4 ms·
The current way an x86 platform is booted to linux today uses mostly closed source UEFI DXE drivers, so the current boot flow is really (simplified) like this:
by ganshun 9y ago
The current way an x86 platform is booted to linux today uses mostly closed source UEFI DXE drivers, so the current boot flow is really (simplified) like this:
UEFI DXE loads disk/network -> Linux
We're doing
Linux (with commonly used open source drivers)-> Linux
It's possible that if your end goal is a Linux system without too many requirements, you could stop at the first Linux system without ever booting the second. However the bios rom memory is pretty small, and we're mostly working with about 4-8mb of free space left not including the ME region or UEFI PEI.
- krylon 9y ago> you could stop at the first Linux system without ever booting the second Someone did that! Well, something like it, anyway.I have an Asus EeeBox sitting on my desk, gathering dust, that has something called "SplashTop" - if I hit the right key during the POST screen, it boots into a minimalistic Linux desktop in about 2 seconds. There is networking and a browser. I haven't used it in ages, but I think the problem was that it could not access the file system, so one could not do very much, and I think settings did not persist across reboots. But the general idea seemed appealing at the time.