[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBIOS Summit

[Ken Fuchs]

What topics will be covered at the LinuxBIOS Summit?

Will it be limited to technical issues and things that directly
affect technical issues such as access to chip set specifications,
NDA issues, new BIOS technologies and LinuxBIOS' competition, etc.?

Is making LinuxBIOS as popular and compelling as Linux and GNU/Linux
distributions a reasonable and desirable goal?

Would support of operating systems other than Linux such as OpenSolaris,
xBSD, Plan 9, and MS Windows 2000/XP be a reasonable goal?  Perhaps,
a payload similar to ADLO could be used for non-Linux OSes.

LinuxBIOS is now extremely well designed and all the core developers
should get huge bonuses or well-deserved Kudos!  However, sometimes
various mainboard builds break and some mainboard ports remain
incomplete.  We need to support more chip sets and mainboards.  How can
we do this? How can we make porting to new chip sets and mainboards easier?

We might try to generate a generic flash image for each mainboard
that people new to LinuxBIOS can download and use with minimal time
and effort required.  It could ask a few simple questions to customize
the boot with the option to store the answers to NVRAM.  This could
be taken to the extreme of a single Live CD that boots Linux and runs
a script that identifies the chip sets and mainboard and gives the user
the option of flashing his BIOS device with an appropriate LinuxBIOS
image (or one that at least supports all critical devices).

Will the LinuxBIOS Summit be rather open-ended like the above or will
there be a defined agenda or both?

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs <kfuchs at winternet.com>