[OT] Google Sponsors the LinuxBIOS project

1
Google Code wrote:
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.

It would be great to have an HaikuBIOS too ! :idea:

2
forart.it wrote:
It would be great to have an HaikuBIOS too ! :idea:

Why?

Haiku is designed to be a desktop OS, not a firmware BIOS…

3
umccullough wrote:
Why?
LinuxBIOS website wrote:
LinuxBIOS is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers.

It performs just a little bit of hardware initialization and then executes a so-called payload: a Linux kernel, FILO, GRUB2, OpenBIOS, Open Firmware, SmartFirmware, Etherboot, ADLO (for booting Windows 2000 and OpenBSD), Plan 9, memtest86 and many more.

Benefits
There are many reasons for using LinuxBIOS.

* 100% Free Software BIOS (GPL)
* No royalties or license fees!
* Fast boot times (3 seconds from power-on to Linux console)
* Avoids the need for a slow, buggy, proprietary BIOS
* Runs in 32-Bit protected mode almost from the start
* Written in C, contains virtually no assembly code
* Supports a wide variety of hardware and payloads
* Further features: netboot, serial console, remote flashing, ...</blockquote></div>
umccullough wrote:
Haiku is designed to be a desktop OS, not a firmware BIOS...
:? :?:
4
forart.it wrote:
umccullough wrote:
Haiku is designed to be a desktop OS, not a firmware BIOS...
:? :?:

Maybe you’re not clear on what a BIOS is… it’s the stuff that loads BEFORE the OS…

It also provides some abstract access to the hardware in some cases, especially for emulation of legacy hardware. This is not a space where Haiku really has much potential.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS

5

I think an open source BIOS is great. If it becomes competitive with the proprietary ones, it could definitely lower the cost of motherboards.

But… a BIOS and an OS are two different things. Why would Haiku want to start writing a BIOS when a) Haiku exists to recreate the BeOS and b) LinuxBIOS already seems to be doing fine?

6
j_freeman wrote:
Why would Haiku want to start writing a BIOS when a) Haiku exists to recreate the BeOS and b) LinuxBIOS already seems to be doing fine?
Clearly i've been misunderstood. :cry:

I never meant Haiku have to start its own BIOS project… it was a suggestion for Haiku team to ask LinuxBIOS (or, well… OpenBIOS or Open Firmware) devs to support for OS. :roll:

Last but not least: all my 3ad/suggestions tends to create collaboration/links between open projects not to "stole" other project ideas. :wink:

7
forart.it wrote:
Clearly i've been misunderstood. :cry:

I never meant Haiku have to start its own BIOS project… it was a suggestion for Haiku team to ask LinuxBIOS (or, well… OpenBIOS or Open Firmware) devs to support for OS. :roll:

That’s fine - but I suspect you’re still misunderstanding…

These projects do not need to "add support" for OSes - but rather the OSes need to add support for them. In this case, I suspect LinuxBIOS is re-creating the standard interface that most BIOS implementations strive to support, and therefore Haiku probably already runs fine in coordination with LinuxBIOS.

Haiku already has some support for OpenFirmware (as required for most PPC hardware support) - but according to what I’ve heard - many OpenFirmware implementations are "buggy" still.

8
umccullough wrote:
That's fine - but I suspect you're still misunderstanding...
Well, AFAIK LinuxBIOS implements inside it some specific function usefull (mainly) for Linux, am I wrong ? :oops:

In other words: are there any function that can be usefull to Haiku if implemented in the BIOS ?