LinuxBIOS: the future of booting PCs?

[aidanjt]

Also, having a proper OS that isn't part of the storage media on a PC would have distinct advantages. For example, see this thread started the other day by Trig:

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=100789

That's a very good example of another use it could have. kexec() could bootstrap anything, and could even do sysadmin things onboard without any boot media with enough space.

[Funkstar]

Just watched the video. Very Very interesting stuff.

A few key points as far as i'm concerned:
- LinuxBIOS has the fastest Hypertransport implimentation to date. Faster then AMDs own code even.
- LinuxBIOS can produce faster memory IO than a propriatory BIOS as they actually try and get memory timing and speed correct. Others don't as it is hard to do right.
- Flash sizes on motherboards are increasing. 16Mbyte is possible. That is a whole lot of flash for a stripped down, customised OS.

Also from what he said in the video about Cache-As-RAM you could, in theory, run a system with just two omponents: Motherboard and CPU. Very sweet!

[aidanjt]

Of course any memory modules working loose on a PC-BIOS will result in critical error and nothing else. Having an OS run in a C2D's cache would be awesome, you could get much more info with less hardware.

And boy is their test suite impressive as hell.

I'm sorely tempted to get the Gigabyte board and a 6000+ X2, although I don't feel flush enough to experiment with hardware like that.

[aidanjt]

It seems that despite industry scepticism, resistance and FUD, Linux as a whole is still gaining momentum with no signs of slowing down. As far as I can see the reason is that it's appealing to the individual and working it's way from the ground up, in no place is that more readily apparent as in the electronic engineering sector because of it's sheer adaptability and ready to use drivers, the more people that chip in, the better for everyone

[alsenior]

at the end of the video he did make one point that if a os makes bios calls it cannot run on linux bios that means no windows. although i think it would be possible to make a compat layer to emulate bios calls

[Funkstar]

Windows. We actually had Windows booting under BoxBIOS years ago, but it was pretty painfull.

What we would like to do is find the ReactOS guy again and have him talk to us about Freeloader

No real clue what that means, but there are a few things to google for

[aidanjt]

at the end of the video he did make one point that if a os makes bios calls it cannot run on linux bios that means no windows. although i think it would be possible to make a compat layer to emulate bios calls

Yes, they did, they wrote ADLO as a payload to provide PC-BIOS services to silly OSes. It's probably not perfect, but gets the ball rolling.
LILO seems to be an offender too, naughty, though Grub has deprecated it a long time ago, and Grub2 can natively boot from LinuxBIOS, so that covers booting Linux from multiple angles.