Peter Lister P.Lister@sychron.com writes:
So there are two issues: a) DOS isn't supported and b) the floppy as a boot device isn't supported. That will make it a very difficult sell for mobo manufacturers. Can you imagine me buying a Linux PC with LinuxBIOS and it crashing. How am I going to repair it then?
It's Ron's privilege to name the project as he sees fit, but when people first see "LinuxBIOS", misinterpretation does seem to be common. "LinuxBIOS" does *not* mean "a BIOS for Linux" - for one thing, Linux does needs no BIOS.
Bogus. Linux needs a BIOS, to initialize the platform. Which we have shown the hard way. Linux simply needs not any help after it gets except on poorly designed ports.
And LinuxBIOS is a BIOS for Linux.
The project's original intention was to put Linux in a mobo rom *instead* of a legacy PC BIOS.
Which is also suggested by the name LinuxBIOS. Unfortunately that does not work have as well as initially envisioned.
The code base has turned out to be useful for much more than that, and it now supports other boot loader code, such as Etherboot. The UMD guys have just created ADLO to glue the Bochs PC BIOS together with LinuxBIOS for the hardware setup, so that various OSes (MS included) are supported. This is very new, so give it time - but I don't think we'll need to wait long, this stuff is moving fast.
One small step at a time.
Eric