According to Kevin Lawton:
> Chip Salzenberg wrote:
> > Is the Elpin BIOS specialized for use with Plex86, if only in such a
> > minor way as knowing what kinds of pseudo-hardware it's going to find?
>
> It's just a plain vanilla VGA BIOS. There's nothing custom in it.
Oh, OK.
Questions unrelated to licensing: Plex86 emulates only plain vanilla
pre-1990 VGA hardware? If so, won't that have to change, if only for
performance?
> We needed one for bootup of real OSes, and of course all the time
> for DOS.
It's conceivable that the Linux framebuffer support could work already
with uninitialized VGA hardware and without a VGA BIOS. If it doesn't
work now, it might not be hard to make it work, especially with plex86
pseudo-hardware that either is, or can be made, sane and/or friendly.
> At this point, plex86 isn't ready for being a package in a distro.
> When it is, the Debian folks can distribute plex86 without the
> VGA BIOS and provide the user with instructions on how to access
> it by CVS for those who want it (probably most).
I think it will be possible to distribute both of them: Plex86 can be
in main, and the Elpin VGA BIOS, a non-required supplement, can be in
non-free. This is already done with e.g. 'gimp' and 'gimp-nonfree'.
--
Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"We have no fuel on board, plus or minus 8 kilograms." -- NEAR tech
