[Arm-netbook] I Have An Possible Chance To Meet An ARM Senior Manager

[Gordan Bobic]

On 10/08/2012 01:47 AM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote:
> On 07/10/12 21:31, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
>> You wrote:
>>> If I meet him would you have any thing you would like me to talk about?
>>> Whatever you want is of interest to me. I am a hardware newbie BTW.
>>>
>>> He is one of the 7 chaps from the early days of ARM.
>>
>> I would stress that the lack of something like the BIOS is the biggest
>> factor holding back ARM for general Linux use. They need to standardise
>> the boot mechanism so that any fool can install their choice of Linux
>> distribution by just putting a memory stick or whatever in to basically
>> any ARM device. Currently, the only realistic option for any normal person
>> buying an ARM device is to stick with the OS it came with, whether that
>> is WebOS, Maemo, Android or WinCE. In the x86 world, you install what
>> you like and upgrades are no problem.
>>
>> Oliver
>>
> Hang on ARM stuff does not have a BOIS. They don't need one. They have a
> boot thingly like uboot which I believe is (100%) free software. The
> description of the problem sounds like you mean the evil
> proprietary,non-free drivers and firmware.

The problem is several-fold:
1) There are many devices with proprietary boot loaders.
2) uboot shares code with the Linux kernel so it's a bit crazy to be 
loading uboot then doing it all again with the kernel.
3) BIOS is more than uboot - it is a set of standards that ensure basic 
functionality to bootstrap the machine is always there and always the 
same on all devices. For example, you know there's going to be a 
bootable disk available at a specific I/O address, you know the graphics 
card will be there at a specific address and that they will be 
communicatable with using the standard, pre-defined protocols. SoCs 
don't really have such standards. That's the key problem.

Gordan