LinuxBIOS Gets GUI

LWATCDR writes "Has a great write up on combining LinuxBios a Linux kernel, busybox, X, a window manager, and rxvt into a two meg flash chip. So what does get you? A six second boot time for one. All sorts of uses come to mind. Terminals to use with the Linux Terminal server. A very fast booting embedded system like a Car computer. With every one pushing for multi-core cpus, mega gigabyte drives and many gigabytes of ram it is interesting to see how small you can go."

Comments

Two megs?

[NixieBunny]

Uh, shouldn't that be a two gig flash chip, not two meg? X is a bit bigger than two megs, last time I checked.

Re:Two megs?

[stoolpigeon]

tfa is like 10 sentences - including this one The setup: LinuxBIOS + a Linux kernel + BusyBox + a tiny X11 server (Kdrive) + the Matchbox window manager + rxvt.(emphasis mine)

Re:Two megs?

[tomstdenis]

I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark and suggest they are using custom builds of the packages with optimizations turned off [or at least not towards unrolled code etc] and various elements removed [like all the drivers, support for the various bit depths, etc].

Just hazardin a guess...

Tom

Re:Two megs?

[Sparr0]

Your misconception illustrates precisely why projects like this are awesome. No, the summary was not incorrect. They really did this in TWO MEBIBYTES. Two gigs would be completely non-impressive, you can fit any desktop linux distro in that. Doing it all without X in 1.44MB, with dozens of diagnostic tools, is common on rescue floppy distros. Adding an X server (*NOT* XFree or XOrg, mind you) in under 2MiB is impressive but not impossible.

Re:Two megs?

[phoenix.bam!]

X.org is large, but there are other smaller implementations of X servers.

TinyX and Xvesa are two examples.

Re:Two megs?

[vivaoporto]

Small text, but plenty of hyperlinks, including a video of the system working.

Re:Two megs?

[vidarh]

You do realize there's more than one X server out there, don't you?

For example, Xvnc only takes about 800KB compressed. Yes, it doesn't display, but bolting a framebuffer driver onto it would only take a few KB - in fact you could fit both Xvnc and a full featured vnc client into less than 1MB. There are at least a few small "proper" X servers (that drives a display instead of keeping it's own frame buffer) out there that would fit in 2MB too - I only mentions Xvnc since that's the only one I happen to have installed.

Re:Two megs?

[Sobrique]

In IT, size matters - small is good.

Explains a lot really :)

Re:Two megs?

[Rob the Bold]

Uh, shouldn't that be a two gig flash chip, not two meg? X is a bit bigger than two megs, last time I checked.

Two gigs? What do you need? Pre-downloaded pr0n?

Re:Two megs?

[crush]

This is just such a great project. It's absolutely awesome. Small, fast, cool: choose any three and rejoice!

Re:Two megs?

[KiloByte]

MEBIBYTES

Please, stop this. The efforts by Academie Englaise to redefine the value of pi^H^Hmegabyte has failed miserably, and there is no reason to have this idea in a place other than MS Bob, UnifiedRoot or DOPA -- in the bit bucket where all asinine failed proposals go.

Re:Two megs?

[crush]

Kdrive (referenced in this project) and TinyX are roughly the same thing. The name just changed once Keith Packard got it integrated into Xorg

Re:Two megs?

[pipatron]

Indeed, it's well known and accepted that Mebioctets is the only correct word for this.

See for example http://zapatopi.net/labs/kibioctets.html

Re:Two megs?

[udippel]

In IT, size matters - small is good.
Explains a lot really :)

Micro-soft ?

Re:Two megs?

[tonigonenstein]

I like how they are proud of having X and rxvt. What they may not realize is that you don't need X if you are just going to run a terminal emulator. Replacing rxvt by a useful graphical application (still staying under 2MiB) would make for a more convincing demo.

Re:Two megs?

[itlurksbeneath]

You didn't read TFA, did you.... It clearly says that it's running inside a 2MB BIOS chip.

Re:Two megs?

[Sparr0]

Efforts to redefine? I think you are mistaken. Megabyte has meant "one million bytes" for far longer than the word byte has even existed. I am still pondering why YOU are trying to redefine it to mean anything else.

Re:Two megs?

[permawired]

It's the BIOS they're talking about... so yes, it's 2 meg

Re:Two megs?

[Goaway]

He is not "trying" to. He is simply accepting that this already happened decades ago, and that there is no reason to do anything about this.

Re:Two megs?

[cyclop]

Replacing rxvt by a useful graphical application (still staying under 2MiB) would make for a more convincing demo.

Why? They just wanted to show that they are able to run X. The application you run under X makes no difference.

Re:Two megs?

[cyclop]

Didn't know this annoying issue has finally been formalized the correct way. I really like it, although I doubt it will ever be of general use.

Re:Two megs?

[Lorkki]

Someone should probably tell the mass storage manufacturers, they don't seem to have caught onto this memory addressing convenience thing at all.

Re:Two megs?

[cyclop]

Whoa, a Linux BIOS with pre-downloaded pr0n! It would have an instant market! "From cold iron to pr0n in 6 seconds!"

Re:Two megs?

[Anna Merikin]

Sure. Try here http://www.angelfire.com/linux/floorzat/2diskXwin. htm 2-Disk Linux.for a linux with x that will fit on two floppies, one for the base install and the second for x-windows.

They used to have a 1-Disk Linux distro that would fit on one floppy (1.72Mb?) with a tiny x-server, busybox, ed (an editor) and a web browser (dillo? elinks? I don't remember....) but I don't see it on the page anymore.

It is actually usable (I tried it) but I had some probs saving files to hard disk, IIRC. This was a long time ago, but the project looks still active.

Re:Two megs?

[Sparr0]

I think the hard drive industry might disagree with you. Everyone says it's just a recent marketting gimmick to cheat people out of space, but every HD I have ever bought, since 20MB was "huge", was rated in decimal multiples.

Oh yeah, DVDs are measured in decimal multiples too. 4.7GB == 4700000000B.

You're just on the losing side of a very long argument. It probably won't be over until English is history, but it will end in our favor eventually.

Re:Two megs?

[LWATCDR]

Nope it is two megs. X.org is pretty big but there are smaller x servers available.
Anyone can get Linux running in 2 gigabytes of space.

Re:Two megs?

[drinkypoo]

Why is it asinine to ask people to use words in a way that makes sense? Simply because some people are too stupid and/or obstinate to use words as they are meant? I mean, that's a good argument, but I still think that accuracy is more important than your comfort level.

Re:Two megs?

[Tim C]

The SI prefixes kilo, mega, etc were in use long before they were used by the computing industry. Even within the industry, the SI prefixes are used when talking about mass storage and transmission speeds - the M in 100Mbps is 10^3, not 2^20, and similarly for hard drives.

Now personally I think that mebi, kibi, and the others sound stupid and would never use them myself, but I at least acknowledge the reality that megabyte means both 10^3bytes and 2^20bytes depending on the context, and as such is ambiguous.

Re:Two megs?

[heinousjay]

Hope springs eternal, apparently. All your "team" needs to realize is that when a word is clumsy in pronunciation (such as mebibyte) people won't use it.

Re:Two megs?

[Richard Steiner]

It's not a recent gimmick at all, as your experience seems to demonstrate. :-)

Re:Two megs?

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

TWO MEBIBYTES

Did you just come back from the dentist or something?

Try it again after the novocaine wears off.

Re:Two megs?

[slackmaster2000]

It's asinine because of the douchebag factor.

So you're talking to your uncle who's asking you, the family "computer genius", some questions about which memory module he should consider buying to upgrade his computer. You say something like, "well, I think that you should get at least two gibibytes total." Your uncle replies, "What's a gibibyte?" You proudly declare, "A gibibyte is 1,024 mebibytes, or two to the power of 30 bytes. Computers are binary machines, and memory is manufactured in sizes accordingly, not using base-10, which would yield 'megabytes' and 'gigabytes', which are 1 million and 1 billion bytes, respectively. Thus, when we talk about computer memory, we use mebibytes and gibibytes, even though manufacturers incorrectly use megabytes and gigabytes on their packaging."

Your uncle thanks you and after you depart he turns to your father and says, "what a douchebag."

Another reason to not use mebibyte and gibibyte or any of the baby-talk bytes, unless it's absolutely necessary, is that they're not recognized by Firefox's spell checker.

Re:Two megs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next stop: making LinuxBIOS run on a sybian, with total scriptable control.

Re:Two megs?

[bflong]

Just an FYI, KDrive *is* xorg. it's built from the official sources and is part of the source code tree and build system of xorg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdrive

Re:Two megs?

[drinkypoo]

It's asinine because of the douchebag factor.

Yes, it's true. The corporations who misused the SI prefixes all these years are staffed by douchebags.

Oh, that's not what you meant?

Re:Two megs?

[Dr. Spork]

Aww, six seconds? But I want porn now!

Re:Two megs?

[ehrichweiss]

This has less to do with SI and more to do with a way to approximate the values in semi-easy-to-understand binary/hexadecimal representations. Since 1,024 was close to 1,000, the idea of 1024 bytes being a binary equivalent to a "kilo" was not a large leap and it's easier to remember 0x400 bytes equals a kilobyte than 0x3E8 bytes, or that 0x100000 bytes instead of 0xF4240 equals a meg. As programmers(or at least us low level language programmers) we live and breath in the binary world and rarely have to think in decimal terms comparatively.

What kills me is that I'm betting that a large majority of people who argue for the 1,000 byte kilobyte will gladly accept "ginormous", "omgwtfbbq" "aiiiggghttt"and "teh" and all the other language abuses and will see absolutely nothing wrong with their use. I'm sure that whoever dreamed up the "mebi" thing thinks they are making things easier but until us older programmers and hardware engineers die, that's not gonna take hold very well. Of course it speaks volumes that the term "mebi" is almost 10 years old now and still hasn't taken hold.

One might also note that memory is the reason we use these terms in the first place since hard drives and the like didn't come about for a long while so trying to make the language even more confusing, and garbled, because hard drive manufacturers want to skimp on drive size seems asinine, and they DO want to skimp on drive since formatting 160Gb, whether it's 160,000,000,000 bytes or 160x1024x1024x1024 bytes, only yields about 140,000,000,000 bytes.

Re:Two megs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, but the word "byte" was meaningless until someone determined (a few decades ago) that it would be 8 binary digits. Notice the use of the word "binary", as in "base-2". Thus the closest power in a base-2 system that approximates 1 million (base 10) is 1,048,576, therefore a megabyte (but not a megajoule, megaton, megalomaniac, or mega-maid) is 1,048,576 bytes, due to the implied number base in the use of that word.

Perhaps redefining the use of the word megabyte would've worked if they had instead simply supplemented it by making mebibyte be 1,000,000 bytes. (As in "mebi" you wanted this as a base 10 power instead of the default base 2 power for some reason.)

Re:Two megs?

[Spliffster]

interesting, there was a thing called svnc which used an svga frame buffer or something. I haven't used it for years and do not know if it is still available/maintained. it was pretty small as well.

Re:Two megs?

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case it's probably not even correct since flash chips are usually specified in megabits, not megabytes. So the chip in question is 2Mb.

Re:Two megs?

[joe_plastic]

ogg theora video of the same.

Re:Two megs?

[slackmaster2000]

The whole world has moved on now that we've all figured out that our hard drives are going to be a tad bit smaller than we thought. Then again, the memory companies have helped to even things out. The last time I bought 1 gigabyte of RAM, I was pleasantly suprised to have received 73,741,824 extra bytes!

How about we all just pretend that we know what we're talking about when we say that our internet connection is "8 megs" or that our hard drive is "200 gigs" or that we have a "3 gig" processor. None of these statements are accurate, but we know what they mean and they're close enough for the sake of discussion.

There's nothing wrong with saying "mebibyte" or "gibibyte", aside from the potential for them to sound like a three year old trying to pronounce "megabyte" and "gigabyte." ... well, and the fact that every single time you try to throw them into a general discussion somebody is going to call you on it. Every time. Every single time. It's patently obvious nerdiness, and somebody will always jump on it, and people like us will jump into the fray.

Re:Two megs?

[drinkypoo]

Every single time. It's patently obvious nerdiness, and somebody will always jump on it, and people like us will jump into the fray.

Well, since I am proud to be a nerd (Actually I use the term "geek" but whatever) I guess I don't have a problem with that. It's like the sweatshirt THE WORLD DOESN'T KNOW I'M A (whatever).

Re:Two megs?

[illumin8]

I think the hard drive industry might disagree with you. Everyone says it's just a recent marketting gimmick to cheat people out of space, but every HD I have ever bought, since 20MB was "huge", was rated in decimal multiples.

Just because an industry has co-opted our terminology for data storage doesn't mean we need to play their game and change our terminology to be more "politically correct." In fact, I would argue that we've been talking about bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes a lot longer than they've been cheating consumers on storage, so we have more of a right to use the term "megabyte" than they do.

The day I start saying mebibytes will be a cold day in hell.

Re:Two megs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Micro-soft ?

Ding, ding, ding!!!! For your funny reply, you have won a free membership to Flaccid's Gentlemens' Club.

Re:Two megs?

[Lord Ender]

MEBIBYTES

Please, stop this.

No, you stop this. Who the hell are you to redefine kilo to mean 2^10? It has ALWAYS meant 10^3--since long before there existed a word which meant 2^10. Now we have a word which means 1024 (kibi) and we still have a word that means 1000 (kilo), so we can stop all this ambiguous bullshit and just use precise, clear terminology.

So PLEASE, stop trying to redefine kilo to mean 1024!

Re:Two megs?

[nacturation]

In fact, I would argue that we've been talking about bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes a lot longer than they've been cheating consumers on storage, so we have more of a right to use the term "megabyte" than they do. And it used to be that when you bought a 20MB hard drive, you received 20 * 1024 * 1024 bytes worth of storage. However, if you lost a sector your data was pretty much gone. These days, if they use the difference between GiB and GB to act as redundant failover sectors then I'm quite happy with the "loss" of storage space.

Re:Two megs?

[ZERO1ZERO]

Of course it speaks volumes that the term "mebi" is almost 10 years old now and still hasn't taken hold.

Don't you mean 0.9765625 years old?

Re:Two megs?

[turgid]

Buy a book. You can keep it under your pillow.

Re:Two megs?

[nuzak]

> so we can stop all this ambiguous bullshit and just use precise, clear terminology.

The hurdle you have yet to clear is to make anyone actually care how accurate and precise you are.

I prefer kibobytes myself, which are exactly 997 bozobytes long.

Re:Two megs?

[ehrichweiss]

Did you not learn anything? It's almost 0x0A years old. Sheesh. Everyone's trying to be a comedian.

Re:Two megs?

[jelle]

You probably meant 10^6 where you typed 10^3...

When you think about it: 2^20 is actually pretty much 10^6 plus a low sales tax anyway, and almost nobody seems to complain that sales tax is not included on the prices listed in the stores either...

Re: Two megs?

[Anonymous Coward]

MEBIBIBABYBITS. Sheesh, you morons and your baby talk.

Just say megabytes, or MB and leave your childish notions at home. If you want to run with the big dogs, you have to stop pooping like a puppy. AND STOP LICKING YOURSELF, sheesh, you make a guy sick.

Re:Two megs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your experience != truth.

I worked for a company that sold a lot of hard drives, starting when you started and going on for a long time. The makers stopped lying at some point and told the truth for a few years, then said 'awww fuck it' and started lying again. Their lying doesn't make it truth.

If you knew what you were talking about, instead of being so convinced of your superiority, you'd shut the hell up. Example.

Did you know, for example, that hard drives have 512 byte blocks? That's as low as it goes.

Another example.

Did you know that computers all say how big file sizes and filesystem sizes in KB, MB, and GB, not some mumbling made up HD industry made up units (that they don't have to astroturf, unless you are paid to do so).

Guess what. You are a not a moron, as someone asserted. You are young and lack wisdom, and will look back on this some day and slap your forehead and say "What was I thinking?!". When that day comes, slap *real* *hard*.

Re:Two megs?

[weasel5i2]

heheh, SybianOS?

If it can run J2ME apps, I'd totally get one for my girlfriend :)

Re:Two megs?

[Fordiman]

Depends of which one you're using. KDrive (which is what this uses) is purty derned small.

What I want to see is the BIOS config done via a pretty GUI, and the normal process to chainload to another OS.

Or, how about booting a Disk-On-Chip with Linux on it; the HD is used only for data.

Re:Two megs?

[yanyan]

Gives new meaning to the term HARD BOOT!

Re:Two megs?

[charlieman]

You just want your username not to be outdated!

Re:Two megs?

[mrchaotica]

The whole world has moved on now that we've all figured out that our hard drives are going to be a tad bit smaller than we thought.

A "tad" smaller? Are you kidding? With the hard drive capacities today, that "tad" has become huge! For example, take a 750 MB drive. The difference in capacity between what people would expect (i.e., 750*2^30 bytes) and what the drive actually has (i.e., 750*10^9 bytes) is (750*2^30)-(750*10^9) = 55306368000 bytes. Or in other words, 51.5 GB (binary) or 55.3 GB (decimal). So, your "750 GB" drive is really only 700! Still think it's only a "tad?"

Re:Two megs?

[zsau]

Of course it speaks volumes that the term "mebi" is almost 10 years old now and still hasn't taken hold.

Actually, if you run a GNU/Linux box and look at a lot of command-line utils, the abbreviations they use are certainly the standard. So for instance, the output of ifconfig on my computer currently reports, amongst others:

RX bytes:14565195 (13.8 MiB) TX bytes:1044498 (1020.0 KiB)

GNU and BSD command-line utils also generally provide both options to output values in non-standard (i.e. 1 KB = 1 024 bytes) and standard sizes (e.g. "ls -h" will give non-standard output, whereas "ls --si" (on GNU at least) will give standard output).

Similarly, I just bought a 4 GB USB flash drive, and it has a formatted capacity of 4 000 000 000 bytes. Debian's apt-get reports my download speed as being 13 kB/s.

So both aspects of the standard are in practical use.

As for what "most people" will do: They'll say whatever their computer says. And at least in metric countries, I suspect most people would be surprised if you told them they're wrong when they approximate 28 324 124 as 28 megabytes.

Re:Two megs?

[Sparr0]

Did you know that computers all say how big file sizes and filesystem sizes in KB, MB, and GB, not some mumbling made up HD industry made up units (that they don't have to astroturf, unless you are paid to do so).

Yeah, right. Windows apps report one or the other virtually at random, with no indication of which it is. Most linux console apps have a separate -h and -H options for one or the other, and [a number greater than zero] of my linux GUI apps report in kiB and MiB. It get's even better when you talk about transfer speed. 1GB file over a 1Gb connection... Takes 8 seconds right? Oh, whats that? Maybe it takes 9 seconds? What does 1 second matter? How about if its 1TB over a 1Gb connection. 135 minutes or 150 minutes?

Re:Two megs?

[KiloByte]

You just want your username not to be outdated!

Yeah, it predates the kibi crap by quite a few years. In fact, I was named this way only by association with a friend called MegaByte, although he appears to not use his nick anymore.

So indeed, there is a personal reason this issue riles me up.

Re:Two megs?

[slackmaster2000]

Man, I don't think you were trying to be funny, but you totally just made me shoot semi-hot coffee out my nose.

Did you just launch into a giant math tantrum -- one so severe that it seemed appropriate to show your work -- to not only demonstrate but really drive home your point that, essentially, 7% is over and above the threshold of "a tad?" (I'll leave my seven percent calculation as an exercise for the reader)

Anyhow, it's all relative. I believe that 50GB is within the realm of a tad when considering a 750GB drive. Plus, we know in advance how much space we'll be getting, so it's really not difficult to select a drive that meets our requirements; it's not like we're selecting a custom size and paying per gigabyte. Besides, the "why is my hard drive not as big as the box said it would be" is one of the first great questions on the road to geekdom and complete social disorder. I look back on answering this great question for my bored and bewildered family members as a sort of rite of passage.

Frist Post

[Anonymous Coward]

We call this an Amiga

First?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast boot times excite me.

Re:First?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast boot times excite me.

But it's the time-till-crash that excites your mom.

Slashdotted

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I hope they weren't running their webserver with it.

Embedded linux

[Jack Malmostoso]

This gives a whole new meaning to the word "embedded"!

Re:Embedded linux

[jimstapleton]

No, that would only happen if you got it to install on your bed.

So far, I've only gotten NetBSD to do that... Right after I installed it on my toaster, and before I installed it on my electric can opener.

Re:Embedded linux

[Chmcginn]

Or if you installed it in one of those... ah... programmable marital aids... that might get used in a bed. Bedded, if you will.

question remains

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but does it run... oh, never mind!

pothole

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic???

DUR!!!!

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is pretty much exactly what "embedded" meant all along.

Impressive, but unnecessary

[ArcherB]

While the X server was quite cool, I don't see what functionality it can bring at this stage of the game. I want to see a Linux BIOS that works for my hardware that allows me all the features of my existing BIOS. If you can do that with X, great! But right now, I want function over form. A text base menu like what I have now would be fine.

Re:Impressive, but unnecessary

[Anonymous Coward]

What you miss is vendor support.
Eyecandy is honey for the vendor bear.

Re:Impressive, but unnecessary

[Dielectric]

I think you missed the point. It's running a fully graphical Linux in 2MB of solid-state memory. It just happens to be residing in the BIOS chip, which means no other hardware is necessary to get a functioning system. I think it's awfully cool.

Re:Impressive, but unnecessary

[ivucica]

It's for geeks, not for real life use! Ya know, lab experiments ... and such ... Get a geek researcher spirit, dude :)

Re:Impressive, but unnecessary

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't want a cool BIOS. He wants a working BIOS.

I have a custom firmware in my WLAN router. I can ssh into my access point and scan the airwaves from there. It's mighty cool, but I wouldn't hesitate one second and replace it with a standard firmware if the custom one wasn't stable.

Re:Impressive, but unnecessary

[Anonymous Coward]

> "We don't have enough troops in Iraq," Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, 2005.

Nice of you to point out how much more insightful Kerry was than Bush (took bush a lot longer and a lot of interviews to recognize the same thing, didn't it!)

Pity that 20,000 more still isn't going to be enough. Even when he finally gets the problem, Bush blows the solution.

Great sig.

Re:Impressive, but unnecessary

[LuisAnaya]

I do...

• Graphical options and hardware diagnostic. Most of the time this is done in "special drive partitions". It allows the display of items over time if needed.
• Thin clients, Smaller/Cheaper X-terminals, 3270 Terminal Replacements.
• Self contained front end consoles for industrial use (less moving parts means less things to go wrong).

It is true that you can do all that using a USB drive, but I would not dismiss this off hand. My 2 cents.

Re:Impressive, but unnecessary

[Kazoo the Clown]

Yes, though I'd be interested in some HOWTO regarding putting bootable Linux in a BIOS chip that doesn't include X11, but basic SVGAlib or even headless and the ability to insert some custom applications. I'd like to turn some old diskless PC hardware and a vid capture card into an IP cam with some custom security functions...

The OP leads me to believe it's possible.

I've got an old PROM/PIC burner that I could dust off, now I wonder if that could be used to burn some BIOS chips with this sort of thing. Time to take another look at the Linux BIOS project...

How small you _can_ you go?

[bubbl07]

[...] it is interesting to see how small you can go."

Apparently, it's normal and happens to lots of computers. It's not the size of the hard drive, it's how fast you can boot up.

Re:How small you _can_ you go?

[happymellon]

Insightful? This is hilarious

Re:How small you _can_ you go?

[Master of Transhuman]

"It's not the size of the hard drive, it's how fast you can boot up."

Guys have been saying this for years.

Women, however, disagree...

Re:How small you _can_ you go?

[iamacat]

Yeah, you can get by with a small hard disk. However, if you only have a floppy disk, you are in trouble no matter how you use it.

Linux on RFID chips?

[mdm-adph]

Eh? Just how much space is on your typical RFID, anyway?

Re:Linux on RFID chips?

[Lorkki]

I suppose you're thinking of passive devices, so the answer would be in the range of a couple hundred bits. They're not really equipped for running anything either - if you're looking for a cool way to carry your tiny distribution, just stick with USB flash devices (pun not intended).

Mobile BlitzBoot

[Doc Ruby]

If only I could just plug one of these into my PlayStation and boot Linux in 6 seconds, instead of the hours, reboots, and disc swaps to install Ubuntu on it.

In fact, what would be great would be a 2GB (maybe 4GB) Flash drive with minimal linux and gcc running on many different architectures, which loads the Linux source and recompiles for the host into which it's plugged. Maybe caching the last few, including the most popular PPC/x86/MIPS versions, which could of course be precompiled. There's probably a role for the Internet in updates, but running off the local drive will make the process much faster.

Ultimately I'd like to see all this run off the Flash in my mobile phone, booting the hosts off Bluetooth. That would take new BIOS'es for the hosts which could pair with Bluetooth and boot from it before booting the installed OS. Preferably all config'ed and run from an app in my phone.

Re:Mobile BlitzBoot

[Anonymous Coward]

"If only I could just plug one of these into my PlayStation and boot Linux in 6 seconds, instead of the hours, reboots, and disc swaps to install Ubuntu on it."

Funny... I installed Gentoo on a PS3 in less than 'hours' (and only had to reboot twice, once to get into the installer, once to boot off the HD).

"In fact, what would be great would be a 2GB (maybe 4GB) Flash drive with minimal linux and gcc running on many different architectures, which loads the Linux source and recompiles for the host into which it's plugged. Maybe caching the last few, including the most popular PPC/x86/MIPS versions, which could of course be precompiled. There's probably a role for the Internet in updates, but running off the local drive will make the process much faster."

It would be much faster to download everything from the internet than recompile the entire system every time you plug it into a computer (try running 'emerge --update --deep --emptytree world' sometime on a gentoo box, it'll take far longer than just downloading everything from the internet).

Better video

[oneandoneis2]

There's a better quality video (i.e. a non-YouTube one) available at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fornix/linuxbios. ogg

Re:Better video

[Anonymous Coward]

The base line in that soundtrack is extremely similar to the one in Let There Be More Light. When the video came up I thought "where is that bass riff from, they ripped someone off" then I realized it's from a Pink Floyd album I've listened to literally hundreds of times over the course of about 20 years. :)

FBUI

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh...but then there's also FBUI, which is a full blown GUI system that runs as an in kernel module (~50k). Has some light weight libraries for interfacing with it. Would save tons more room than kdrive with all this other stuff. No networkable hooks though

Re:FBUI

[asphaltjesus]

Holy smokes! Thanks for that tip. FYI: http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/

Now, I've got to figure out how to get freevo to run on it. The Intel framebuffer is not playing nice on my freevo/mythtv box and this is one answer.

This came as no surprise to me "August 2006: Inclusion of FBUI windowing system into the Linux kernel has been blocked by Linux framebuffer developers. This illustrates one major defect of how the Linux project is managed: those who control it are no more responsive or responsible to the public's needs or wants than are Microsoft's managers." People....

Re:FBUI

[Anonymous Coward]

The kernel developers probably objected to something and he refused to fix it. Nine times out of ten when you hear someone bitching about how the kernel developers won't allow into the kernel, the guy's leaving out whatever the kernel dev's specific objections were, because he doesn't want to make the effort when it's easier to just bitch and whine.
  I mean, the kernel devs have accepted drivers for hardware that has one total user planet-wide, obviously they'll accept your patch if it's done correctly and doesn't break anything.

Good to see

[Cruise_WD]

Between this, and the Linux support for SIM cards, how long until we can make our own linux phone? A completely DIY phone might even tempt me to get one...

Re:Good to see

[ThogScully]

The initial OpenMokos have just shipped to developers. They'll hopefully be more generally available toward the end of this year. I'm excited to get one as soon as I can, and no I'm not affiliated with them - I just think they are doing some awesome work.
-N

http://www.openmoko.com/

Re:Good to see

[drinkypoo]

Get back to me when they get EDGE GPRS. And, you know, announce a price. The lack of EDGE GPRS is an absolute dealbreaker.

Re:Good to see

[illumin8]

Looks like a nice phone, but no EDGE? Also, no SD card slot and only 128MB of memory built in? And no USB 2.0? Only 1.1? For a phone that isn't even released yet their specs are about 3 years behind the rest of the industry.

Re:Good to see

[Dave2 Wickham]

It takes MicroSD. USB1 only does seem odd, I agree.

Re:Good to see

[Anonymous Coward]

What good is EDGE without an effing keyboard? Had it come with one, I would've been all over it.

Re:Good to see

[zsau]

And, you know, announce a price.

350 USD. Been well-known since, you know, January. They've even announced prices for the car and hackers kits (75 and 200 USD IIRC).

The lack of EDGE GPRS is an absolute dealbreaker.

This phone wasn't meant to be perfect for everyone. The iPhone doesn't do GPS, so I won't be buying it;[*] otoh a fast network connection is not something I really need on a screen that small. Other OpenMoko phones might be released if the Neo1973 does well enough that might be more suited to your needs.

[*] Not that I know when, or if, it'll be released out here in Australia. It's hard to know if we count as 'Europe', 'Asia', or 'WTF? You exist?!'.

Re:Fast boot times?

[stiggle]

But fast boot times have been available for years.
My car stereo (www.empeg.com) has been able to fast boot linux from flash for over 7 years.

Lots of consumer potential

[jbarr]

The article does mention other applications like carr PC's, etc. but this could have lots of household PC uses. I would LOVE to have something like this, but for "consumer use", it would need to automatically boot, connect to the network using either presets or DHCP, and then present a menu (text or graphical--doesn't matter) displaying a list of available VNC and rdp servers to connect to (I use Windows primarily, so that's MY need, but Linux (aka X) connections could be useful too.) Then launch the graphical session.

Better still, let me just define a dedicated server, and have it auto-boot and connect.

My desire is to use older PC's as quick-booting "terminals" accessing Windows servers. Then, from the users' perspective, it's a seamless Windows environment.

Re:Lots of consumer potential

[Bert64]

What you want is a dumb terminal, and these already exist and are widely available.
Most support X11/XDMCP or RDP.

Re:Lots of consumer potential

[jbarr]

What you want is a dumb terminal, and these already exist and are widely available.
Most support X11/XDMCP or RDP.

While that's certainly true, wouldn't simply replacing a BIOS chip be much cheaper? I'd gladly pay a reasonably priced (something like $25-$50) for a replacement BIOS chip for use in existing PC's as opposed to ponying up for the much higher cost of terminals.

Re:Lots of consumer potential

[couchslug]

For that price you can get CF/IDE adapters and CF cards that will work nicely. Damn Small Linux and some other distros will install to CF easily.

Re:Lots of consumer potential

[Anonymous Coward]

An empty BIOS chip (for use as replacement) is about 2-3 bucks.

Re:Lots of consumer potential

[Bert64]

Used dumb terminals come up on ebay regularly, and are usually quite cheap...
They're also small and quiet, and consume a lot less power than an old PC while also being more reliable.

Yeah, but...

[guy-in-corner]

...does it run Windows?

Sorry.

Re:Yeah, but...

[mr_mischief]

You're being humorous, and it's pretty fuinny. There's a point here just waiting to be made, though.

Since it's LinuxBIOS we're talking about, it could be a thin client which also has the option to boot off any drive the system is capable of using for boot. So while you can't fit the Windows installation into the BIOS flash, you could have a well-featured small Linux in the BIOS which then boots into Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD, NetBSD, other BSDs, Darwin, Solaris, a full Linux installation, or anything else that runs on the PCs LinuxBIOS can be the BIOS for.

PCs used to come with DOS in ROM, and QNX has had kernel+GUI+other stuff in this kind of space for years although I've never seen QNX on the BIOS flash. It's cool to see someone doing it with LinuxBIOS. EPOC/Symbian, WinCE/PocketPC, Palm, etc all have GUIs, too. Maybe something like this could lead Linux to be truly competitive in that kind of market eventually. I had Debian Small running on my Psion 5mx, which was really cool. Still, even having a Sempron, Celeron, Geode, or C7 board with no disk and no Compactflash that gives me a small, power-efficient smart terminal to stick in the living room or kitchen would be great.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey. Yeah. No.

Re:Yeah, but...

[idiot900]

...does it run Windows? You were joking, but the device apparently actually can run Windows.

Re:Yeah, but...

[nuzak]

> PCs used to come with DOS in ROM

I've never heard of this. Granted, DOS existed largely to call BIOS routines, and much of BIOS existed largely to serve DOS, but I've never seen a PC that had DOS completely in the BIOS. Maybe you're thinking of cartridge BASIC, which was burned in on some machines.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Nutria]

I've never heard of this. Granted, DOS existed largely to call BIOS routines, and much of BIOS existed largely to serve DOS, but I've never seen a PC that had DOS completely in the BIOS. Maybe you're thinking of cartridge BASIC, which was burned in on some machines.

http://www.datalight.com/products/romdos/
http://www.drdos.com/dosdoc/romhtml/romch1.htm

It's perfect for embedded single-process applications.

Re:Yeah, but...

[mr_mischief]

Nutria already gave some examples, but I've got more for you.

Tandy 1000, HP's 95LX (and 200LX) palmtop PC with DOS (the 200 had MS-DOS 5.0), the HP 1000CX DOS palmtop, some of the early IBM Aptivas, the HP model 110 line of desktops, the rather famous GRiDLite (my GRiD laptops all loaded DOS from hardrive -- always wanted a GRiDLite too though), the IBM EduQuest Model 30 and Model 40 (I have a few model 40s, but only one still boots -- into OS/2 Warp because I'm not using the on-chip DOS), the Sharp PC-5000 portable, the IBM PCJr, certain IBM PS/1 machines, the Tandy 2500 XL, and some others.

Also, Franklin, Commodore, TI, and Atari had systems with some form of OS in the ROM. Some Franklin systems had something called F-DOS in ROM which I think was mostly a ripoff of AppleDOS.

Notice that these examples are not modern hacks to try it out at home, but all commercially shipped systems from the late 1970s to early 1990s.

AMD and Intel still have documentation on DOS in ROM for embedded systems on their websites, and AMD even recommends Datalight's solution.

Imagine....

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these....

imagine...

[comradeeroid]

running a bunch of these in a Beowulf cluster.

CarPC use? yes and no.

[Lumpy]

First if you are shutting down your car PC then you are doing it wrong. You use hibernate or sleep modes, shutting the thing down completely is the WRONG way to do it. What that I hear you say? your motherboard does not support linux hibernate? Your fault for using the wrong hardware.

You CAN get hardware thatdoes what you want, you CAN get hibernate to work EVEN on unsupported hardware, Software hibernate exists out there and is a patch for the linux kernel, works quite well and is fast.

6 second boot from bios is great, you are NOT getting the OS to boot to useability in 6 seconds with how most people have their Car PC install. I dont care what kind of voo-doo is going on in the bios. You have to roll your own embedded OS to get the incredibly boot times or use a stripped down slackware to get it done.

Honestly the Linux BIOS needs to focus on working on far more platforms and motherboards first and the flashy GUI last. I love it, we used it in an embedded design 4 years ago but for general use it's limited to a small subset of motherboards.

But the summary's example for CarPC use is not realistic, Designing for a automotive platform first and showhorning a standard PC in your car LAST is the solution to getting lightning fast boot times in a CarPC.

Re:CarPC use? yes and no.

[drinkypoo]

6 second boot from bios is great, you are NOT getting the OS to boot to useability in 6 seconds with how most people have their Car PC install. I dont care what kind of voo-doo is going on in the bios. You have to roll your own embedded OS to get the incredibly boot times or use a stripped down slackware to get it done.

If you don't need a bunch of services, you can just set init to a script that runs your GUI.

It's actually not very hard to set up your own self-booting system.

Best quote from tfa...

[Lodewijk]

"who needs hard drives when you can fit everything in the BIOS just fine"

Who are the idiots working on this project?

[pyite69]

Motherboard support is the most important thing to be working on. I have wanted to use LinuxBIOS for > 5 years now, but the supported hardware list is laughably small.

Re:Who are the idiots working on this project?

[drinkypoo]

You could be the idiot working on this project. You want additional hardware support? Join up and help produce it. People aren't idiots simply because they're not providing what you want. Alternatively you could also hire a developer for the period of time it takes to support your chosen hardware...

Re:Who are the idiots working on this project?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, I could use the myriad alternatives that already work, for much less investment, and no associated undesirable political tripe. Now that's a winning solution.

As a bonus, I don't accidentally help you out!

Re:Who are the idiots working on this project?

[drinkypoo]

Alternatively, I could use the myriad alternatives that already work, for much less investment, and no associated undesirable political tripe. Now that's a winning solution.

Could you please share with us the myriad alternatives to System BIOS?

If you have an AMI BIOS, you may be able to purchase an updated, bugfixed BIOS that's newer and better than what the manufacturer provides. But that only happens when a major customer (or a sufficient number of customers) need[s] support for some hardware no longer supported, and there's money for it.

Please share with me the myriad alternatives to my System's BIOS. I'm eager and ready to listen.

Re:Who are the idiots working on this project?

[vdboor]

Motherboard support is the most important thing to be working on. (..) the supported hardware list is laughably small. How about showing the world first why a LinuxBIOS is actually really cool? Why it should get better. You get more developers on the board, and fix hardware support much sooner.. :-)

Re:Impressive, but .... usefull!

[chrwei]

Given that is for a BIOS project, the primary goal is to load another OS off larger storage medium. So why an GUI? Easy, what do you do when your main OS fails? You reach for a bootable recovery CD or USB drive. Oh, but you aren't at home and didn't bring it with you! Gah! Oh wait, you can boot the BIOS in GUI mode and get on the internet and use a web browser and all sorts of stuff!

Even better, what happens when your grandmothers primary OS fails? Think she can use CLI tools and fsck the disk and other such things? What about a GUI where she can point and click through a diagnostic wizard? Maybe even click something to let you ssh in and fix it remotely?

Realistically, I don't think the setup will stay at 2Meg, but I don't think it will need to be more than 32Meg since you can have a fully useful PDA in 32Meg. And if more storage is needed, it can always be extended by using the "recovery partition" concept.

I'll admit that it's arguable that all this is necessary, but I'd argue that enabling the public to know if the issue is RAM or HDD or some other easily swapable part is necessary in taking the frustration out of owning a computer, as well as in reducing waste. There are too many people that don't know that memory can go bad and be replaced easily and that the computer itself is still quite useful. A diag wizard in the bios can fix this problem.

Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

My Apple ][+ boots to the OS in 1 second!

Re:Whatever

[skoaldipper]

Pfft. My Atari 400 goes from SELECT to BOSS in 0.8.

Six second boot time...

[rickb928]

...doesn't seem like it would be doing much system checking.

Of course, bad RAM is pretty much a thing of the past.

-rick

Re:Six second boot time...

[Kazoo the Clown]

Of course, bad RAM is pretty much a thing of the past.

Of course, the reason we know this is we're still checking. How else are you going to know if new RAM technologies are still as robust, other than keeping an eye out for bizzare system behaviour, stuck pixels, strange trash stored in files, etc.. I remember those days, and frankly, I prefer some sort of bootup RAM testing.

Re:Six second boot time...

[jd]

Bad RAM isn't really detected by the counter (which is just there to look nice) and the BadRAM patch which autodetects it and works round it on a live system is probably a more sensible way to go.

(What would be cool would be to merge the BadRAM patch with the hot-pluggable memory code, so that if a chip dies on a live system, the system can handle it and request a hot memory swap.)

Mod up, please

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just coming in here to say the same thing.

Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[Anna Merikin]

It reminds me of my old DOS days when I tried to map DOS into 1024 MBs of very fast level-2 cache on a Tyan Pentium-1 Motherboard. I never succeeded, but it booted quick and crashed faster!

I still run DOS (triple-booting with Mepis and Fedora) from time-to-time for WordPerfect and custom macros and it's right spritely on a Sempron-2800. DRDos 7.03 takes about 3 Mb.

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[Spliffster]

why don't you use qemu or bochs for dos ? that way you wouldn't need to reboot to use it. qemu with the kqemu kernel module is pretty fast ... i use it to play old dos/win 3.11 games on my linux boxen.

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[Anna Merikin]

BC WP5.1 uses the function/ctr/alt/shift keys for its own purposes, clobbering its easy use on DOSemu (DOSbox) and emulators/virtualizers, which compete for the same keys.

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[FishWithAHammer]

They can be reconfigured, can't they?

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[chgros]

1024 MBs of very fast level-2 cache on a Tyan Pentium-1 Motherboard
I wish I had 1GB of very fast level-2 cache, even now!

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[Anna Merikin]

Which? WP's keys cannot be remapped, and, though it has a menu system, it is invoked with Alt++, which gets clobbered, and it requires Shift-F7 to save a file and Ctr+F7 simply to Quit. Assuming key remapping, what might I replace the Ctr, Alt and Function keys WITH? This is a word processor running keystroke macros. Almost all the key combinations are used by WP (including Home, PgDn, PgUp and End keys) leaving no way to use **nix keyboard commands (in the case of DOSemu) or virtualizer keystrokes in the case of Bochs, VMWare, etc.

For full disclosure, I kept a dedicated DOS box, an old Compaq luggable 486-DX4 100 that I use for WP most of the time (it still has Win-3.11 on it, and as its network card stopped working and there is no expansion capability, it is connected to a DEC laser printer in standalone mode.)

The triple boot with DOS on my main box is in case this aged machine stops working I can still print my WP documents. But now that Abiword and OO can read my WP files, perhaps it is time to retire that ancient OS on the big box (but those macros! Many cannot be reproduced under any other word processor and I would have to learn another macro language.... :oP ).

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[Anna Merikin]

Yeah, I noticed this after it had been submitted. I'm an oldtimer, but I still get caught in the occasional typo. Of course I meant 1024 Kb, or 1-meg.

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[LWATCDR]

I don't think that Qemu has any hot keys so it might work out for you.
Even if does get the source and turn them off:)

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[Spliffster]

sorry, i wasn't aware of this. it sounds as if you are a candidate for vmware server (qemu is much more light weight ... but as you point out ... has some drawbacks). with vmware server (which is free as in beer ... cheers) you get full control of the keyboard except the ctrl+alt combination.

Cheers,
-S

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[mrchaotica]

Turn off all the DOSBox hotkeys and use ctrl-alt-del to switch tasks. I can almost guarantee that WordPerfect doesn't have that combination trapped!

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[sjames]

It reminds me of my old DOS days when I tried to map DOS into 1024 MBs of very fast level-2 cache on a Tyan Pentium-1 Motherboard. I never succeeded, but it booted quick and crashed faster!

DOS without any extensions should fit in the cache with a bit of room left over. If you can get Cache as RAM going, you wouldn't even need any actual RAM in the machine so long as PIO disk access is OK.

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[Anna Merikin]

This was my idea in a nutshell. I couldn't get into CMOS w/o a RAM chip installed, though, and I guess there was the rub -- where do you map memory divided into ordinary RAM and L2? Use a RAM disk to the cache? That makes no sense, the overhead of the RAMdisk will kill any performance boost.

And I suspect any DOS program will run instantaneously on a Pentium anyway, so what would I have gained -- outside of the fun of doing it for the hell of it?

Now, of course, looking for a fast flash 1-Gb USB thumb drive to install Knoppix onto....

Knoppix' live CD can already boot from a RAMdisk (if one has >1-Gig RAM.) It moves along quite well, though not as fast as Feather, which uses fluxbox sted of KDE.... Now that combination flies. Each click of the mouse seems to make the system explode into action. Rxvt seems to open BEFORE the mouse is clicked. Even Firefox opens instantly. Now that's fast!

Re:Running from BIOS must be fast, indeed....

[sjames]

This was my idea in a nutshell. I couldn't get into CMOS w/o a RAM chip installed, though, and I guess there was the rub

The regular BIOS would never work with cache as RAM. If it would work at all, it would have to be a custom BIOS, perhaps a modified LinuxBIOS that sets up cache as RAM and skips raminit.c.

where do you map memory divided into ordinary RAM and L2?

That's the thing, you don't. As soon as the CPU touches actual RAM, cache as ram goes up in a puff of smoke. The CPU will try to write the cache back to non-existant RAM to make room for caching actual RAM. On some CPUs, using the cache as RAM isn't even documented to work at all, it's just a corner case thaat happens to work. In others, it is documented, but is only intended to work well enough (and long enough) to get real RAM initialized.

There's still plenty of things to investigate for that. I'm not sure how the processor would like (or not like) handling the IDT out of cache.

And I suspect any DOS program will run instantaneously on a Pentium anyway, so what would I have gained -- outside of the fun of doing it for the hell of it?

Some limited embedded applications might benefit from not needing the expense of even minimal RAM, especially on a custom board where space and cost can be saved by not even connecting RAM traces to the northbridge. Other than that very special case, the fun of doing it would be the only payoff.

How much time/money are we talking for most x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have any idea? I'd really like to see some work in this area, because a lot of manufacturers fail to fix BIOS bugs (especially after a certain amount of time).

Absolutely

[Weaselmancer]

They're using KDrive, one of the build options of XFree/XOrg done by Keith Packard specifically for embedded or small targets. At my last job we were compiling that for a MIPS target, and the X executable came in at around 650k IIRC.

It's the support libraries and fonts that make an X install huge. Drop those and you can easily squeak in a busybox implementation in 2 Megs.

That being said - this is a fantastic hack. Everyone in the thread is thinking embedded computers for cars, but not me. I'm thinking Geode chips, PC/104 boards and industrial control.

And since I'm thinking about it, thank you Keith if you happen to read this. The other guy I was working with on this project actually got in touch with you over IRC and you helped us out with some problems we were having. Very nice of you to give us a hand - we really appreciated it.

Incorrect Slashdot article title:not LinuxBIOS GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

The title of the Slashdot article is completely incorrect and misleading.

The GUI shown is just a normal Linux GUI which runs after Linux has booted. The fact that its code is stored in the same flash device as the LinuxBIOS is just simple aggregation, and totally irrelevant.

It has nothing to do with the LinuxBIOS code at all, and it is certainly not a GUI for LinuxBIOS.

Great work in making it fit into 2 meg, but really bad Slashdot title.

Typewriter!

[sevenfactorial]

I've been wanting a cheap laptop to essentially be a dedicated word processor for years. I hate waiting for a machine to load, and I abhor the distractions that a full service operating system offers while I'm trying to compose something. A command line interface and a 6 second boot time sound ideal to me. I can't be the only person who has an interest in a machine like this--witness the Alphasmart product line and its popularity with writers. If I had the ability to mass produce such machines, I would certainly try to market and sell them.

Re:Typewriter!

[Nutria]

I've been wanting a cheap laptop to essentially be a dedicated word processor for years. I hate waiting for a machine to load, and I abhor the distractions that a full service operating system offers while I'm trying to compose something. A command line interface and a 6 second boot time sound ideal to me. I can't be the only person who has an interest in a machine like this

The Tandy Model 100 portable computers were loved by writers and journalists as far back as 1983,

Hard Drive

[quakehead3]

Not necessary anymore. Remove it!

Re:Fast boot times?

[Ostrich25]

My car stereo (www.empeg.com) has been able to fast boot linux from flash for over 7 years.

I don't have that much time to wait for my car stereo to boot! Even my iPod can boot in less than 7 years.

Re:How small? Gavin's 3721 byte OS!

[KlaymenDK]

In 2004, Gavin Barraclough wrote an OS (from scratch) in only 3721 bytes:

"This is a 32-bit multitasking operating system for x86 computers, with GUI and filesystem, support for loading and executing user applications in elf binary format, with ps2 mouse and keyboard drivers, and vesa graphics. And a command shell. And an application - a simple text-file viewer."

Granted, it may not be the must useful (or maintainable!) OS ...

http://www.de.ioccc.org/years.html#2004_gavin

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Comrade Linux runs YOU!

A much easier solution

[Cancel-Or-Allow]

40-Pin IDE Flash memory that fits quite nicely in the ide socket.
2GB for less than $50.00
I do commend the efforts of getting linux in the bios, but what can you really do with 2MB?

Cool, but...

[hedora]

My hard drive can read 30mb/s and has a 16MB of cache. If the image is 2MB, and grub prefetches it into drive cache, can't it also boot this software in 6 sec? Drive spin-up should happen in parallel with POST, so the only time you lose is waiting for the legacy bios to do its thing...

Still, a diskless 2MB Linux + X is damn impressive! After all, "1.44" floppies are really 2MB... ;)

Constant of diglyme is ~42

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I wonder what would happen if they could work with these guys.

Re:How small? Gavin's 3721 byte OS!

[Andrei D]

This is a 32-bit multitasking operating system for x86 computers, with GUI and filesystem, support for loading and executing user applications in elf binary format, with ps2 mouse and keyboard drivers, and vesa graphics. And a command shell. And an application - a simple text-file viewer."
Granted, it may not be the must useful (or maintainable!) OS ...
Piece of cake... According to Andrew S. Tanenbaum "you'd have to be real dumb not to be able to write an operating system in a month.".
Sorry, but that dont impress me much. Anyone can do it in a month. Unless you're real dumb, in which case you write an obsoleted monolithic kernel instead. *ducks*

4.7GB?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh yeah, DVDs are measured in decimal multiples too. 4.7GB == 4700000000B."

Um, no, a DVD is 4700372992B

Which isn't 4.7GB in decimal OR octal.

Why are HDD in Kb (1024) multiples? Because a sector is 512bytes. So a 120GB HDD isn't 120,000,000 bytes.

YOU were the one who wanted to go all pedantic...

Basic?

[nmos]

So where's the Basic interpreter?

Re:Impressive, but .... usefull!

[swillden]

Given that is for a BIOS project, the primary goal is to load another OS off larger storage medium. So why an GUI? Easy, what do you do when your main OS fails? You reach for a bootable recovery CD or USB drive. Oh, but you aren't at home and didn't bring it with you! Gah! Oh wait, you can boot the BIOS in GUI mode and get on the internet and use a web browser and all sorts of stuff!

Not only that, but consider that for many purposes, given this BIOS, you don't *need* any other OS. I think that's the real point here.

Similar idea on Mac Classic

[ChunderDownunder]

Apple once embedded System 6.0.3 in the Macintosh Classic ROM. This was in 512K and allowed the user to boot when their boot media was corrupted.

So fitting Linux into 2 meg is hardly surprising. Being flash it can be updated, obviously, highlighting the limited usefulness of the Mac solution.

Re:How small? Gavin's 3721 byte OS!

[bubbl07]

Unfortunately, the "he must be compensating for something" argument doesn't apply here (in fact, it would apply in the complete opposite situation), otherwise I'd have been all over that.

I suppose I'll have to go with a firm, yet warranted, "you know what they say about guys that write small operating systems..."

I'll be here all night, folks.

Re:How small? Gavin's 3721 byte OS!

[iamacat]

You can write an operating system in an hour if all it does is load from a boot sector and play /usr/games/moo. Its making it attractive to modern computer users that takes a while.

Dunno. Didn't know there were any.

[jd]

Whenever I update the Freshmeat record, I'm noting the addition of two or three FLASH chips, probably the same number of support chips, and usually one or two motherboards. The web pages are hopelessly out-of-date when it comes to what LinuxBIOS supports. My suggestion is to print out the web page then add everything I've noted in the updates since the page was last changed. My guess would be that you would give LinuxBIOS a great deal more credibility.

USB 1.1

[Anonymous Coward]

The phone is limited to USB 1.1 in order to save power.

this idea put forward in 2001

[Anonymous Coward]

this idea was proposed in 2001 on halfbakery.com, an australian site for half baked ideas.

their link seems down now, so here's the wayback machine version:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060305034407/www.half bakery.com/idea/OS_20ROM_20for_20the_20desktop#107 7642000

Re:How small? Gavin's 3721 byte OS!

[misleb]

Even just playing /usr/games/moo is probably harder than you think. Unless by "operating system" you mean something like DOS where you pretty much rely on the BIOS for disk, video, and input. And even then you still have to implement filesystem support (if only read-only), loading of executables into memory, basic system calls, etc. And if this is a statically linked Linux/BSD binary, you'll probably have to know how to switch into 32 bit mode and setup a VM.. in which case you'll lose a lot of BIOS support. Even a very basic OS is a fair amount work.

-matthew

Yes, but

[suitepotato]

does it run Windows?

Waapuro?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Probably an unnecessary question, but are you aware of wapuro? (waado puroosessa == word processor)

I realize just now that I haven't noticed them in the stores in the last several years, but they used to be quite common in Japan. Small word processing dedicated portable with a built-in (usually thermal) printer. Releatively heavy beasts in most cases, however. Hitachi or Toshiba, about ten years ago, was selling a model without the printer, but ultra-lights of course wiped out the market for those.

I think the problem with maintaining the market is the pricing.

Oh, Cool

[WindBourne]

You have a stepford wife.