Foxconn deliberately sabotaging their mobo BIOS to destroy Linux?

Check this story on the Ubuntu forum.

A guy called 'TheAlmightyCthulhu' (who likes the word perseverance) claims that the Foxconn company has deliberately sabotaged a mobo's BIOS to ruin the Linux ACPI.
After trying to install Linux on his G33M-s mobo he got kernel errors and other mishaps. He insists that this can hardly be a mistake and that it is done to channel buyers towards Microsoft...

By disasembling bios code he found out that, while the Windows profile was flawless, the acpi table for linux systems had lots of errors.
'TheAlmightyCthulhu' claims this is intentional and he has filed a complaint with the FTC.
Foxconn produces hardware for the Xbox360, WII's, Playstations 2/3, Dell/HP mobo's, so this company should know what they're doing...
Either something is ACPI compliant or not, 'TheAlmightyCthulhu' claims.

Read the full story here; link.

Will their new nickname be Fauxconn?
Cheers.

 

Ouchie...I see a yummy-fun-to-read-about-lawsuit in the works.

 

Heads are gunna roll.

EDIT: But after reading thru the thread...I dont think any sort of lawsuit would go anywhere. They will just be slapped on the wrist and told to issue a fix.

 

See, that's what worries me is MS conspiring with hardware vendors, etc. But then again, I still think the KGB is causing our hurricanes lol

EDIT: pretty interesting back and forth there.

 

The ACPI DSDT on my Toshiba laptop detects the OS and does different things for each also, it's quite common I believe and probably comes that way from the BIOS vendor. Probably Foxconn just never got around to testing/fixing the Linux part. It sucks that it doesn't work, but the conspiracy theory is just laughable.

 

The exchange was pretty entertaining to read.

 

According to Red Hat kernel developer Matthew Garrett, it is NOT true that Fauxconn, err Foxconn intentionally has tried to wreck Linux usage with one of it's motherboards.
After analyzing the acpi tables, Garrett found that Ubuntu user 'TheAlmightyCthulhu', based his assumptions on faulty intel!

Check Garrets statement about the initial assumptions here; link
You can find part of his analysis and comments from others and further arguing and bickering about this 'issue' here; link

So, it seems Gates hasn't got Foxconn sofar as to assimilate all it's users yet

 

Garrett is claiming two things: a) there is no conspiracy at work and b) some or all of the problems Ryan (aka "TheAlmightyCthulhu") reported should not have any effect on Linux since Linux reports itself as Windows to the BIOS, so they are not real problems.

Well, reading the messages there it appears that Foxconn is working on the issues that Ryan found. To me this indicates two things: a) conspiracy is unlikely since Foxconn is cooperating, b) however the problems Ryan found are real because Foxconn would not be wasting money on non-issues.

 

That's interesting. I never knew that. Does it do that for all BIOSes? What if the BIOS has a Linux-optimized version of the firmware included on the chip?

 

Just because foxconn is working on the issue doesnt mean that its real, it could mean they are trying to figure out if its real or not. I mean, this is really bad publicity and possibly even a law suit, depending on the results. We just dont know what foxconn is doing about it, we can only speculate. Their "work on the issue" could just be a simple investigation into the matter, or it could be a whole working fix.

 

I don't know. I'm reporting what I read on Matthew Garrett's site. That specific point (i.e. "from kernel 2.6.whatever Linux reports itself as Windows") does not seem to be in dispute so I have no reason to doubt it.

What I do know is that for quite a while know, there's been a way with boot parameters to tell Linux to lie to the BIOS or to force the usage of one parameter table over another.

If the BIOS has an entry optimized for Linux, then I guess you have to use the boot parameters.

 

BIOS programming is not brain surgery. It would take all of five minutes of a BIOS specialist at Foxconn to say whether the problems raised are real or not. If it were a non-issue we'd already have seen a rebuttal from Foxconn.

 

Mmmm, that's a bold statement if you ever had to rely on Inventec's BIOS programmers.
Apparantly you've never had a Znote 6615, 6624 or 6625.

But on topic, couldn't the anouncement from Foxconn be partially/mostly marketing talk?
At least it sounds good that they 'are working on this issue'.

 

Its common business strategy to release empty statements like "we are working on it" once a major problem is brought up. It still doesnt tell us anything about it; we need more updates.

 

Are you talking from the perspective of someone who is trying to reverse engineer the BIOS or from the perspective of a motherboard manufacturer who has all the specs in hand?

 

The comment was meant as a sarcastic joke/sneer towards some Inventec bios programmers who have managed to **** up bios after bios version for a couple of Zepto notebooks.
Example; A new bios update frying your NIC....
The did/do have all the specs in hand by the way.

 

It appears that Foxconn did release a fix.

 

Kudos for Foxconn, I must say.
When they say, "we're working on it", they really are working on it.
Everything but a checksum 'issue' resolved. Impressive.