В 13:17 +0200 на 19.08.2011 (пт), Michał Masłowski написа: > A problem with ARM machines is that these which are widely available > usually need nonfree firmware or don't have free BIOS.
ARM machines do not have BIOS, at least not in the x86 meaning. They have a bootloader that prepares the hardware and boots the kernel. AFAIK most devices use U-boot which is free software. There are other bootloaders that work with ARM, like Qi, RedBoot, APEX and probably more, that might or might not work with some hardware. A problem might be replacing the installed version (of U-boot for example) with newer one, if it had been patched and the machine vendor did not release the code, as required by the GPL. Another problem might be that there is no information at all how to replace the bootloader/firmware.
