Open Firmware use on OLPC.

[Jim Gettys]

Yeah, I like LAB too.  Let no one think I don't.

On Fri, 2006-10-13 at 12:34 -0600, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> Speaking as the guy who really likes linux as bootloader, and will 
> continue to use it for many platforms as I have for 6 years now, I have 
> really thought a lot about this change from Linux to OFW, and I'm good 
> with it.
> 
> I still am not sure I'm sold on all the merits (we've seen here that 
> once you hit about 2 Ghz. CPUs, linux will boot another linux faster 
> than polling-I/O-based bootloaders will), but I think you do what you 
> have to do, and in this case OFW makes sense; Linux is just getting to 
> darn big for a 1M part.
> 

a *slow* 1M serial flash part...   Very different game on a bigger
machine....

> I think that we, as a group, should now go to the Linux kernel guys and 
> ask them to please, pretty please, put OFW parsing into the PC side of 
> the house -- it's in the PPC and Sun side, has been for years, no reason 
> not to have it in the PC side. Stefan and I have asked for this from 
> time to time for some years now, and always got the rejection; but now, 
> 10M OLPCs can't be wrong! I think we might get there this time.

Time will tell.
                               - Jim

> 
> A truly open, sensible, easily parsed table format for PCs; no more 
> 4-character labels a la ACPI; what a concept!
> 
> thanks
> 
> ron
-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child