LinuxBIOS Gets GUI

LWATCDR writes "Has a great write up on combining LinuxBios a Linux kernel, busybox, X, a window manager, and rxvt into a two meg flash chip. So what does get you? A six second boot time for one. All sorts of uses come to mind. Terminals to use with the Linux Terminal server. A very fast booting embedded system like a Car computer. With every one pushing for multi-core cpus, mega gigabyte drives and many gigabytes of ram it is interesting to see how small you can go."

Re:Two megs?

[stoolpigeon]

tfa is like 10 sentences - including this one The setup: LinuxBIOS + a Linux kernel + BusyBox + a tiny X11 server (Kdrive) + the Matchbox window manager + rxvt.(emphasis mine)

Re:Two megs?

[Sparr0]

Your misconception illustrates precisely why projects like this are awesome. No, the summary was not incorrect. They really did this in TWO MEBIBYTES. Two gigs would be completely non-impressive, you can fit any desktop linux distro in that. Doing it all without X in 1.44MB, with dozens of diagnostic tools, is common on rescue floppy distros. Adding an X server (*NOT* XFree or XOrg, mind you) in under 2MiB is impressive but not impossible.

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is pretty much exactly what "embedded" meant all along.

Better video

[oneandoneis2]

There's a better quality video (i.e. a non-YouTube one) available at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fornix/linuxbios. ogg [sourceforge.net]

Re:Impressive, but .... usefull!

[chrwei]

Given that is for a BIOS project, the primary goal is to load another OS off larger storage medium. So why an GUI? Easy, what do you do when your main OS fails? You reach for a bootable recovery CD or USB drive. Oh, but you aren't at home and didn't bring it with you! Gah! Oh wait, you can boot the BIOS in GUI mode and get on the internet and use a web browser and all sorts of stuff!

Even better, what happens when your grandmothers primary OS fails? Think she can use CLI tools and fsck the disk and other such things? What about a GUI where she can point and click through a diagnostic wizard? Maybe even click something to let you ssh in and fix it remotely?

Realistically, I don't think the setup will stay at 2Meg, but I don't think it will need to be more than 32Meg since you can have a fully useful PDA in 32Meg. And if more storage is needed, it can always be extended by using the "recovery partition" concept.

I'll admit that it's arguable that all this is necessary, but I'd argue that enabling the public to know if the issue is RAM or HDD or some other easily swapable part is necessary in taking the frustration out of owning a computer, as well as in reducing waste. There are too many people that don't know that memory can go bad and be replaced easily and that the computer itself is still quite useful. A diag wizard in the bios can fix this problem.

Absolutely

[Weaselmancer]

They're using KDrive, one of the build options of XFree/XOrg done by Keith Packard specifically for embedded or small targets. At my last job we were compiling that for a MIPS target, and the X executable came in at around 650k IIRC.

It's the support libraries and fonts that make an X install huge. Drop those and you can easily squeak in a busybox implementation in 2 Megs.

That being said - this is a fantastic hack. Everyone in the thread is thinking embedded computers for cars, but not me. I'm thinking Geode chips, PC/104 boards and industrial control.

And since I'm thinking about it, thank you Keith if you happen to read this. The other guy I was working with on this project actually got in touch with you over IRC and you helped us out with some problems we were having. Very nice of you to give us a hand - we really appreciated it.

Re:Two megs?

[bflong]

Just an FYI, KDrive *is* xorg. it's built from the official sources and is part of the source code tree and build system of xorg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdrive [wikipedia.org]

Re:Two megs?

[joe_plastic]

ogg theora video [sourceforge.net] of the same.