Re: [ANNOUNCE] Gujin graphical bootloader 0.4

[ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)]

"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> writes:

> The point is that this belongs in the kernel image, so that it can be evolved,
> not in the boot loaders, where it becomes static.  These kinds of things will in
> 
> practice change too quickly to be frozen into boot loaders.

In principle I agree.  But until I have thought out all of the angles
I'll play with just about every idea.

I will say though that having a 32bit entry point in a bootloader is
fully reasonable as, if you are doing anything more than zImage the
bootloader needs to switch into protected mode anyway.  However having
a the ability to switch back into realmode to do BIOS calls is also
reasonable. The interesting case there is loadlin.

But I fully agree that bootloaders should be as simple as possible
with respect to the kernel.  But I also have a major issue with 
the fact that rdev only works on x86.  And even with linuxBIOS around
it would be nice to compile a kernel that is x86-generic.  That is one
of the neater ideas of the alpha port.  I know on the ppc port it
splits up per bootloader.  I don't have any problems with compiling
for a specific environment but I don't want to make it mandatory.

Eric