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

[luke.leighton]

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 1:47 AM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross
<arm-netbook at aross.me> wrote:

> 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.

 yeah - gordan put it well, by pointing out that u-boot is actually a
modified copy of the linux kernel source code: it has to be, otherwise
you can't boot up and load from the NAND flash, because you don't know
how to access it, right?

 why in god's name u-boot was even written, rather than just having an
initrd with an application that presents a simple menu and calls kexec
when the user selects what to do, i really don't know.

 if you've seen the marvel-based "openrd" nightmare situation where
you can boot from NAND but not from SD, yet after booting you *can*
access the SD, you'll know that this is down to lack of proper
maintenance of u-boot.  whilst the drivers in linux get SD working,
they haven't been properly cut over to the
version-of-the-exact-same-drivers-running-in-uboot.

 so actually, u-boot makes the situation *worse* not better.

 l.