With all the talk about open source operating systems and related software, how often do we hear about open source BIOS? Sure enough, there are a few ongoing projects such as LinuxBIOS. But to date, there has been no truly well supported effort to provide comprehensive technology for system initialization and… startup.

That situation now appears to be changing as a result of some new software being developed by Red Hat, called “RedBoot”. The RedBoot project is new, and there is much yet to be done — but RedBoot may soon be “booting” that proprietary BIOS out of many embedded Linux (and other) systems.

If you've ever tried to use an embedded PC in a non-PC application, you probably had to struggle with issues like eliminating a long list of copyright messages, creating a custom splash screen, speeding the boot process, supporting custom hardware initialization, or adding robust system diagnostics. RedBoot to the rescue!

Here's a new RedBoot whitepaper by Paul Beskeen, director of engineering for Red Hat's embedded runtime engineering team in Europe. It provides an introduction and overview of RedBoot, and points to the online RedBoot documentation and source code . . .

Read RedBoot Whitepaper

 
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