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Richard Yao posted on Thu, 21 Jun 2012 05:33:22 -0400 as excerpted: |
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> A firmware replacement for the BIOS does not need to worry about floppy |
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> drives, hard drives, optical drives, usb devices, isa devices, pci |
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> devices and pci express drives, etcetera, because those live on buses, |
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> which the kernel can detect. |
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But you have to be able to load the kernel first, before it can do all |
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that detection. And to load it, you need to be able to read the device |
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it's located on, which in a modern x86 system (as contrasted with mips/ |
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arm) generally means detection of what's there, some mechanism to choose |
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which available devices to check for a kernel or boot loader or whatever, |
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and some way to dynamically configure it, since many devices are simply |
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(device info probable) bricks until configured, these days. |
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Sure, you can boot directly to a Linux kernel /as/ your firmware (as Ian |
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S suggested), but then you're back to hard-configuring it in ordered to |
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do so, thus losing all that extra flexibility that's part of what makes |
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x86 different. Which was the question that I was addressing. |
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
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