On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 12:58:37PM -0800, h...@zytor.com wrote: [...]
> Multiboot has a fundamentally broken assumption, which is to do certain work Just to be precise. We are talking about Multiboot2 here. > for the kernel in the bootloader. This is fundamentally a bad idea, because Why it is a bad idea? I think that it depends on a kernel. Some may wish to figure out all/some machine details ourselves. However, some may do not care and take everything from a bootloader. Anyway, Multiboot and Multiboot2 specs do not force anybody to take one way or another. You are free to choose what you like. Even more, you can pick exactly what you like. > you always want to do things in the latest step possible during the boot > process, I can agree to some extent. > being the most upgradeable, Here I am not sure what you mean. > and have the interface as narrow as possible. That is obvious. Do you think that Multiboot/Multiboot2 protocols are substantially suboptimal? > Therefore, using Multiboot is actively a negative step. Do you have better proposal? To be precise, I am not talking about patch itself but about idea (of one common/standard boot protocol) in general. > It is declared an "Open Standard" but anything can be such declared; it really > is a claim that "everything should work like Grub." I have not seen such statement in Multiboot and/or Multiboot2 spec. Of course it was prepared by GRUB guys and the "reference" implementation is there. Though, anybody may come and extend specs if he/she wishes. And I did it. Of course I can agree that they are not perfect (especially Multiboot proto is very inflexible). However, both protos try to standardize boot process. I think it is nice because right now almost every (new) kernel has own boot protcol (some even support more then one, sic!). And it is enormous task to support all of them in one boot loader. So, I think that Multiboot protocols family (IMO, Multiboot2 is preferred today) are good idea. Are they not perfect? Yes, but I do not think that proliferation of tons of incompatible boot protocols, each specific for one kernel, is better. So, if you think that we can fix something in Multiboot2 please tell us. If you think that it is unfixable please tell us too. We can think about Multiboot3 too (ehhh... maybe this is not the best idea). Anyway, it would be nice if one day we have one common boot protocol for (almost) everybody. Daniel
