LinuxBIOS Gains Steam

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."

Comments

BIOSes should not be operating system-specific.

[Brett Glass]

It is no better to be locked into running Linux on a machine than to be locked into running Windows. The BIOS should be a generic facility that can load any desired operating system.

Re:BIOSes should not be operating system-specific.

[Wesley Felter]

Most current BIOSes are extremely biased toward DOS and DOS-derivatives like windows 95 - they're pretty ill suited to even Windows 2000, I'm sure microsoft now would prefer them to be replaced too (but with something that still ties you to MS, of course - no doubt MS will be prodding at x86 BIOS manufacturers to get this).

Intel is pushing a new BIOS standard called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface?); it's not really clear why they're not just using Open Firmware except maybe the conspiracy theory you mentioned.

Re:BIOSes should not be operating system-specific.

[Wesley Felter]

No one's locking anyone into Linux. People who use LinuxBIOS know what they're getting into.

Reminds me of my ? to RMS about a free BIOS

[weave]

I attended a talk by RMS at H2K. He mentioned how he doesn't use any software that isn't free. I asked him if the BIOS code that boots his computer was free (as in speech).

He said it was a good question. His position on it is if it's flashable and programmable, source should be free.

He kind of dodged the question about whether or not his computer BIOS was flashable, free, whatever...

Don't get me wrong, unlike most people, I have a lot of respect for the guy and I don't believe for a second Linux or Open Source would be where it is today without the efforts of him and his team. It's just that there are always little contradictions that trip up even the best of zealots. Like, I wonder if his life is in danger, will he approve of being hooked up to a computer that provides life support but is running non-free software! :-)

What should be in the ROM

[tsprad]

1. Initialize all the programmable chips so the board can come up and run.

2. A quick self-test to make sure that everything looks like it's basically working.

3. Offer the option of a more extensive self-test to provide some assurance that weird behavior is not a hardware problem.

4. Load a bootstrap loader from *any* I/O device on the board that might be practical. If the board has an Ethernet interface, it must be able to boot from that. If not, then perhaps from a serial port. This is for initial system installation. Normally you'd boot from the disc controller, of course.

5. Not require any equipment that's not permanently attached to the motherboard, i.e., if you don't know you've got a keyboard and a local video display, then use the Ethernet (preferably) or a serial port for operator control. Load the loader unattended if there's no operator present.

6. A remote reset sure would be nice if you could make sure you could keep it out of the hands of the jokers.

With all that and a 100Mbit Ethernet, the admin could reinstall the officially-approved software on the luser's workstation in a few minutes, without getting out of his own chair, and without having to walk the luser through any complicated procedure like finding the reset button and pressing it, let alone finding some special floppy or CD. And not just luser's workstations, servers, too. once the power and the Ethernet are plugged in you'd never have to turn the lights on in the server room again.

Re:Not generally useful..

[A Commentor]

One objective is to NOT support any extra hardware.

So with my board's original BIOS, the SCSI BIOS comes up after the regular BIOS. This allows configuring of the controller, each device, low-level disk formating, etc. So will the SCSI BIOS still be displayed on boot-up? If not, I would have lost alot of functionality by using the LinuxBIOS.