More than one million devices have already shipped with LinuxBIOS, and the growth is continuing. In his interview for the upcoming FOSDEM 2007 conference, LinuxBIOS creator Ronald Minnich talks about vendor support, the One Laptop Per Child BIOS, and his reluctance towards EFI.
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Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:2005-08-11
Why would you say that? I consider trying different OS's, hardware and settings as playing. Your attitude doesn't help OSS, and it doesn't help regular users learn about OSS or different ways of doing things.
I bet you treat your users like that too, if you have any, if you don't, thank god
Member since:2005-07-06
I've seen LinuxBIOS in news before, but if Chipset makers have gotten on board, seen LinuxBIOS and then backed off over the years, why is that?
Mainly because they are just scared about potentially giving up control of their hardware, and allowing people to see how it works for reasons that are best known to them. For the smaller vendors who have let go of this bogus and paranoid IP (Intellectual Property) attitude then they've found that it makes no difference whatsoever. Intel is obviously the biggest culprit here.
From smaller hardware vendors' points of view LinuxBIOS is great because it provides more of a level playing field and a ready made BIOS, with the economy of scale of lots of other people using and contributing to it (as in the Linux kernel), which they can then pick up and run with.
That approach always tends to win in the end, and is how the PC came about and how Intel got so rich. Many companies wanted to stay in a world of total proprietary and closed hardware with certified hardware from certain vendors, and Intel seems to want to take us back to that world. In the long run, no matter how big the market Intel thinks there is for things like DRMed entertainment systems (it's not about entertainment DRM though but mainly about control), the market for more open and cheaper systems is larger and is where things naturally gravitate.
Member since:2005-11-16
Mainly because they are just scared about potentially giving up control of their hardware, and allowing people to see how it works for reasons that are best known to them. For the smaller vendors who have let go of this bogus and paranoid IP (Intellectual Property) attitude then they've found that it makes no difference whatsoever. Intel is obviously the biggest culprit here.
I don't believe this at all - for example, if Intel are worried about giving up control of their hardware they wouldn't have datasheets on just about every chip they produce freely downloadable from their web site.
From the article, LinuxBIOS is used in (over) one million devices (embedded systems where Windows and/or backwards compatability doesn't matter). How many desktop/server machines is it used in? My guess is probably less than 500 machines owned by LinuxBIOS developers and people experimenting with beowulf clusters.
IMHO it's more about economics - LinuxBIOS is mostly useless, mostly buggy/incomplete (AFAIK) and rather messy for most desktop machines that end up running windows. Because of this the cost of bothering with LinuxBIOS for desktop/server manufacturers (end user documentation & tech support, reliability testing, answering emails from developers & trying to create useful responses, etc) is too high to justify considering the size of the end market (almost none).
If LinuxBIOS was actually intended as a desktop/server BIOS for Windows machines things may be completely different - it could have been used in millions of PCs and no embedded systems instead of the other way around.
Member since:2005-06-30
"Is there something wrong with LinuxBIOS?
Maybe they are behind other BIOS's in terms of functionality?"
The biggest problem with LinuxBIOS starts and ends with hardware (as you should realize if you'd read the interview).
"Easy" hardware is documented; the vendor answers questions and provides sample source; there are lots of people familiar with it; the hardware is well designed, and simple to code to.
"Hard" hardware is undocumented; the vendor hides and obscures information; few if any people understand it; and it has obscure interfaces.
Even when a manufacturer has all of the information, a BIOS can be faulty. If a manufacturer is trying to obscure information, LinuxBIOS developers have a very difficult job getting things to work properly.
At this point the LinuxBIOS has reached a point of maturity that allows the developers to solve tricky problems more easily because they have a more secure foundation.
"Most End users do not care what their BIOS is, they care that it's going to work, with no problems."
LinuxBIOS holds the promise of doing things similar to or the same as what EFI is capable of without the same requirements of EFI. As users see what some computers with EFI or LinuxBIOS are capable of, they will care about the features.
True, most won't have a clue that a traditional BIOS doesn't offer the same features. So, they won't express a desire for a particular "BIOS," but the features will create a demand.
Member since:2005-07-08
Is there something wrong with LinuxBIOS? Maybe they are behind other BIOS's in terms of functionality?
Can other BIOS implementations export fine-grained power management interfaces to the OS? Can other BIOS designs suspend and resume within a second? Do other BIOS vendors allow serious overclockers to compile their own tweaked BIOS images (or download them from enthusiast sites) to get every last bit of performance? Are there any other BIOS offerings that are designed with efficient and correct operation, rather than proprietary interface abstraction, in mind?
LinuxBIOS is one of the technical reasons why OLPC will wow people. Regardless of whether you think cheap green laptops are what developing nations need to drive economic growth, OLPC is a showcase of what personal computing could be like if we said no to proprietary interfaces. It's not about freedom in the religious sense, it's about what the freedom allows us to do with the technology we have. The capabilities of the OLPC, especially given its price and development timeframe, will simply blow people away. And it's because of open source and standards like LinuxBIOS.
Member since:2005-07-11
I'm not picking on it, because having some things Opensourced is great, but there come a time where non-Opensource programs/technologies are better than the Opensource ones.
Most End users do not care what their BIOS is, they care that it's going to work, with no problems.
I'm curious to know what you think of Asus's uber closed-source BIOS omfgwtftechnology?
http://www.benchzone.com/page.php?al=asustek_evaluation&pg=3
Member since:2006-11-24
Member since:
2006-02-01
I've seen LinuxBIOS in news before, but if Chipset makers have gotten on board, seen LinuxBIOS and then backed off over the years, why is that?
Is there something wrong with LinuxBIOS?
Maybe they are behind other BIOS's in terms of functionality?
I'm not picking on it, because having some things Opensourced is great, but there come a time where non-Opensource programs/technologies are better than the Opensource ones.
Most End users do not care what their BIOS is, they care that it's going to work, with no problems.
And how is LinxBIOS in terms of Overclocking etc.
The title is misleading too, he doesn't really talk about the security concerns of EFI, he just say it's possible.
In this world, anything is possible.