about linux, linuxbios and bootup times

linuxbios at mikebell.org linuxbios at mikebell.org
Fri Sep 10 21:27:01 CEST 2004


On Thu, Sep 09, 2004 at 06:59:24PM -0700, linuxg33k wrote:
>  From everything that I have read, I am understanding 
> that basically its a faster bios that jumps to the distros bootloader 
> when done?  Or does this redefine the bootup process where the linuxbios 
> is the bootloader and upon coming to life jumps straight to the distro 
> kernel?  If it jumps to the distro bootloader surely the time savings 
> are a few seconds at best?  If linuxbios takes over some of the 
> bootloader functions, how does this affect a typicall install if at all?

LinuxBIOS (plus the payload) will get you as far as loading your linux
kernel. It doesn't do anything for speeding up the time from loading of
kernel to launching of process 1, or the time from launching of process
1 to usability. _However_, it's actually a relatively simple process to
get from jumping to the kernel to, for instance, a directfb based GUI in
under 3 seconds, so those few seconds LinuxBIOS saves you can make a
big, big difference.

A lot of the focus of LinuxBIOS has not been around improved boot times,
which is why stuff like the EPIA-M's terrible boot time has gone
unfixed (there are sleeps in there, and also it defaults to a
compressed linuxbios image) but you take what you can get with free
software, at least linuxbios is GPLed, so if you care enough you
can fix it yourself and contribute those changes back for everyone else.



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