On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 07:41:25AM -0500, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 10:57:56AM +0100, Peter Stuge wrote:
"BIOS" is quickly getting obsolete.. Plus LinuxBIOS as of now doesn't do much in the traditional BIOS sense; there are no callbacks, by design. It's a mainboard firmware rather than a BIOS. That's actually pretty good, "mainboard firmware" - but then I'm back at the original problem; what to call the non-payload part. Core? Hardware init?
I think the term "BIOS" means different things to different people. Some think of it as the POST stage - which is what LinuxBIOS replaces. Others would associate it with the old DOS callbacks (as you did). And yet others think of the menu screen in a COTS BIOS where boot options can be set.
Right. Are there more fundamental blocks in a classic BIOS that I can't think of?
- Hardware init controlled by battery-backed NVRAM LinuxBIOS does this but it is instead controlled by compile-time options. What is the desired development of this part?
- Boot process controlled by NVRAM LinuxBIOS does this too, by loading a payload, and this is also controlled by compile-time options. What is the desired development of this part?
- Legacy services, and the only way BIOS is visible after OS loads LinuxBIOS does not, and should not, ever, do this. Right?
I'm not saying a LinuxBIOS firmware image cannot have callbacks, but they probably shouldn't be to this project, but rather, as Ron says, to the Linux kernel itself. I keep making this distinctions since we will not start developing the kernel "inside" LinuxBIOS, but a firmware image will instead be a marriage between LinuxBIOS parts and kernel parts.
I wonder if the pain of changing names would be worth preventing the perpetual misunderstanding that the current name creates.
Right. Perhaps it will.
LinuxBIOS right now has nothing to do with Linux. The misconception that Linux is in the firmware or that the firmware was derived from Linux comes up frequently. (See one of the replies in this thread..)
Right.
Interestingly, Linux is a trademarked term. If a manufacture ever started shipping LinuxBIOS, they'd need to put the little blurb about "Linux is a trademark owned by Linus Torvalds" in their promotional material -- even though Linus and Linux have nothing to do with the product.
This is also a reason to change the name. And a pretty good one IMHO.
Also, if LinuxBIOS+ADLO ever matures, one could get in the very awkward position of trying to explain to end users that they're really running Windows and not Linux. :-)
Yup.
//Peter