On Tue, 15 Mar 2005, Jonathan Morton wrote:
> If I understand right, the "bootstrap" section (presently called > LinuxBIOS) is essentially a stripped-down Linux kernel with some rather > more in-depth device initialisation capabilities. Such a configuration > does make sense, and would allow very flexible boot device support. such was the plan. But the small flash size problem changed the plan > If this is true, then as a kernel it *does* have callbacks, and can > justifiably be termed a BIOS in the strict sense of the word, even if it > doesn't provide the legacy "IBM compatible" calls to run M$-DOS > directly. Thus the name "LinuxBIOS" should probably stick. yeah. I still think long term I want linux in there. The Intel EFI guys beat up on me a lot about this -- "LinuxBIOS has no API". My response was, "of course it does -- it's called the linux system call layer". But it's harder to make that case when there's no linux in there ... > Eventually, even Intel will have to admit it's time to ditch the old, > frequently buggy and restrictive AMI and Award BIOS structures. > Goodness, BIOSes of both kinds have caused havoc when faced with a HD > slightly larger than was expected at the time of manufacture, multiple > times in recent history. The onus has largely been on the HD > manufacturers to work around the BIOS bugs. That's just wrong. Intel has admitted that, long ago; it's just that their solution is utterly proprietary, which runs against the grain. At least my grain. ron _______________________________________________ LinuxBIOS mailing list [email protected] http://www.openbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
