Things That Should Never Happen

About ten days ago I posted about a problem with Samsung laptops getting bricked when trying to boot Linux using UEFI. There was a fair amount of commentary on the problem, and we later updated the article to indicate that it appears the problem is in the NVRAM and that removing the CMOS battery and power is enough to clear the problem. That's certainly still a major bug, and the best thing to do is to simply avoid using UEFI with Linux on Samsung laptops. Except, the bug appears to be quite a bit deeper than just a Linux driver. According to Matt Garrett, the problem is that the "UEFI Black Box" is supposed to take certain actions when specific conditions are met, but the...