On 18 May 2002, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > You may be correct, but I'm not ready to conceed that yet. I see > etherboot in a different light. A set of drivers totally independent > from the kernel, with a different set of maintainers. With an > independent set of drivers which hardware you support is obviously > different.
And the fact is you know more than me on this score, since you have done more. It just looks like more work to me. > In summary. Source divergence I see that as a requirement to have a > maintainable bootloader. Unless that bootloader is a user space > program running on a kernel. Lack of hardware support (or support > divergence) I see as a problem to be fixed by having a sufficiently > large user and developer base so you have enough people ensure the > support is present. Interesting thing: 9load, the plan9 loader, uses stock plan9 drivers, and is interrupt-driven. It's an interesting approach. It definitely opened my eyes when I saw what those guys had managed to do. I am not completely convinced that source divergence is required. Thanks Eric for bringing this up. ron
