Slashdot Mirror
Blurring The Line Between BIOS And OS
Jon Kincade writes "The Register has an article about Phoenix Technologies cME software that allows users on anything from servers to embedded systems to run diagnostics, browse the web and other things without having to boot into a full fledged OS. The primary use seems to be recovery from system crashes. Also, this may explain why the Phoenix browser was asked to change its name a few months ago."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Basic Input Output System
If you can do more advance operation through "BIOS", then the "BIOS" is no longer BASIC.
Therefore, it should no longer be called BIOS (Basic IOS)
Call it Embedded Operating System (EmbOS).
Just a thought!
Now that computers aren't coming with floppy drives, there better be something that users can do crash recovery from if the machines won't boot from cd....
Personally I'd like the choice of recovery cds/floppies.
I agree.
The whole point of a "Basic Input/Output System" is for, well, basic I/O. It was meant to be a thin layer between the OS and the hardware.
While I agree that the technology can be improved upon, I don't think this is the proper direction to take.
I much prefer the route that Gigabyte has taken with their DualBIOS. If there is serious enough trouble with the OS, just boot to a CD with recovery tools on it. If there's a problem in the BIOS, you now have a spare. I don't see the necessity of a TCP/IP stack in the BIOS.
My $0.02.
-azmaveth
we used to buy the magazines, go to the stores and log on to the net to be eagerly greeted with hot new tech that made us want to immediately scrap the $10k worth of goodies we'd just bought the week before.
Now it seems that every day brings "innovations" that seem designed to further my intent to hang on to what I've got forever if I can manage it.
What's wrong with this picture?
KFG
When i am doing a fresh install of WIN2K and REDHAT on my comps (a once-in-6-months exercise) i make sure the machine is not even physically hooked up to the net untill i have a software firewall configured, up and running. I keep the firewall packages on CDs, along with config files, and ONLY AFTER these are setup, i go online to install other things, update drivers, etc (usually, only for win2k, not for redhat, which is trivial to bring back to my customized setup)...
;) ...
having TCP/IP built into the bios, with no firewalling support, and no possibility of frequent/safe upating, no easy way to check for "being" owned is a very bad idea. Also, Phoenix being a popular bios manufacturer, there will be a lot of worms targetting this bios tcp/ip stack.
I dont see a single genuine advantage of having all this crap in the BIOS anyway. I mean, if u hose ur drive, and need to go online for some critical information/software before u can bring ur comp back up, just keep a KNOPPIX cd handy. I personally think BIOS shud be thinning down even further, given none of the modern OSes really use most of the services, and the BIOS mostly just gets in their way. All the bios shud be capable of, is to bring up the OS, and then let the OS configure everything. It wud be so neat to have the OS kernel setup all the hardware, the powersaving policies, everything when it starts up. Of course, the best is to just have the OS kernel as the bios!! just throw this anachronism completely out. (yeah for ppl whos fav os is not linux, sumthing else might need to be worked out
Ghoul
Sigura Non Grata
What if they called it an OS on a chip?
Make it separate from the BIOS; but possibly on the same EEPROM chip; it will only load up if you hold down the F12 button (or something) when you boot.