[announce] LinuxBIOS on AMD64

[Stefan Reinauer]

Hi,

I wrote a paper on LinuxBIOS on the AMD64 platform that covers
some aspects on the following topics:

* image configuration
 * porting LinuxBIOS to new AMD64 motherboards
 * debugging and tweaking hints
 * some internals

The document is available at 
http://www.openbios.org/docs/LinuxBIOS-AMD64.pdf

I am very glad to announce that this document is released under the GPL,
so please go ahead and use it, spread it, change it. But please do
submit your changes back so everybody can benefit. I suggest putting the
document in the freebios2 documentation subdirectory, if nobody objects.
(What is the preferred file format for that? TeX? The document was
initially created using OpenOffice 1.1 8)

Don't hesitate to make suggestions on improvement, report typos, badly
written english, or whatever comes to your mind when reading the paper.

Stefan

[Steve Gehlbach]

> The document is available at 
> http://www.openbios.org/docs/LinuxBIOS-AMD64.pdf
>
> I suggest putting the
> document in the freebios2 documentation subdirectory, if nobody objects.
> (What is the preferred file format for that? TeX? The document was
> initially created using OpenOffice 1.1 8)
>   Stefan

Thanks for the excellent documentation.  I am not a big fan of Tex or 
troff, other people may be. I think OpenOffice is fine.  Other projects 
I work on code docs in plain HTML as well.  Where something like Word is 
used (and I assume compatible to OpenOffice), we use the rtf file 
format, so cvs can do its thing.

-Steve

[ron minnich]

I prefer latex for this, as cvs works on it well.

I can't stand open office, sorry.

ron

[Steve Gehlbach]

ron minnich wrote:
> I prefer latex for this, as cvs works on it well.
>
> I can't stand open office, sorry.

Oh well I tried.  I learned troff long ago, and there isn't room in my 
brain for another typsetting language.  Brain cell death from old age 
and beer, perhaps.

-Steve

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Steve Gehlbach wrote:
> > I prefer latex for this, as cvs works on it well.
>
> Oh well I tried.  I learned troff long ago, and there isn't room in my 
> brain for another typsetting language.  Brain cell death from old age 
> and beer, perhaps.

I should be clearer. I prefer latex for this. That doesn't mean I 
actually *like* latex :-)

I do my real pubs in Frame on an ibook.

ron

[Steve Gehlbach]

ron minnich wrote:
> I should be clearer. I prefer latex for this. That doesn't mean I 
> actually *like* latex :-)
>
> I do my real pubs in Frame on an ibook.

Cool, on that we can agree, my real pubs are also done in Frame.  I 
didn't think that many people used Frame.  Adobe refuses to put it out 
for Linux, and it is not clear what the future of it is.  Recently the 
whole dev team was moved to India, much to the dismay of a few dozen 
unemployed sofware engrs in silicon valley.

-Steve

[Stefan Reinauer]

* ron minnich  [031120 18:58]:
> I should be clearer. I prefer latex for this. That doesn't mean I 
> actually *like* latex :-)
>
> I do my real pubs in Frame on an ibook.

Last time I used latex was probably around '96 - since then I did most
of the text I wrote in HTML, plain, or some mainstream word processor.

I neither have an ibook nor Frame, otherwise I would have used that
combination.

But I'll have a look at converting the text. Can anyone recommend a
template?

Stefan

[Stefan Reinauer]

* ron minnich  [031120 18:39]:
> I prefer latex for this, as cvs works on it well.
>
> I can't stand open office, sorry.

It uses xml for storing it's files. I even got the tex export plugin to
work, but that is nothing you want to work on later on.

I'm almost done converting the document to LaTeX manually. Just the
graphics and some text formats are missing. And I have to find out how I
choose a less coltish font to get the document readable again ;)

Stefan

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Stefan Reinauer  [031120 13:09]:
> I wrote a paper on LinuxBIOS on the AMD64 platform that covers
> some aspects on the following topics:
> image configuration
> porting LinuxBIOS to new AMD64 motherboards
> debugging and tweaking hints
> some internals

[..]
> Don't hesitate to make suggestions on improvement, report typos, badly
> written english, or whatever comes to your mind when reading the paper.

In order to make this document easily changeable and enhanceable, I
converted it to LaTeX now. I was using pdflatex to convert it to pdf.

The document is commited to LinuxBIOS CVS now (freebios2/documentation).
Just doing a make in that directory should do the job.

Hope this way people can contribute now ;-)

Stefan