I registerd at donotcall.gov as soon as it opened, had my home phone added. Checked again a few weeks later and it wasn't on the list. I figured the database server must have dropped a few transactions because of the sheer volume of those first few days. I added myself to the list again, with email confirmation and all. Just checked again a few days ago and AGAIN I'M REMOVED FROM THE LIST! So I added my number for the third time and it seems to have stuck.
I think a LOT of people have ben dropped. I've heard some big differences in the numbers. On the first week of this list I heard 80M people signed up, last week I heard 50M people were in the DB. Sounds like someone's dropping data from this thing.
Well the bank I work at has an aversion to buying new monitors, so many machines are running on 15" displays where even 1024x768 makes text unreadable for the older folks.
The newer machines are coming with 17" CRTs or LCDs which handle 1024x768 reasonably.
As for praising OS X and not XP, OS X really does look MUCH better, and the new UI doesn't hog NEARLY as much screen real-estate as XPs 'Luna'. It almost seems that Microsoft sent the 'use as much whitespace as you want' memo to the UI designers instead of the coders.
Apple's approach is "show the user what they need to know" while Microsoft's is "Show them everything all the time, we'll just have the UI randomly remove shit you don't seem to use after a while." Apple's UI is philosophy-driven, where Luna seems feature-driven.
Lusers seem to really love the way it hogs monitor real-estate with big fat curvy textures, while anyone who actually wants to get work done will generally switch to the 'windows 2000' look and feel as soon as they find the option.
I'm with you. I'd rather have my CPU hold files in the flush buffer and order them for minimal space usage and maximum read performancde than flush them out at 'low cost' right away. I've had tremendous luch with ReiserFS 3.6, and most desktop users wil have short periods of heavy disk activity (opening an app or unpacking a tarball) followed by intensive CPU activity (using the app, compiling the tarball contents). Obviously server systems will have heavy all-around disk loading, but most servers I've seen use VERY little of their CPU, even database machines (when properly tuned).
Reiser has the right idea, leveraging the overpowered CPU to boost performance and efficencey(sp?) later.
I've tried 2.6-testX and it doesn't seem to do all that much more for me than 2.4 does. I remember moving from 2.2 to 2.4 and there was a LOT more that I could use, USB and ReiserFS and quite a speedup. 2.6 seems to perform about the same as 2.4 on my boxes though.
Maybe I'll have to wait until I get a TCQ-enabled drive and see if that makes a difference.
GCC-3.3.1 worked fine to rebuild my gentoo system from stage-1, and Apple wouldn't use it if it was totally borked. Sometimes stuff stays masked to maintain sanity (a lot of ebuilds have to change 'GCC=3.2' to 'GCC=>3.2' to build), sometimes they want to wait until the bug reports roll in, and sometimes there's more coming soon enough that unmasking and rereleasing would be foolish.
While it is a bit dangerous to live so 'close to the edge' the OS vendors generally have their shit together enough to test before releasing (excepting RedHat a few years ago, idiots).
I call your error. X might _feel_ slower to you, but if properly configured it has incredible graphical performance. Your 'scrolling window' example inherently is relying on a third-party toolkitt that runs on top of X. A better comparison would be to grab a window and move it all over the place really fast, because that's going to be a lot more X and a lot less toolkit (oversimplification, I know).
In Windows the scrollbar and it's function are rolled up into a single, integrated GUI package. In a non-xlib X app (like the one you're comparing to) the scroll functions belong to a toolkit that 'translates' down to X for function.
Like I said before, if you don't believe me you can run KDE on Win32 and see for yourself, the core of X graphics and the core of Win32 graphics are both wicked fast, but on X most apps run through several layers of interpretation to get the job done, and on Windows they do not.
Perhaps it's time to integrate GTK+ APIs into X, make it 'lower' and closer to the core, and see what happens when it doesn't have to translate down.
Not regular moves/resizes. I'm talking about those bloaty XP 'keep everything drawn all the time, re-render 20 times per second' moves and resizes. Your P150 can't do that no matter what you say.
Alright, the Windows Window Manager doesn't have 'desktop icons' either, explorer.exe provides them, the file manager provides them. Don't believe me? open an app, and kill explorer.exe with the task manager, watch 'my computer' disappear.
You can certainly run an external file manager that provides desktop icons under WindowMaker, and that would be the only fair way to compare these apples.
That still doesn't make X slow. If you insist on KDE and GNOME you should be complaining about KDE, GNOME, Qt, and GTK+. XFree86 and Windows have similar graphics throughput, the Windows UI is a LOT lighter than KDE or GNOME, and it runs partially in kernel mode.
If you have issues with the performance of your linux desktop you should be looking at the applications, desktop environments, and toolkits, because XFree86 is definitely the wrong tree to bark up.
One thing you learn with computers is that you can speed things up only as much as the smallest bottleneck will allow. X is not at all the bottleneck for graphics performance on Linux machines.
At least if an OSS project fails the code is available for other projects to scavenge and incorporate. Where's all that closed-source code written for the dot.coms now? It's GONE or in the hands of lawyers, it will do no good for anyone.
OSS is great because it can pull in a thousand directions at once and still end up at the destination.
Mozilla is a great example, the core application has been extended to include a bazillion features, but its actually a kickass suite. And now there's a layout engine (gecko) that can be used in other applications to provide kickass HTML support.
GNOME and KDE are another great example, the rivalry has done more to further the project than anything else. Windows has come a LOT less far in the same time that KDE and GNOME have been around.
Could we move faster if there weren't competition, sure, but we'd need a lot of MONEY and MANAGERS to keep everyone in line and on-task. Luckily we don't have the burden of pandering for money or slaving under managers to get what we want.
Alright, people need to listen closely. XFree86 is NOT SLOW, the toolkits you lay on top of it are what bogs it down.
I get full-window dragging and resizing in WindowMaker on my old 366MHz laptop, and it has an ATI Mach64 video chipset. Windows crawls when I do similar operations on the same hardware.
I seriously suggest that if you think X is slow you check out a more lightweight window manager and apps. GNOME and KDE have a LOT of overhead because they run on top of an extra layer of abstraction (GTK+ and QT, respectively). WindowMaker is written in C to interface with X more directly and it shows.
You can still use your GNOME/KDE apps under WindowMaker, I'm using konqueror as my file manager right now. Try it.
As for this project, it sounds cool to me. I think X is plenty fast as it is, but that doesn't mean I think someone should take what we've learned over the last decade and apply it to a more modern 'ground-up' solution. It would be nice if there was an X replacement that had QT and/or GTK+ tied in more closely, or if we had a quartz-extreme-like OpenGL windowing system and font renderer with postscript-esque qualities (i.e. run my desktop at high resolution, but zoom everything appropriately for 'real-world' DPI).
I'm writing this on a Compaq Armada 1750. I upgraded mine to 320MB RAM, PIII 600MHz, and 40GB drive. It's got 2 type-II cardbus slots, your standard PC ports, a trackpad, nice keyboard, and a beautiful 1024x768 14.1" Active LCD. It runs linux REALLY well (just don't use ACPI if you want it to cool itself), and WinXP is actually pretty fast on it as well. You can swap out the hard drive (on it's own removable chassis) quite easily to switch from Linux to Windows to whatever drives. DVD-ROM and floppy at the same time (or extra battery instead of the floppy) for full desktop-replacement. I'm looking for a DVD-ROM/CD-RW module that will fit the front bezel, but that's another story.
Did I mention that this thing is a total BEAST? You can toss it across the room and it still runs. I run mine in my car (no shocks, mind you) for MP3s. It's no lightweight, but it's built to last, not to carry.
These can be had on eBay for about $250, mine would go for about $600 because of all the 'leet upgrades.
Or... it will go on a rampage of litigation, suing IBM for 'stealing SIMD' and Intel for infringing on their 'use silicon chips as CPUs'. Eventually all Apple G4 users will get mail asking for an 'extended Altivec Licensing Fee' of $499 per CPU.
I buy them by the dozen. The price of the F-301 determines where I will be buying most of my other office supplies. It also helps that the director of Desktop Support where I work gets free Zebras (her favorite pen) when she asks if anyone has a pen on them.
The higher-up model, the F-401 costs about twice as much but is a bit heavier, I carry one or two of those in my breast-pocket and use them for myself only.
These are seriously rugged pens, the fine point is great for use in a tech environment where we often need to jot notes in margins or inconspicuously mark hardware. I've found that they work pretty well horizontally and even at upside-down angles (mostly when they're 'fresh').
I know a local artisan-geek who makes up flyers for bands entirely in PostScript with a text editor. His posters come out looking like fractal-hypnotic-demonic designs that really catch the eye. Anyone walking by who knows computers can tell that he's not using Photoshop/Illustrator to just rotate and copy an image, it's quite obvious that he's actually PROGRAMMING his posters.
But AFAIK LinuxBIOS is just the kernel stripped of most everything but the very basic needed to get that particular machine to a net-bootable state. I'm wondering why we would use a heavily-modified hack of Linux when we COULD use a system designed from the ground-up to boot computers.
Granted, I don't have any experience with LinuxBIOS, mostly because the documentation basically said it would end my PC as I know it and replace it with something I'd need to hit the books on every time I wanted to change something. OpenFirmware has made my life on the Mac a lot easier, and it seems to eliminate the need for a lot of the crap we have to do on the x86 side of the fence to get a modern system booted.
Tell me how LinuxBIOS would make the PC better assuming less-than-full support from hardware vendors when OpenFimware is supportable and proven right now.
Oh yes, Hypercard was WAY more than a slide show! My dad has been running his business off Hypercard for over fifteen years! He tracks his time and expenses on projects, which autocalculates the billing, which autogenerates the invoice that gets him paid. It also tracks if the client has paid or not, keeps a 'credit rating' for clients in his hypercard 'rolodex', and handles all the family finances.
My Chemistry teacher and I made a test-at-your-own-leisure testing system for our science department in high school, it was network enabled, and pretty secure. It let us take short tests after we completed our lab work, or during off-hours and study halls. The test was randomized so nobody could make cheat-sheets.
You have OF pegged wrong. OF would let the bootloader for the OS live INSIDE the BIOS, where it should. No more NT bootloader, or GRUB, or LILO, you use the same bootloader for all of them. No more disk space/kernel location issues, as OF can handle 32-bit disk addressing already. Universal diskless (TFTP) booting without custom configs for each NIC sounds nice to me, so does a standard, native external media booting capabilities, OF modules for popular filesystems so you won't even NEED Master Boot Records. OF is miles ahead of what the PC BIOS can do, and we'd all be using it already if Phoenix weren't stagnating the market by holding on to what they've got.
Just keep in mind that LILO and GRUB, and the NT bootloader are HACKS to fix a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. A modern kernel should be able to 'grab' all the memory and start booting without an intermediary 'step-up' stage.
I think OF is the way to go (vs. LinuxBIOS) because SOME vendors won't ever fork over their I.P. to a Linux venture, but an open and well-reputed solution like OpenFirmware does a tremendous job, it will be supported by the motherboard manufacturers, it won't make them give up anything they want to keep 'under wraps', and it's a lot simpler and more sane.
The last thing I want to do is wait three months for an unsupported LinuxBIOS flash to appear for a new piece of hardware when I could have OF right off the bat.
plug it in, boot holding cmd-option-O-F, when you get to the OpenFirmware prompt type:
reset-nvram reset-all
some 'flashing' messages will happen and the machine will reboot. discharge the battery fully and then charge it fully. repeat once if needed.
The iBook batteries are pretty flaky, yours might actually be dead if this doesn't fix it. Call and tell Apple that your battery is dead and send it back, make use of that AppleCare you bought (you did buy it right?).
It's going to have to be much sooner than that to replace the PC BIOS with something more modern. There's really only so much you can do with an 8-bit BIOS (which is what we have now, right?). The BIOS should be somewhere you can check RAM and Disk integrity, set up TFTP sessions, simple boot scripts, and get a list of what's actually connected to the computer to pass to the kernel.
OpenFirmware is absolutely INCREDIBLE, and if more companies were on-board it would get even better. On a Macintosh (O.F.) you just hold 'option' at boot and you get a menu of all bootable drives connected to the machine, be they FireWire, IDE, SCSI, or USB (actually USB is disabled out of sanity). You can get a device list even better than most Operating Systems can provide from OF.
All that has to happen is a small system to give OF a GUI for general-purpose stuff that he BIOS handles now, like editing the time and some options. Also it would be nice to have extension APIs for disk checking and basic kernel argument-passing.
LinuxBIOS isn't what you think it is, it's just a way to bypass the normal BIOS to pull a kernel off the network, it's not structurally capable of 'taking over' because it was designed from the beginning as a 'means to an end' for clustering. It has far LESS functionality than a typical BIOS, and the development lag time makes it infeasible for a mass switchover.
We really need to make sure that the 64-bit motherboard manufacurers start using OpenFirmware, it's the perfect opportunity to facilitate a switch to a more modern and sane BIOS. If Microsoft gets involved we're SURE to see major problems and serous bloat on the board.
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I registerd at donotcall.gov as soon as it opened, had my home phone added. Checked again a few weeks later and it wasn't on the list. I figured the database server must have dropped a few transactions because of the sheer volume of those first few days. I added myself to the list again, with email confirmation and all. Just checked again a few days ago and AGAIN I'M REMOVED FROM THE LIST! So I added my number for the third time and it seems to have stuck.
I think a LOT of people have ben dropped. I've heard some big differences in the numbers. On the first week of this list I heard 80M people signed up, last week I heard 50M people were in the DB. Sounds like someone's dropping data from this thing.
Really, I heard he was using a SCO UNIX box, sharing it with an auto parts manufacturer's billing system.
Shows what I know.
Well the bank I work at has an aversion to buying new monitors, so many machines are running on 15" displays where even 1024x768 makes text unreadable for the older folks.
The newer machines are coming with 17" CRTs or LCDs which handle 1024x768 reasonably.
As for praising OS X and not XP, OS X really does look MUCH better, and the new UI doesn't hog NEARLY as much screen real-estate as XPs 'Luna'. It almost seems that Microsoft sent the 'use as much whitespace as you want' memo to the UI designers instead of the coders.
Apple's approach is "show the user what they need to know" while Microsoft's is "Show them everything all the time, we'll just have the UI randomly remove shit you don't seem to use after a while." Apple's UI is philosophy-driven, where Luna seems feature-driven.
It's called the 'lollipop' user interface.
Lusers seem to really love the way it hogs monitor real-estate with big fat curvy textures, while anyone who actually wants to get work done will generally switch to the 'windows 2000' look and feel as soon as they find the option.
I'm with you. I'd rather have my CPU hold files in the flush buffer and order them for minimal space usage and maximum read performancde than flush them out at 'low cost' right away. I've had tremendous luch with ReiserFS 3.6, and most desktop users wil have short periods of heavy disk activity (opening an app or unpacking a tarball) followed by intensive CPU activity (using the app, compiling the tarball contents). Obviously server systems will have heavy all-around disk loading, but most servers I've seen use VERY little of their CPU, even database machines (when properly tuned).
Reiser has the right idea, leveraging the overpowered CPU to boost performance and efficencey(sp?) later.
I've tried 2.6-testX and it doesn't seem to do all that much more for me than 2.4 does. I remember moving from 2.2 to 2.4 and there was a LOT more that I could use, USB and ReiserFS and quite a speedup. 2.6 seems to perform about the same as 2.4 on my boxes though.
Maybe I'll have to wait until I get a TCQ-enabled drive and see if that makes a difference.
GCC-3.3.1 worked fine to rebuild my gentoo system from stage-1, and Apple wouldn't use it if it was totally borked. Sometimes stuff stays masked to maintain sanity (a lot of ebuilds have to change 'GCC=3.2' to 'GCC=>3.2' to build), sometimes they want to wait until the bug reports roll in, and sometimes there's more coming soon enough that unmasking and rereleasing would be foolish.
While it is a bit dangerous to live so 'close to the edge' the OS vendors generally have their shit together enough to test before releasing (excepting RedHat a few years ago, idiots).
actually I had an app that drew it's own resize handle INSIDE the WindowMaker resizer and I used that.
I call your error. X might _feel_ slower to you, but if properly configured it has incredible graphical performance. Your 'scrolling window' example inherently is relying on a third-party toolkitt that runs on top of X. A better comparison would be to grab a window and move it all over the place really fast, because that's going to be a lot more X and a lot less toolkit (oversimplification, I know).
In Windows the scrollbar and it's function are rolled up into a single, integrated GUI package. In a non-xlib X app (like the one you're comparing to) the scroll functions belong to a toolkit that 'translates' down to X for function.
Like I said before, if you don't believe me you can run KDE on Win32 and see for yourself, the core of X graphics and the core of Win32 graphics are both wicked fast, but on X most apps run through several layers of interpretation to get the job done, and on Windows they do not.
Perhaps it's time to integrate GTK+ APIs into X, make it 'lower' and closer to the core, and see what happens when it doesn't have to translate down.
Not regular moves/resizes. I'm talking about those bloaty XP 'keep everything drawn all the time, re-render 20 times per second' moves and resizes. Your P150 can't do that no matter what you say.
Alright, try running the KDE port for Win32 and show me how the problem is X. I guarantee that KDE on Win32 is slower than KDE on X.
Even if you optimized it to hell it would still be faster on X because X is faster than Windows.
Alright, the Windows Window Manager doesn't have 'desktop icons' either, explorer.exe provides them, the file manager provides them. Don't believe me? open an app, and kill explorer.exe with the task manager, watch 'my computer' disappear.
You can certainly run an external file manager that provides desktop icons under WindowMaker, and that would be the only fair way to compare these apples.
That still doesn't make X slow. If you insist on KDE and GNOME you should be complaining about KDE, GNOME, Qt, and GTK+. XFree86 and Windows have similar graphics throughput, the Windows UI is a LOT lighter than KDE or GNOME, and it runs partially in kernel mode.
If you have issues with the performance of your linux desktop you should be looking at the applications, desktop environments, and toolkits, because XFree86 is definitely the wrong tree to bark up.
One thing you learn with computers is that you can speed things up only as much as the smallest bottleneck will allow. X is not at all the bottleneck for graphics performance on Linux machines.
At least if an OSS project fails the code is available for other projects to scavenge and incorporate. Where's all that closed-source code written for the dot.coms now? It's GONE or in the hands of lawyers, it will do no good for anyone.
OSS is great because it can pull in a thousand directions at once and still end up at the destination.
Mozilla is a great example, the core application has been extended to include a bazillion features, but its actually a kickass suite. And now there's a layout engine (gecko) that can be used in other applications to provide kickass HTML support.
GNOME and KDE are another great example, the rivalry has done more to further the project than anything else. Windows has come a LOT less far in the same time that KDE and GNOME have been around.
Could we move faster if there weren't competition, sure, but we'd need a lot of MONEY and MANAGERS to keep everyone in line and on-task. Luckily we don't have the burden of pandering for money or slaving under managers to get what we want.
Alright, people need to listen closely. XFree86 is NOT SLOW, the toolkits you lay on top of it are what bogs it down.
I get full-window dragging and resizing in WindowMaker on my old 366MHz laptop, and it has an ATI Mach64 video chipset. Windows crawls when I do similar operations on the same hardware.
I seriously suggest that if you think X is slow you check out a more lightweight window manager and apps. GNOME and KDE have a LOT of overhead because they run on top of an extra layer of abstraction (GTK+ and QT, respectively). WindowMaker is written in C to interface with X more directly and it shows.
You can still use your GNOME/KDE apps under WindowMaker, I'm using konqueror as my file manager right now. Try it.
As for this project, it sounds cool to me. I think X is plenty fast as it is, but that doesn't mean I think someone should take what we've learned over the last decade and apply it to a more modern 'ground-up' solution. It would be nice if there was an X replacement that had QT and/or GTK+ tied in more closely, or if we had a quartz-extreme-like OpenGL windowing system and font renderer with postscript-esque qualities (i.e. run my desktop at high resolution, but zoom everything appropriately for 'real-world' DPI).
I'm writing this on a Compaq Armada 1750. I upgraded mine to 320MB RAM, PIII 600MHz, and 40GB drive. It's got 2 type-II cardbus slots, your standard PC ports, a trackpad, nice keyboard, and a beautiful 1024x768 14.1" Active LCD. It runs linux REALLY well (just don't use ACPI if you want it to cool itself), and WinXP is actually pretty fast on it as well. You can swap out the hard drive (on it's own removable chassis) quite easily to switch from Linux to Windows to whatever drives. DVD-ROM and floppy at the same time (or extra battery instead of the floppy) for full desktop-replacement. I'm looking for a DVD-ROM/CD-RW module that will fit the front bezel, but that's another story.
Did I mention that this thing is a total BEAST? You can toss it across the room and it still runs. I run mine in my car (no shocks, mind you) for MP3s. It's no lightweight, but it's built to last, not to carry.
These can be had on eBay for about $250, mine would go for about $600 because of all the 'leet upgrades.
Or... it will go on a rampage of litigation, suing IBM for 'stealing SIMD' and Intel for infringing on their 'use silicon chips as CPUs'. Eventually all Apple G4 users will get mail asking for an 'extended Altivec Licensing Fee' of $499 per CPU.
Nevermind.
I buy them by the dozen. The price of the F-301 determines where I will be buying most of my other office supplies. It also helps that the director of Desktop Support where I work gets free Zebras (her favorite pen) when she asks if anyone has a pen on them.
The higher-up model, the F-401 costs about twice as much but is a bit heavier, I carry one or two of those in my breast-pocket and use them for myself only.
These are seriously rugged pens, the fine point is great for use in a tech environment where we often need to jot notes in margins or inconspicuously mark hardware. I've found that they work pretty well horizontally and even at upside-down angles (mostly when they're 'fresh').
I know a local artisan-geek who makes up flyers for bands entirely in PostScript with a text editor. His posters come out looking like fractal-hypnotic-demonic designs that really catch the eye. Anyone walking by who knows computers can tell that he's not using Photoshop/Illustrator to just rotate and copy an image, it's quite obvious that he's actually PROGRAMMING his posters.
But AFAIK LinuxBIOS is just the kernel stripped of most everything but the very basic needed to get that particular machine to a net-bootable state. I'm wondering why we would use a heavily-modified hack of Linux when we COULD use a system designed from the ground-up to boot computers.
Granted, I don't have any experience with LinuxBIOS, mostly because the documentation basically said it would end my PC as I know it and replace it with something I'd need to hit the books on every time I wanted to change something. OpenFirmware has made my life on the Mac a lot easier, and it seems to eliminate the need for a lot of the crap we have to do on the x86 side of the fence to get a modern system booted.
Tell me how LinuxBIOS would make the PC better assuming less-than-full support from hardware vendors when OpenFimware is supportable and proven right now.
Oh yes, Hypercard was WAY more than a slide show! My dad has been running his business off Hypercard for over fifteen years! He tracks his time and expenses on projects, which autocalculates the billing, which autogenerates the invoice that gets him paid. It also tracks if the client has paid or not, keeps a 'credit rating' for clients in his hypercard 'rolodex', and handles all the family finances.
My Chemistry teacher and I made a test-at-your-own-leisure testing system for our science department in high school, it was network enabled, and pretty secure. It let us take short tests after we completed our lab work, or during off-hours and study halls. The test was randomized so nobody could make cheat-sheets.
You have OF pegged wrong. OF would let the bootloader for the OS live INSIDE the BIOS, where it should. No more NT bootloader, or GRUB, or LILO, you use the same bootloader for all of them. No more disk space/kernel location issues, as OF can handle 32-bit disk addressing already. Universal diskless (TFTP) booting without custom configs for each NIC sounds nice to me, so does a standard, native external media booting capabilities, OF modules for popular filesystems so you won't even NEED Master Boot Records. OF is miles ahead of what the PC BIOS can do, and we'd all be using it already if Phoenix weren't stagnating the market by holding on to what they've got.
Just keep in mind that LILO and GRUB, and the NT bootloader are HACKS to fix a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. A modern kernel should be able to 'grab' all the memory and start booting without an intermediary 'step-up' stage.
I think OF is the way to go (vs. LinuxBIOS) because SOME vendors won't ever fork over their I.P. to a Linux venture, but an open and well-reputed solution like OpenFirmware does a tremendous job, it will be supported by the motherboard manufacturers, it won't make them give up anything they want to keep 'under wraps', and it's a lot simpler and more sane.
The last thing I want to do is wait three months for an unsupported LinuxBIOS flash to appear for a new piece of hardware when I could have OF right off the bat.
plug it in, boot holding cmd-option-O-F, when you get to the OpenFirmware prompt type:
reset-nvram
reset-all
some 'flashing' messages will happen and the machine will reboot. discharge the battery fully and then charge it fully. repeat once if needed.
The iBook batteries are pretty flaky, yours might actually be dead if this doesn't fix it. Call and tell Apple that your battery is dead and send it back, make use of that AppleCare you bought (you did buy it right?).
It's going to have to be much sooner than that to replace the PC BIOS with something more modern. There's really only so much you can do with an 8-bit BIOS (which is what we have now, right?). The BIOS should be somewhere you can check RAM and Disk integrity, set up TFTP sessions, simple boot scripts, and get a list of what's actually connected to the computer to pass to the kernel.
OpenFirmware is absolutely INCREDIBLE, and if more companies were on-board it would get even better. On a Macintosh (O.F.) you just hold 'option' at boot and you get a menu of all bootable drives connected to the machine, be they FireWire, IDE, SCSI, or USB (actually USB is disabled out of sanity). You can get a device list even better than most Operating Systems can provide from OF.
All that has to happen is a small system to give OF a GUI for general-purpose stuff that he BIOS handles now, like editing the time and some options. Also it would be nice to have extension APIs for disk checking and basic kernel argument-passing.
LinuxBIOS isn't what you think it is, it's just a way to bypass the normal BIOS to pull a kernel off the network, it's not structurally capable of 'taking over' because it was designed from the beginning as a 'means to an end' for clustering. It has far LESS functionality than a typical BIOS, and the development lag time makes it infeasible for a mass switchover.
We really need to make sure that the 64-bit motherboard manufacurers start using OpenFirmware, it's the perfect opportunity to facilitate a switch to a more modern and sane BIOS. If Microsoft gets involved we're SURE to see major problems and serous bloat on the board.