Booting from floppy

[Peter Lister]

> So there are two issues: a) DOS isn't supported and b) the floppy as
> a boot device isn't supported. That will make it a very difficult
> sell for mobo manufacturers. Can you imagine me buying a Linux PC
> with LinuxBIOS and it crashing. How am I going to repair it then?

It's Ron's privilege to name the project as he sees fit, but when
people first see "LinuxBIOS", misinterpretation does seem to be
common. "LinuxBIOS" does *not* mean "a BIOS for Linux" - for one
thing, Linux does needs no BIOS. The project's original intention was
to put Linux in a mobo rom *instead* of a legacy PC BIOS.

The code base has turned out to be useful for much more than that, and
it now supports other boot loader code, such as Etherboot. The UMD
guys have just created ADLO to glue the Bochs PC BIOS together with
LinuxBIOS for the hardware setup, so that various OSes (MS included)
are supported. This is very new, so give it time - but I don't think
we'll need to wait long, this stuff is moving fast.