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LinuxBIOS Boots Linux, OpenBSD, Windows
Ivan writes "LinuxBIOS coupled with BOCHS has replaced the PC BIOS. The union of these two cool open source projects completely replaces closed source BIOS, while retaining the ability to boot other operating systems like BSD and Windows.
Here's the announcement."
Why not start using OpenFirmware on PCs???
will this ever get adopted by big vendors like Dell, HPQ, Gateway, etc.
If not then no one will use it outside of the OSS community.
If you install this, do you lose your old BIOS? For example, if I install it to my ASUS board, will it eliminate my ability to go to the BIOS setup menus? What happens to my ability to change the jumper settings through software?
OLPC Australia
Okay, from a user's perspective. Even if they consider your board "supported", *and* there aren't any bugs, I have one big question.
How "supported" is "supported"? Can I change all the parameters that I can now? Does the OS get back the right sizes of drives when it asks about them? Are there issues with setting stuff like the RTC? What is broken? How about temperature sensors and other stuff on the I2C bus?
Because I'm willing to be that "we can boot BSD" is a long way from "this is a complete, end-user ready product that supports all the functionality of the hardware."
May we never see th
Ever heard of the microkernel design? Whereas Linux is a monolithic vintage Unix design, HURD has much more potential in the long run. Better stability, modular easy-to-modify structure and so on.
Furthermore, HURD is a truly pure Free Software operating system. Linux has become tainted by the use of non-free tools like BitKeeper and closed source binary 3rd party drivers. That is not Free Software.
Granted, HURD has severe limitations regarding the hard drive partitions, but those should be overcome shortly.
Will this be able to support special features on each motherboard that are present in a manufacturers own bios such as temperature sensors, clock speeds, case security features, etc.?
Will we be able to 'plug-in' support for booting from external devices like usb/firewire drives, flash cards, pcmcia devices, usb memory keys, and transparently make them look like a normal floppy/hdd.
Will this now make booting from a CD an older machine that doesn't presently possible?
Will I be able to replace the linuxbio with the original again if everything buggers up?
What about so called dual bios systems?
Does anyone know if this helps us in the war against Palladium and DRM?
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
will this conflict with microsoft's palladium plans? sounds like yes. will microsoft try to boycott this project? (rhethorical question..)
As an 'end user' I would rather deal with multi-booting a computer without using LILO or GRUB.
However, I have a few concerns, not on the technical side, but on the political/corporate side (and no, this is not a troll...sheesh)
- Will Microsoft, in its zeal to maintain some semblance of control, seek to disable Windows from using motherboards with this bios...perhaps as one of their many 'updates'?
- If Microsoft pushes forward their "trusted computing" through Palladium, how does this affect this project?
- Since this appears to be a government-funded project, will Microsoft scream that this is unfair (not that they have a point, but will they?). Since the US government seems to be unable to discipline the company, I'm wondering how much power they REALLY have over the government.
- Will this project eventually woo motherboard manufacturers were to leave the various BIOS companies (Award, etc.)?
Sheesh, that was a lot of questions about M$, but I'm not obsessed (sharpening ax on grindstone)
So you can replace the perfectly good bios that comes with your pc with one that might work almost as well if you are very lucky and happen to have exactly the right hardware and software. The question "Why?" springs to mind here?
Sig is taking a break!
Sorry if this sounds like sci-fi, but I have started lately thinking whether it would be possible to launch a tiny REAL OS from within/integrated with the BIOS. A bit like vmware but on a even lower level - I am thinking this might start being possible now that BIOS capabilities are increasing all the time as well. This would provide many interesting possibilities. Do you see this impossible for some reason? The vmware page says : "VMware technology is patented and patent-pending" - does anyone know exactly which patents they have and what limitations do those pose.
Will there be any OpenSourced hardware for these things to run on?
/bin/ls | less ) you can't see what hardware bugs exist except by inferring their existance from their effects. Why don't people start designing open-source CPUs, chipsets etc?
;-). It would mean an end to Pentium F00F-style bugs, at least...
Think about it: all I hear the OpenSource monkeys chatering about is OpenSource software (from Linux kernels and KDE to bare-metal stuff like this). All the hardware these things run on is just as proprietary as Windows XP.
Now, while you can unscrew the case and have a peer inside (much as true programming gurus can see what a program does by doing cat
Of course, as there aren't all that many chip fabrication plants around we will have to rely on Intel and friends (enemies ?) taking the GPL/BSD/MIT/insert favourite licence here chip designs, making them and flogging them for loads (captive market, y'see. "Here is the chip design, you want this in Socket 468 format give us three hundred dollars". I think that the GPL allows that). I'm not all that sure how these licences would apply to chip designs but still. There must be some chip design geniuses out there who aren't employed by AMD and by making a few chip designs GPLd they could change the way the computing world operates. And get a high-paying job out of it as well
Just a few thoughts, I doubt it will ever happen but still...
-Mark
Well, but linuxbios is not just about booting, Im currently using LinuxBIOS in a project that uses it as full Operating System, with the Advantage that it boots directly from EPROM, No HD required ;)
China would love this. Another step closer to paying no techno tax to the west.
Freedom of speech doesn't come with bandwidth.
BTW Linux doesn't use the bios once past the basic boot phase - my mouse works (MS Explorer), My NVidia GeForce II works fine (Mandrake 9.0) AND my computer crashes only if I do something really stupid. Most of the time Lockups can be sorted out by killing X or loging in remotely (via a secure connection - SSH) and killing the process causing the problem, but this is rarely needed.
... But I digress.
Hmmm, Beer....
The Linux Bios is at a state now where boot time is limited by the time taken for the drives to spin up (Note: got to get flash HD for root...)
ASUS may provide **FREE** bios upgrades, this is to fix errors and poss minor speed improvements. I doubt they will support the mentioned implementation of secure hardware with iButtons and alike - Does this look like an alternative (abet slightly different) to Palladium...
I think I'll wait for a more mature release before I go replacing my Award BIOS. As much as I love open source stuff, I don't want to deal with my BIOS being screwed up at the moment.
Incase anyone ever does find themselves in a pickle with a failed BIOS flashrom...
You can often use flashrom chips from other motherboards, sometimes even if they are a different type of flashrom.
I had one machine BIOS upgrade go really bad (no longer even got to display any POST info at all, not even frantic beeping), I pulled the bad flashrom out, booted another motherboard with a DOS floppy with the old ROM image and flash program, while it was ON I pulled out the good flashrom and inserted the bad (two completely different models of motherboard), flashed the bad rom back to the old image, swapped the flashroms back and presto, both machines working.
You have to be very careful not to short anything when extracting the flashroms while the PC is ON and whatever you do, don't insert them the wrong way around!
The Award flashers will typically detect the part type and voltage, warn you that it's not the correct image for the current motherboard (if the mobos are sufficiently different) and then proceed to flash if you give it the OK.
This should probably only be done as a desperate measure where you can afford to loose the motherboard that you temporarily flash with. Pick up some PC's off the street for spare flashroms and elligible flasher motherboards that you don't mind wrecking.
My OpenBSD file server is a Pentium 200MMX that someone just threw out. Works beautifully. In fact every PC I've picked up off the street has worked without any problems.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Imagine if this could be made to work on an MS Xbox? It would transform that clunky Halo-player into a practical work computer - or even an affordable clustering machine.
Indeed, DARPA funded the entire Internet development as a Defense against Nuclear War. It was an enabling technology to allow communications when major communications services were disabled.
That is a myth. It is true that the original work on packet switching that Paul Baran did at RAND in the fifties was driven by the desire to design a survivable network. However, the ARPANet was built simply because computers were expensive in the 60's. DARPA realised that if they could connect together all the computers used by the various Universities and research labs they were funding (MIT, Berkeley, USCS, RAND, Lawrence Livermore etc. etc.) then they could make better use of the available computer resources, E.g. the guys at MIT could log onto the system at RAND and make use of some peice of equipment there.
Read Where Wizards Stay Up Late for more information.
By the way. One of the 10 fastest supercomputers in the world uses linuxBios. Just thought I'd mention that. :)
-=fshalor
What I don't understand is why people aren't pushing for faster power-on times in practice for all PC's. Why can't something like DiskOnChip be used for all of the boot processes? Wouldn't boot be faster if all of /boot and some of /etc was on a faster read/write device like DiskOnChip on the motherboard?
With RAM and Hard Disk prices dropping so fast, it's good for mass storage. But it seems that I see very few projects (other than the odd embedded project or two) that actually look at bringing a regular OS closer to the speed and responce times of a real-time OS.
The only thing I would see BIOS helping in would be if it provided a WHAM-BAM up and running OS from power on. And there have to be a dozen possable solutions. I agree in principle it's worth hacking the BIOS, but I wonder if it's truely the best/fastest way to help system preformance for the typical workstation.
I am not asking this with sarcasm, I just didn't see much about this on their web site.
Thanks.
Simpy
It looks like the fsmlabs product has come a long way. It is really great that they make it available for free. I think that this approach has several advantages over the Steeplechase system in that you can probably do a lot more with the RTOS. The Steeplechase RTOS was limited.
Unfortunately, Steeplechase didn't make any money. There were licensing costs with the Radisys kernel and most professional controls folks were afraid for PC based control. I have to admit that I would probably limit my exposure to things like data acquisition and small controls projects. Many of the things that I work on tend to go boom or release dangerous chemicals when they fail.
The last thing that I used Steeplechase for was NASA's Payload Ground Handling Mechanism that loads payloads into the space shuttle. We used Steeplchase as a watchdog over the motion controllers. It compared operator input to the motion of the gantry and hit the kill switch if the motion controller seemed to be out of control. It worked very well in that application.
As far as cost, Steeplechase was competitive. It cost about the same to buy the I/O and software as it did to purchase a PLC.