[OLPC-devel] Re: Boot tasks -- the iPAQ way

[Jordan Crouse]

On 19/07/06 09:23 -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> I will once again repeat my plea: the most important thing we can put in 
> BIOS flash is capability. Yes, graphics are nice, but if you sacrifice 
> capability (such as mknod, mkdir, etc) then you will find yourselves, at 
> some point, wishing you had the capability, not the pretty pictures. So, 
> let's be careful about trading off capability for nice looking boot 
> screens.
> 
> In particular, if the quest for graphical boot screens drives us away 
> from busybox and into kernel-mode applications programming, then I think 
> we've taken the wrong path.

I'm going to take the opposite position - If the ROM Is hosed in the field,
then there isn't much a shell is going to be able to do for 99.99% of the
intended users.  Its nice to have for the uber hackers among us, but we can't
let that distract us from a slick user experience.   

Certainly a shell is important, especially at this point in time, but as we
improve the ROM, the shell is going to fall further into disuse.  Eventually,
it is my hope that we'll be able to disconnect the menu option all-together.

Luckily, for the near future, we can have our cake and eat it too.  The UI
I'm working on should come in about 13k or so, plus 100k for the pictures
(thats raw picture data - it will compress fabulously) so we shouldn't have
to compromise too much at this point.

Jordan
-- 
Jordan Crouse
Senior Linux Engineer
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
<www.amd.com/embeddedprocessors>