Google Sponsors the LinuxBIOS project 172
Rockgod noted that "The LinuxBIOS project aims to take down the last barrier in Open Source systems by providing a free firmware (BIOS) implementation. LinuxBIOS celebrates its Sixth anniversary this year, and has an installed base of over 1 million LinuxBIOS systems. With the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, that number is expected to exceed 10 million users in 2007. LinuxBIOS supports 65 mainboards from 31 vendors in v1 and another 56 mainboards from 27 vendors in v2"
LinuxBIOS has a problem (Score:2, Informative)
From the site:
LinuxBIOS has a problem
Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.
Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.
Knew that'd get your attention ;) I really wanted a list of motherboards that support this... I think it would be really neat to have a customizeable BIOS.
Re:why would a major manufacturer of motheboards (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LinuxBIOS has a problem (Score:2, Informative)
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:VJTK5OuL8OIJ:
BIOS + DRM = lockin .. (Score:4, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/hardware/03/09/04/1427237.sht
Re:why would a major manufacturer of motheboards (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Any place to buy the MOBO with lb pre-installed (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hitting two sacred cows at once... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Eternal game of catch-up? (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't just a random open source BIOS though. It's based on the linux kernel, and all the hardware support that entails. Or well, as much as you can cram into your kernel image. This kernel then bootstraps to another kernel (or through ADLO, apparently can run WinXP or Win2k's NTLDR.) The only bootloaders it in fact supports are NTLDR and LILO, apparently.
Re:Info on Linux BIOS in actual usage? (Score:4, Informative)
LinuxBIOS supports several different types of payloads: Linux, Open Firmware, Etherboot, etc. If you are using a Linux kernel payload, then you probably don't want to be upgrading it often. In that case, you can set up the first kernel to kexec a second kernel (before kexec, there was a patch called the two kernel monte).
AMD64's 64-bit mode is definitely supported.
It's not trivial (yet) to boot a version of MS Windows with LinuxBIOS, but using Linux as a BIOS can give all sorts of benefits. One very interesting capability for people running beowulf clusters is that you can boot over any network device that Linux supports (e.g. Myrinet or Infiniband). That may not mean anything to a regular home user, but the point is that you have a whole lot more flexibility in what you can do. Even if you don't want to make it boot your home system over your wireless LAN, it does increase your freedom and it prevents people from nibbling away at the freedom you already have.
I would say freedom from future DRM really is the biggest incentive for trying out LinuxBIOS at home. You can avoid Intel's EFI standard (they're pushing for it to be on all desktops and servers), which will enable companies to inflict DRM on you. Linus has made some very good points about why EFI is not good [kerneltrap.org]. One way to look at EFI is that it is basically an OS, and not a very good one.
There are several white papers and tutorials that do a good job of explaining how LinuxBIOS works. Look at the LinuxBIOS documentation [linuxbios.org] section.
opencores.org (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Eternal game of catch-up? (Score:3, Informative)
Heck, I have TWO EZ-Cam webcams I bought back in 2001 or 2002. The designers sometimes allow their contract manufacturers to change up components for almost-the-same depending upon the prices in the commodities or components market.
It happened when I worked for a maker of multiplexers/demultiplexers. During burn-in, whole racks of equipment would just go to shit because the contract manufacturer sometimes sourced crappy (but supposedly- or almost-identical) components to put on the MOBOs. My director was a smart guy and traced the problems to that. Dell does the same thing. I had one Dell tech on the phone and seduced/challenged him into admitting that Dell from time to time changes board components even in the same make/model of machine without telling the consumers/purchasers of the equipment. Even when I was in the company IT department before moving to Customer Support & Manufacturing, my IT manager saw I was having problems with one or 2 boxes. He told me those were a pair Dell had quietly made changes to and were to be replacing them at Dell's cost. So, TWICE in the same company, in under 2 years, I got burned by secret changes.
What does it mean? Anyone buying boatloads of hardware for some large lab or emulation or scientific project might have some wayward machines having spurious, untraceable problems. All because a component on the MOBO was switched. I HAD to get the Dell guy on the speaker phone during a tech support call, and it was timely. I worked for a friend who told me I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Having been insulted and demeaned in front of others by him (some non-Dell MOBO machines were just reFUSING to be Ghosted (Norton) and he blamed it on me and incompetence even tho I told him of my experiences with Dell and other products, and that the problem HAD to be in the MOBO he had just bought, a comment to which he took great exception), I was on the phone with Dell and got my over-the speaker answer. Swapping the MOBO on the NON-DELL box solved the problem. I never got an apology from that day.
As for my EZ-Cam cameras, one has a shitty Conexant chip. No distro of Mandrake since 2001, no Mandriva, no Ubuntu, or Suse, or any other distro I tried could get that damn camera to shoot or show images. They DID SEE the camera, but could not activate it. Meanwhile, another camera of the same markings, DID work. Years ago I opened both and took pictures and found what I suspected: different components, yet same model/type, etc.
So, it won't be that hard for mshaft to software discriminate against Linux-friendly BIOS code unless... well, unless, I suppose, that code is cross-licensed with Novell/Suse and mshaft, too.
Hopefully, Linux devs will become so nimble that the BIOS makers might be bypassed altogether. But, the hardware makers will still likely solder or epoxy on some firmware-laden chip that will refuse to work with Linux BIOS footprints.
Re:Why bother? (Score:3, Informative)
If you actually read the LinuxBIOS web site, you will see that a prime motivation was to allow remote updating of the BIOS on Linux clusters. It beats attaching a keyboard to each of 256 motherboards and updating them one by one.
Manufacturers of embedded systems are likely to be interested in a BIOS that is free and fast.
It is not so clear what the benefits are for Joe and Mary desktop user. I'm sure most Linux users will continue to use the BIOS that comes with their board.
OLPC isn't using LinuxBIOS anymore (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OLPC isn't using LinuxBIOS anymore (Score:2, Informative)
That's incorrect. The OLPC project is still using LinuxBIOS to boot the machine, but they are using OpenFirmware as a payload. I have seen both OpenFirmware and a linux kernel payload demonstrated on the OLPC revA developer boards. They chose OpenFirmware because it can fit in a smaller ROM chip.
If you don't understand what that means, just read up on things at http://linuxbios.org/ [linuxbios.org]