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LinuxBIOS Gains Steam

Posted by michael on from the sleek-penguin-under-arctic-ice dept.

solferino writes: "LinuxJournal has a good overview article about linuxBIOS and where it's currently at (hint : moving like a sleek penguin under arctic ice). Why linuxBIOS? To quote from the article "Currently two different interest groups are working on LinuxBIOS: one working on embedded systems and one building large-scale computer clusters. For these applications the legacy x86 firmware is suboptimal." Yes, this was a slashdot story in March this year but this article is relevant for updating the project status and for providing indepth information."

1 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. What LinuxBIOS is NOT by CatherineCornelius · · Score: 5, Informative
    The importance of this Linux BIOS project is not that it provides a way of doctoring motherboards so that they will not load Windows (and in any case, such an effort could hardly pose any commercial threat to Microsoft).

    Nor is it that the BIOS is free software--there are other open source BIOS projects that can perform a DOS/Windows boot.

    It isn't even that LinuxBIOS is suitable for embedded systems--other free BIOS's will support embedded systems and can perform a DOS/Windows boot.

    In any case, there's nothing to stop someone writing a DOS/Windows boot loader and booting it from LinuxBIOS.

    The point, surely, is that "LinuxBIOS generally weighs in under 64KB and doesn't waste ROM space with unnecessary functionality. Because it isn't a legacy design, LinuxBIOS starts up fast, even without code optimization."

    It really just provides a nice slimmed down boot cycle suitable for embedded systems that do not require the PC BIOS baggage. We're not even talking about manufacturers dropping DOS/Windows compatibility, simply one or two equipment providers considering using LinuxBIOS in situations where compatibility is unnecessary and speed to boot is an important factor.