Comments on: Long Time in Coming http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/01/long-time-in-co.html Dispatches from a Small Business Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:39:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: eCurmudgeon http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/01/long-time-in-co.html/comment-page-1#comment-9346 eCurmudgeon Sun, 27 Jan 2008 02:43:13 +0000 http://coyote-blog.com/wordpress/2008/01/long-time-in-co.html#comment-9346 <p>So why not Open Firmware (IEEE-1275)? If it was good enough for Unix workstation vendors and Apple (at least during the PowerPC days), it ought to be good enough for PCs.</p> So why not Open Firmware (IEEE-1275)? If it was good enough for Unix workstation vendors and Apple (at least during the PowerPC days), it ought to be good enough for PCs.

]]> By: Micah http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/01/long-time-in-co.html/comment-page-1#comment-9345 Micah Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:52:45 +0000 http://coyote-blog.com/wordpress/2008/01/long-time-in-co.html#comment-9345 <p>Gotta go with Linus on this one:</p> <p>===<br /> So EFI has this cool shell, a loadable driver framework, and other nice <br /> features. Where "nice" obviously means "much more complex than the simple <br /> things they designed in the late seventies back when people were stupid <br /> and just wanted things to work".</p> <p>Not that I'd ever claim that the BIOS is wonderful either, but at least <br /> everybody knows that the BIOS is just a bootloader, and doesn't try to <br /> make it anything else. </p> <p>The absolutely biggest advantage of a BIOS is that it's _so_ inconvenient <br /> and obviously oldfashioned, that you have to be crazy to want to do <br /> anything serious in it. Real mode, 16-bit code is actually an _advantage_ <br /> in that sense. People know how to treat it, and don't get any ideas about <br /> it being some grandiose framework for anything else than "just load the OS <br /> and get the hell out of there".<br /> ===<br /> http://kerneltrap.org/node/6884<br /> </p> Gotta go with Linus on this one:

===
So EFI has this cool shell, a loadable driver framework, and other nice
features. Where “nice” obviously means “much more complex than the simple
things they designed in the late seventies back when people were stupid
and just wanted things to work”.

Not that I’d ever claim that the BIOS is wonderful either, but at least
everybody knows that the BIOS is just a bootloader, and doesn’t try to
make it anything else.

The absolutely biggest advantage of a BIOS is that it’s _so_ inconvenient
and obviously oldfashioned, that you have to be crazy to want to do
anything serious in it. Real mode, 16-bit code is actually an _advantage_
in that sense. People know how to treat it, and don’t get any ideas about
it being some grandiose framework for anything else than “just load the OS
and get the hell out of there”.
===
http://kerneltrap.org/node/6884

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