that old GNU/Linux argument

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul 25, 2008, Les <hlhowell at pacbell.net> wrote:

> Do you know what the BIOS actually does?

Yep.  It loads the kernel and transfers control to it.  At times, it
provides the kernel with essential information about the configuration
of the system.  At times, in some cases, the kernel requests the BIOS
to perform certain essential tasks.  That's about it.

Point is, if it's removed, the system won't boot up.  Which is
perfectly along the same lines of, if the kernel is not there, the
rest of the system can't come up.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}