What i really don't get is: Why trying to support bleeding edge hardware almost nobody has datasheets for instead of writing reliable custom drivers that would support older hardware. development itself would be far easier, at least SOME hardware would be supported and people would be able to TEST linuxbios on old hardware without fearing to ruin an expensive mainboard. most of the drivers written only include a working version which is far away from a full featured support that would make a difference to the original bios versions. this is imho what drives users away.
i'm willing to write more generic full featured drivers (northbridge/southbridge) for older chipsets (i posted a list and i'll stick to that list). my problem is not that i don't understand the hardware itself but the linuxbios framework. i don't want to spend hours of code surfing just to understand how and where certain code sniplets are called or how certain config files need to be written. a documentation to the code is close to non-existant. while this might not be a problem to long-term developers it drives new ones away.
what i would like to see is: generic support for usb/cdrom boot, ide support in southbridges, an onscreen menu (nothing fancy) and a far better documentation for users and developers. Holger