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Google Sponsors the LinuxBIOS project

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the guts-like-to-be-free-too dept.

Rockgod noted that "The LinuxBIOS project aims to take down the last barrier in Open Source systems by providing a free firmware (BIOS) implementation. LinuxBIOS celebrates its Sixth anniversary this year, and has an installed base of over 1 million LinuxBIOS systems. With the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, that number is expected to exceed 10 million users in 2007. LinuxBIOS supports 65 mainboards from 31 vendors in v1 and another 56 mainboards from 27 vendors in v2"

8 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. why would a major manufacturer of motheboards by BrentRJones · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why would a major manufacturer of motheboards want to stay away from Linux for BIOS?
    What do Award and Phoenix have better than Linux?

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  2. Extensible Firmware Interface by smitty97 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    uh.. EFI & TianoCore ?

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    1. Re:Extensible Firmware Interface by Laur · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't forget a link to the OpenBios project, which aims to create a FLOSS implementation of the Open Firmware standard.

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  3. Any place to buy the MOBO with lb pre-installed? by WindBourne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If a company is selling mobos with these on it, now is the time to speak up. It strikes as this will be free advertisement. If not, this might be the time to start selling.

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  4. Hitting two sacred cows at once... by Otter · · Score: 3, Interesting
    With the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project [CC], that number is expected to exceed 10 million users in 2007.

    1) Given that yesterday's news was that OLPC managed to produce a whole 10 computers, and that we're now halfway through November 2006 -- yeah, I can't see how they could possibly fail to hit 10 million in 2007!

    2) Has Googlefawning now hit the point where it's no longer necessary for Google or the Slashdot story to explain exactly what it is that "Google sponsors" means? (Apparently they paid for a build system. Take that, Gates Foundation!)

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  5. Info on Linux BIOS in actual usage? by tji · · Score: 4, Interesting


    I have seen this mentioned every so often here, and I am interested in trying it out. But, the stuff I read blurs the line between what I think of as BIOS functions and the actual OS. So, I am not sure if it's worth trying out or not.

    Does anyone have pointers to good information, or experience themselves? The kind of questions I have are:

    - Do I still have the configuration capabilities that you expect in a Phoenix/Award BIOS? En/Dis-able integrated devices, Fan Control, ACPI en/dis-able, etc.

    - The articles all say that LinuxBIOS boots a linux kernel very quickly. Is this into a limited BIOS setup environment, or is this the actual kernel for the Operating System that you're running? If it's the latter, don't kernel upgrades become more difficult/dangerous? (Are there any docs which go through the system bootstrap process step by step?)

    - Is AMD64 (in 64 bit mode) supported?

    - Beyond the Linux hobbyist incentive to try out new things, are there any other major advantages to using LinuxBIOS on my home Linux server (which is a supported board)? Do I lose anything my current Award BIOS offers?

  6. Re:It's not the last barrier by T-Ranger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The SPARC processor has (nearly) always been "open" for the 1990+/-5 definition of "open". Its design is managed by SPARC International, which besides Sun includes TI, Cypress Semiconductor, and Fujitsu.

    But anyway...

    The processor of a system is. Being "open" to change doesn't really get you anything. If you have enough money to do a production run of a modern CPU, then the costs of buying into SPARC International, or the reference design of MIPS, or an IBM POWER, etc, etc, is nothing. Getting a custom chip is more then just sitting around and thinking. BIOS is software. Writing a better BIOS is a matter of sitting around and thinking. (Well you see what I'm getting at here..) Getting a custom chip produced is not feasible for anyone but the most rich geeks, beyond the time sitting down with Verilog. Getting a custom BIOS, beyond sitting down in an IDE, is trivial.

  7. Re:Why bother? by Hast · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Operating systems tend to ignore things which the BIOS tells them because they are not reliable. It's a lot easier and more robust to have the OS detect disks and memory than the BIOS.

    So it takes the BIOS quite a lot of time to do something which isn't used anyways.