Eric Seppanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 08:54:43AM -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote: > > > > well we can name it anything. The problem is openbios is taken. Since the > > source tree is called freebios we could call it that but the problem is > > name changes are really hard to propagate once they "take". I'll wait for > > other comments. > > > > The only thing I can see needed mods to boot other-than-linux is to change > > the 'linux' command in the python tool to some other name, such as > > 'payload', and specify the full path to the file, not just the > > directory. Then we've got Eric's uniform boot and we can do what we want. > > > > So, folks: rename or not? > > If you do, why call it ____bios? It's not a bios, and the name causes > confusion. Witness the less-technical folks who show up here regularly > wondering if they can replace their factory bios with linuxbios for their > home machine... > > I could easily suggest [open|free|net|tiny|fast]-[boot|launch|start] or > anything else, but BIOS has had a specific meaning for 20 years, and this > ain't it. Possibly. Until we succesfully implement the code that let's us boot something besides linux, I really don't want to see a name change. Changing the name before we have gotten the code done seems really ahead of ourselves. A couple of things. Personally I hate Open in a name. In far to many cases it has been used to describe something with a published API, that a second vendor could implement a compatible work alike. Free is much better. As far as BIOS. To a programer what we are implementing isn't the classic BIOS. But you have to be a programmer to tell the difference, so I don't think the name is bad. And with just the name it conveys to the unsophisticated what we are trying to do. If we need a label that is better is better than BIOS we should use POST, bootstrap. The expansion of the POST acronym has no connection to what we are doing. But the technical meaning is exactly what linuxBIOS is doing. The initial bootstrap of bring up the system. Though bootstrap is an equally good name. LinuxBIOS is not the bootloader, it is what loads the bootloader... As far as being able to replace a factory bios with linuxBIOS, linuxBIOS 1.0 should provide a way to do that. It probably should be a compatibilty layer that we load to boot windows. This whole conversation got started with the question of booting other things besides linux directly from linuxBIOS. Seriously linuxBIOS is coming along fine. And for some specific uses it works right now. It just happens that replacing a factory BIOS while ultimately a nice thing isn't important to linuxBIOS developers currently. Eric
