Introduction to UEFI HTTP(s) Boot with QEMU/OVMF

A nerdy boot-up tutorial somehow turned into a mini comment-section cage match over why computers are still using what one reader basically framed as the digital equivalent of a fax machine. The post walks through a newer way to start a computer over a network using regular web links instead of the older setup that depends on TFTP, an ancient file-transfer method that even the article dunks on as "trivial," not secure. The big sell? Using normal web tools — and even encrypted web connections — could make remote startup easier, safer, and less tied to a perfectly trusted office network.

But the real juice is in the reactions. One camp was immediately like: finally, a huge quality-of-life upgrade. Commenter nijave cheered that ordinary web servers are way easier to run than old-school boot servers, and loved the idea of moving sensitive startup files to the cloud without instantly inviting tampering. Then came the practical crowd: noodlesUK basically asked the question everyone else was thinking — cool demo, but will this work on real physical machines, or is it just a lab trick? That gave the whole thing a skeptical edge.

And then, of course, the drive-by flex arrived. naturalmovement popped in with the classic comment-section energy: Apple did this ages ago via Internet Recovery, a reminder that in tech threads, there is always someone ready to say the "new" thing is actually old news. Meanwhile, one colleague showed up just to publicly hype the author — the rare wholesome twist in a thread otherwise powered by security anxiety, setup pain, and a little bit of "why are we still like this?" energy.