Anatomy of the Linux Boot Process 170
Donna writes "This article discusses detailed similarities and differences involved in booting Linux on an x86-based platform (typically a PC-compatible SBC) and a custom embedded platform based around PowerPC, ARM, and others. It discusses suggested hardware and software designs and highlights the tradeoffs of each. It also describes important design pitfalls and best practices."
The good thing about Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Proof reading? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The good thing about Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Or hardware installation
acronymfinder.com didn't help (Score:1, Insightful)
Speaking of linux booting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Arrows (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Arrows (Score:3, Insightful)
Because if you buy a motherboard and the BIOS on it makes it so that the computer will only work with Windows XP, server 2k3 and linux kernel 2.4+ people will be pissed. Some people might still want to run DOS, OS/2, Windows 95/98, kernel 2.2, or some other old busted operating system. It's there for that reason. With a linux bios your computer can pretty much only run Linux. Which is fine if that's all you want to run.
Oh, and BIOS makers don't have more workload. They've pretty much mastered making that part of the BIOS. They just have to slightly modify their BIOSes for each motherboard that comes out and update them to deal with the newest chips.
Re:The good thing about Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Or a process stuck in I/O wait.
Or NFS gets confused.
Humility and knowledge of one's own weaknesses please!
Stop plagiarizing! (Score:4, Insightful)
From the Slashdot submission:
And from the actual article: Replacing the string "This installment of "Migrating from x86 to PowerPC"" with "This article" and replacing the word "between" with the phrase "involved in" is not sufficient to serve as summarization in the submitter's own words. Somehow I have a hard time believing that the submitter "Donna" and the article author Lewin Edwards are one and the same person. If I'm wrong, then fine. You can't plagiarize yourself. If I'm correct, then Slashdot's done it again. The article summary isn't an original work by Donna, but a minor modification of the article author's own summary, and should be properly attributed as such.Re:The good thing about Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
It would especially be useful on laptops, or for people who like to save electricity by shutting down their computers when not in use.
Re:Linux Boot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of linux booting... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know, I know, Debian isn't exactly your "grandmother's distribution", but the distro in question is pretty irrelevant once I get to the point.
Anyway, I set it up so they basically couldn't screw it up. They don't know the root password, GDM is set to automatically log in their user (yes, their, hilarity would ensue trying to get them to understand the concept of users) on boot, and the desktop has I think 5 icons, "user's home", "Computer", "Pogo Games" (they love this for some reason), "E-Mail" (evolution), "Internet" (loads google in firefox), and "Trash".
They had to learn very few things to use this system, mainly what the icons do (which is easy because I made them visually huge and self explanatory), and how to shut down (Actions menu, not the Start menu)
Some other measures I put into place, like making a backup of
They haven't had problems with it in about 2 months (since I installed it). Their usage is very basic, and this configuration serves them very well, since I can control the interface to be much less full of surprises than Windows.
So the world is all well and rosy...well...not quite...
I took no measures to clean up the default boot process, so it still outputs 'garbage' like It fills the entire screen, and scrolls by so fast they couldn't comprehend it even if they knew what it all meant.
So I've counted about 5 times so far where my grandmother asks something like, "Now, is all that writing going to come up for good now?" It really, deeply bothers them to see all that as opposed to a pretty Windows logo. Not that I blame them.
So, that progress bar might be 'boring' to you, but it's blissful simplicity to somebody like my grandparents.
(FWIW, I prefer to see it all on a 1024x768 framebuffer, because I want to know when something is configured wrongly but can still pass that stage failing silently)
Re:Stop plagiarizing! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:don't like the splash screens (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean isn't Linux all about choice and configurability?
Re:Speaking of linux booting... (Score:4, Insightful)
"On a somewhat unrelated note, I have also not figured out why Mandrake 10.1 takes far longer to boot up on a much more powerful computer than my Mandrake 10.0 system."
Somewhat unrelated ???!!!
Why don't you try pressing Escape just before the progress bar gets stuck, and find out which particular part of the boot process is causing all the delay. Mandrake may well be trying to set up some service or some piece of hardware that you don't actually use. If so, you can remove the item in question from you setup configuration. This probably explains why Mandrake 10.1 boots slower than 10.0 for you.
Re:don't like the splash screens (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The good thing about Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
It would probably be most useful for the Linux kernel developers themselves.
-a