Re: [PATCH] ACPI: Implement overriding of arbitrary ACPI tables via initrd

H. Peter Anvin
2012-03-27T06:19:21Z

On 03/26/2012 09:46 PM, Peter Stuge wrote:
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> There are a lot of bootloaders, and one of the most commonly used ones
>> has a very adversarial relationship with the kernel maintainers.
>
> A couple of less commonly used ones, by or near the coreboot project,
> haven't exactly been embraced by kernel maintainers. Dunno if it's
> because coreboot doesn't much like ACPI, and thinks that it would
> be interesting to explore and innovate firmware on x86.
>
> //Peter

I think it is more because coreboot has tried to do things in
nonstandard ways rather than fill in the gaps they have. This is
getting a *lot* better, as far as I can tell, but in a sane world there
shouldn't be any need for "bootloaders by or near the coreboot project"
since any standard x86 bootloader should Just Work[TM].

I like to draw parallels with how we dealt with holes in applications in
the early days of Linux. For example, when Linux wasn't providing the
interfaces that X needed, we didn't add a bunch of Linux-specific code
to X, *we added the standard interfaces to Linux*.

-hpa