About 10 different distros including windows run on the XO-1 and its OFW.raffy wrote:Looks like this project needs to be renamed to "Get the XO-1 firmware to boot small Linux like Puppy".
As you keep saying, the only hope for speeding up the XO-1 is to be able to load applications in RAM. And only small Linuxes can do that.
And as I keep saying, those who stand to benefit from the XO-1 should be willing to shoulder the cost of programming the BIOS for that purpose.
Small linux distros DO NOT have any special BIOS requirements that I know of. Do you? (Please answer this question)
OFW is just as free, open and functional as any other part of Linux. You just have to have a clue about it. It is actually easier to develop for it compared to any other proprietary piece of bios or specific driver (look what is happening with a lot of linux video or wifi drivers).
Now having said that if you have any BIOS for the XO-1 boards or you (or anybody else) can develop one, and have a way to flash it in the XO-1, PLEASE go ahead.
If you are saying that ttuuxxx, BK or any other puppy developer does not have the ability to make the puppy init script OFW aware, the way all the other distros do, I'm sorry to hear it.
If you just say that you can not teach an old dog new tricks. I believe you are wrong. The dog is actually very young
If you are saying that they just do not want to bother, I hope you are wrong. But then again you might be right...
Finally if you just say the either OLPC runs or a "normal" BIOS or they can forget about Puppy, let's forget it.
XO is doing very well what it is designed to do with OFW in a way that no BIOS can. Half a megabyte of code can do as much as the BIOS the kernel and the OS together and still have room to run some games!... Is actually too bad that mannerism, lack of knowledge and going mainstream-Linux (RedHat was a major sponsor), stopped OLPC software engineers to take full advantage of it. It would be blazing fast...
BTW is the first time that I hear that a FOSS piece of software must be replace by a proprietary one so another FOSS piece of software can run! Of course I'm new to Linux