not detectable, that's why they apply this unconditionally in the first place.

[ms178]

Setting up a Sandy Bridge HP laptop with 5.13-RC was a nightmare. The problems started with several distros refusing to boot from an USB stick, crashing right after GRUB initialization (only openSUSE worked, Ubuntu and Manjaro did not). The 6770M did not work at all (dmesg showed radeon related errors) and 3 of four threads were not showing up or used at all which made it painfully slow. It turned out a BIOS option could at least get me back the lost three threads. But unfortunately it felt less responsive with that setting.

[rene]

Turns out PC BIOS' still are utter garbage, and engineers always hated it like the plague for good reasons. It's hilarious that the good old BIOS was replaced with even more crap code running and corrupting things. Heck, in 2021 not even the bloody settings work halfway decent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHHogyokkRQ

[lamka02sk]

Any motherboard manufacturers to avoid? If they can't fix their shit, they certainly don't deserve my money.

[AnAccount]

Windows: Doing it correctly 11 years ago what Linux only does now.

The correct way would be for both Windows and Linux to refuse to boot if the BIOS corrupts the memory. That would lead to an actual fix of the root cause....