Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

LinuxBIOS Boots Linux, OpenBSD, Windows

Posted by timothy on from the with-source dept.

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."

5 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Palladium by Anarchofascist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
    1. Re:Palladium by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      However, Palladium needs support in the BIOS level, IIRC. Without it, the OS can either pretend to have Palladium. Or the BIOS can trick the OS into believing that Palladium is oking everything. Palladium requires every link in the chain to be DRM compliant. With our own BIOS, we can now destroy a link even if the OS becomes mandated to contain DRM by law.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  2. This is great news! by stevezero · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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)

  3. virtual machine within BIOS by jki · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:More a matter of principle than practice. by AxelTorvalds · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It has huge practical benefits. LinuxBIOS like derivatives are used in tons of embedded projects. I can go from powerup to multitasking Linux kernel in about 3 seconds on a slow machine without doing a lot of optimization (ie decoding the kernel out of flash) I bet I could drop that the about 1.5 seconds if needed. init is running within about 5 seconds as is.