On Tue, 15 Mar 2005, Jonathan Morton wrote:
If I understand right, the "bootstrap" section (presently called LinuxBIOS) is essentially a stripped-down Linux kernel with some rather more in-depth device initialisation capabilities. Such a configuration does make sense, and would allow very flexible boot device support.
such was the plan.
But the small flash size problem changed the plan
If this is true, then as a kernel it *does* have callbacks, and can justifiably be termed a BIOS in the strict sense of the word, even if it doesn't provide the legacy "IBM compatible" calls to run M$-DOS directly. Thus the name "LinuxBIOS" should probably stick.
yeah. I still think long term I want linux in there. The Intel EFI guys beat up on me a lot about this -- "LinuxBIOS has no API".
My response was, "of course it does -- it's called the linux system call layer".
But it's harder to make that case when there's no linux in there ...
Eventually, even Intel will have to admit it's time to ditch the old, frequently buggy and restrictive AMI and Award BIOS structures. Goodness, BIOSes of both kinds have caused havoc when faced with a HD slightly larger than was expected at the time of manufacture, multiple times in recent history. The onus has largely been on the HD manufacturers to work around the BIOS bugs. That's just wrong.
Intel has admitted that, long ago; it's just that their solution is utterly proprietary, which runs against the grain. At least my grain.
ron