Bitfrost and dual-boot

[Albert Cahalan]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 5:07 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Albert Cahalan <acahalan at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I do believe that, practically speaking, all of this is moot.
>> Windows uses both SD card storage and the NAND flash storage.
>>
>> (NAND storage being what you'd hoped to protect)
>>
>> The most you could protect would be the firmware itself, but
>> it is silly to imagine that a laptop would have OpenFirmware
>> when the NAND storage doesn't even have Linux.
>
> The question was, how to protect Linux from Windows, in particular
> from malware allowed in by Windows. (Or possibly from malware designed
> into Windows, a "marketing" practice not unknown in the past.)
> Protecting Windows-only machines is Microsoft's problem, not ours.
>
> We can be quite certain that script kiddies and others will attack
> Fedora and OFW on dual-boot XOs.

Why do you keep believing that dual-boot XOs will actually ship?

Windows XP is **using** the NAND storage.

There is no support for partitioning it. Even if both Linux and
OpenFirmware were to support such a thing, you'd have to get
Microsoft to agree to something that makes no business sense
at all.

Supposing you managed to get that miracle, you'd have to
convince countries to ship a system with two OSes that are
both about to run out of space. Microsoft will of course be
pushing for a better Windows experience, meaning all space
is allocated to Windows. (but this is theoretical, because you'd
need a miracle to get partitioned NAND support into Windows)

BTW, if NAND size were doubled, that would mean more NAND
available to Windows. If there were so much NAND available
that Windows had no use for it, Microsoft would find a way to
purposely waste the additional NAND.

> Also, I think you completely misunderstand the market. The ability to
> use Open FirmWare instead of a proprietary BIOS will be of intense
> interest to all PC vendors. I expect OFW to sweep through most of the
> market in no more than two or three years.

I can't imagine why. LinuxBIOS (now coreboot) didn't.
Even EFI didn't. Your wishes are not their wishes.